The Israeli parliament’s decision last month to give a hefty budget increase to religious schools that often do not teach science and math is drawing criticism from the nation’s research community. The move threatens to leave a growing share of Israel’s young people without the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy, they warn.
“Hundreds of thousands of kids are getting an education for life in the Middle Ages,” says biochemist and Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. “I won’t say that what they’re learning is useless, but it won’t make them part of the Israeli economy or prepare them to study at university.”
At issue are hundreds of elementary and secondary schools that serve Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jewish community. Haredim comprise roughly 13% of Israel’s population, but Haredi schools enroll nearly 26% of Jewish students and 20% of all Israeli students. The schools, which receive public funding but often are not subject to government regulation, enrolled about 373,000 students during the 2021–22 school year.
Haredi schools typically prepare boys for lifelong study of Jewish religious texts and law, rather than employment. By seventh grade, most of the curriculum focuses on religious content. In 2020, for example, 84% of boys in Haredi high schools studied no secular subjects, according to political scientist Gilad Malach of the Israel Democracy Institute. Haredi girls, who are expected to work and support their families once they marry, are taught a state-mandated core curriculum that includes secular subjects, but the lessons are often less advanced than those given to non-Haredi students.
The quality of Haredi education has long been a sensitive issue in Israel. Supporters of Haredi schools say they are intellectually rigorous and help meet a sacred obligation to strengthen the Jewish character of the world’s only Jewish-majority country. But critics argue they contribute to high poverty and unemployment rates in the Haredi community, which demographers forecast could constitute 25% of Israel’s population by 2050. Roughly half of Haredi men are jobless.
Earlier this year, government funding for Haredi schools became a political flash point after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which draws critical support from conservative religious and nationalist parties, proposed a $333 million spending boost for the schools in its 2023–24 budget. In the past, Netanyahu supported linking public funding for Haredi schools to their willingness to teach secular subjects, including science, math, and English. But the budget proposal included no such conditions because of opposition from key members of Netanyahu’s fragile coalition.
As parliament prepared to vote on the budget in May, some academic researchers urged it to reject the no-strings-attached funding. “Research clearly shows that children who do not study a full core curriculum have considerable difficulty in overcoming this disadvantage as adults,” stated one open letter signed by nearly 300 economists. “The average proficiency of Israeli students in math, science and reading already places them below the average score in every other developed country,” they noted, arguing that Netanyahu’s government was pursuing policies “on the basis of short-term political considerations” that “are putting Israel on the path to becoming a third world economy.” Such warnings, however, failed to prevent lawmakers from approving the budget on 24 May, with Netanyahu winning support from all 64 members of his coalition.
If Netanyahu’s uneasy governing alliance ultimately fractures, a new government could revisit the spending plan. In the meantime, some science and technology advocates are working to strengthen programs that provide technical training to graduates of Haredi schools. The Israel Democracy Institute says more than 5000 Haredi students were enrolled in rabbi-approved, gender-segregated, post–high school technological training programs during the 2021–22 school year, with an additional 15,600 students pursuing a college degree.
Although graduates of Haredi high schools have a weak foundation in math, science, and English, their rigorous religious education, which often involves extensive memorization and analysis, “has taught them how to learn,” says educational neuroscientist Orit Elgavi-Hershler of the Mofet Institute, a teacher training consortium. “And they know how to think,” she says, which can enable them to close educational gaps.
“On the ground, I see that the young generation of Haredi men and women want to be part of the future of the economy, and there are a lot of companies open to recruiting more Haredim,” says Moshe Friedman, a Haredi entrepreneur who co-founded KamaTech, a training program that collaborates with some of Israel’s largest technology firms. “I’m very optimistic.”
Demographer Sergio DellaPergola, a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sees promise in such initiatives. “If the Haredim get a general education, they’ll be a highly productive addition to Israeli society,” he says. “Everyone will benefit.”
