The High Court of Justice on Wednesday issued an order temporarily blocking the transfer of some NIS 1 billion ($314 million) to ultra-Orthodox schools, accused of not teaching core curriculum subjects as required by law, sparking fury among Haredi lawmakers.
The court’s interim injunction came in response to a petition against the transfer submitted by lawmakers from the opposition’s Yesh Atid party.
The transfer was approved by the coalition-controlled Finance Committee of the Knesset last week.
The court injunction issued by Justice Yael Willner said that a panel of judges will hold a hearing on the petition by January 8, 2026. The Finance Committee, the Education Ministry and the Finance Ministry will have until then to submit a response to the petition justifying the transfer of funds to the schools in question.
Reacting to the ruling, ultra-Orthodox parties accused the High Court of “antisemitic harassment,” “holding the Haredi public hostage,” and “declaring war” on the entire community.
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The Shas party likened the judges to “a dangerous band of arsonists who, in their desperate struggle to save their crumbling rule, have chosen to take the ultra-Orthodox public hostage.”
The party accused the court of “stealing the daily bread of young children” and called on “Jews around the world to raise an outcry against this antisemitic harassment.”
Shas leader Aryeh Deri said he had spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the US, expressing his anger to him and urging him to convene a ministerial committee on the issue as soon as he returns.
MK Moshe Gafni, who chairs the Degel Hatorah faction of the United Torah Judaism party, insisted that the funds were “transferred legally, in accordance with accepted procedure and the required approvals.”
UTJ MKs Yitzhak Goldknopf and Moshe Gafni at the Knesset plenum, Jerusalem, September 29, 2025. (Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90)
“The court has declared war on the ultra-Orthodox public,” he said, referring to the judges and petitioners as “wicked” and “determined to harm the livelihood of teaching staff and the entire system.”
UTJ chair MK Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf also likened yeshiva students to “hostages” to “baseless petitions intended for propaganda purposes.”
“We will continue to fight with all the tools at our disposal to ensure equality for every child in Israel,” he said.
Yesh Atid celebrated the decision. “The ultra-Orthodox, too, are not exempt from the laws of the state,” said Yesh Atid chair Yair Lapid. “Anyone who wants to receive public funding will have to teach the core curriculum and submit to appropriate oversight. You will not take the money of reservists and taxpayers and use it to preach against enlistment and deny ultra-Orthodox young people the opportunity to acquire tools for the job market.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid addresses a weekly Yesh Atid faction meeting in the Knesset, on December 29, 2025. (Sam Sokol/ The Times of Israel)
‘Circumvented all restrictions’
The government had requested an extension earlier in the day to respond to the petition and “committed that until a High Court ruling is issued, it would halt any further transfers of funds to Haredi educational institutions that are unsupervised and in violation of the law.”
Yesh Atid, however, said this response reflected a dishonest tactic: “While the petitioners were waiting for a response from the State, the latter acted to establish ‘facts on the ground,’ and some of the funding had already been transferred to ultra-Orthodox educational institutions,” the party says.
The Finance Committee approved the transfer of NIS 786 million ($247 million) to school networks affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, and NIS 136 million ($43 million) to so-called “recognized but unofficial” schools, which commit to teaching 75 percent of the state-set core curriculum but in practice often do not. An additional NIS 151 million ($47 million) was also allocated to Talmud Torahs, which do not teach the core curriculum.
Yesh Atid said that the committee “took advantage of and circumvented all existing restrictions that prevent the transfer of budgets to institutions that are not supervised and do not teach core subjects,” condemning what it described as “a rotten, corrupt and wasteful government that does not count the citizens of Israel and sees our money as a bargaining chip and as political bribery to solve coalition problems.”
The transfers “were made illegally and are null and void,” the party argued.
This money is being stolen from the middle class and “transferred to ultra-Orthodox institutions in violation of the law, in an improper procedure, in an attempt to hide it from the public,” Lapid told reporters when announcing the petition on Monday.
Shas chairman Aryeh Deri in the Knesset plenum, March 31, 2025. (Dani Shem-Tov / Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)
In its petition, Yesh Atid argued that the committee had violated existing restrictions on funding unsupervised institutions that do not teach legally mandated secular studies in approving the transfers, while at the same time rejecting a Finance Ministry request to allocate budgets for additional school inspectors to ensure that Haredi educational institutions are complying with the law.
“The partisan ultra-Orthodox education system is raising a new generation of ignorant people and draft dodgers, and the continued funding of institutions that do not teach core curriculum subjects constitutes an existential threat to Israel’s future as a strong and advanced state. This lawlessness must be stopped,” Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak told The Times of Israel.
According to fellow Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, the petition “focuses on noncompliance with the attorney general’s guidelines, which required the return of funds to the state for failing to teach budgeted core curriculum studies.”
UTJ’s Goldknopf denounced Lapid, declaring in a statement that his actions “once again prove that the only fuel driving him is hatred of the ultra-Orthodox.”
“The petition to the High Court is yet another attempt to harm the fundamental rights of hundreds of thousands of parents and children whose only sin is their desire to preserve their way of life and the traditions of their forefathers,” said Goldknopf, adding that he was “confident that the court will reject this political attempt to interfere in the government’s legitimate budgetary decisions.”
“We will not allow Israel’s ultra-Orthodox children to be turned into second-class citizens,” he declared.
Hitting back, Lapid said that IDF conscription, the study of English and mathematics and raising children to be able to earn a living “is not ‘hatred of Haredim,’” arguing that he was working to ensure “that every child in Israel — including Haredi children — receives what they deserve, namely a proper education that includes core curriculum studies.”
“It won’t help you to shout ‘hatred of Haredim’ every time basic civic duties are demanded of you — duties that every Israeli citizen is required to fulfil,” he added.
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