Various Israeli newspapers are reporting significant movement toward reforming the country’s shameful system of subsidized yeshivas for the married ultra-orthodox.

Ha-aretz:

It took the High Court of Justice a decade, since the original petition was submitted, to rule against the distribution of welfare payments to married men studying at yeshivas.

… [T]he court ruled that awarding stipends to yeshiva students but not to students at nonreligious institutions of higher education is illegal and unconstitutional.

… The ruling came about two months after a Knesset subcommittee was shown the results of an official survey indicating that about one third of the yeshiva students who applied for welfare lied about their income in order to qualify.

The implication is that Haredi cabinet ministers and MKs are about to fight for a line item that costs NIS 135 million a year – NIS 45 million of which, allegedly, is allocated fraudulently.

Not only is much of this state money awarded fraudulently; the people it goes to refuse to provide, for themselves or their children, even the sort of basic education that would make them employable.

The High Court of Justice was presented with a petition Sunday demanding that it order the Knesset and the Education Ministry to explain why ultra-Orthodox schools are not being forced to teach basic subjects, such as Mathematics and English.

… Tens of thousands of students are being deprived of knowledge, tools, and “basic training necessary for the fulfillment of human autonomy, the ability to make an honest living, and the ability to incorporate themselves in Israeli society as active, contributing, and equal citizens,” the petitioners say.

They add that the law harms the legal rights of students attending the small yeshivas, and that it “perpetuates their economic dependence on the community and welfare payments from the state”.

No democratic state, they conclude, agrees to fund a school system devoid of governmental inspection.

A writer for YNET expands on that last point:

There is no other country in the world – not even one! – where the government funds private education. There is no other country in the world where Education Ministry representatives are not allowed to enter a school whose bills they pay (and fully so – 100% of the bills.) There is no other country in the world where teachers refuse to present their curriculum to the body that pays their salary.

He describes the children of an ultra-orthodox friend:

They can’t talk about computers, literature, geography, history, or even the Bible. Yeshivas barely teach any Bible, only Talmud.

He notes that the state’s willingness to pay all expenses for private yeshivas has meant that the national education system has been starved:

[I]n the past eight years we’ve seen a 24% decline in the number of students in teacher colleges in the national education system. People don’t want to be teachers in our sector; not with the current salaries. Why are the salaries so low? Because in those same eight years, the number of teaching cadets in your sector leapt by 111% – and all of this comes from the same budget.

Meanwhile, university students work (many haredim do not), serve in the army (ditto), and struggle to pay tuition. It’s such a grotesque disparity that one wonders why it took a decade for the Israeli court to notice its illegality and unconstitutionality.

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Update: The Jerusalem Post provides historical background. It concludes:

The haredi leadership can no longer justify devoting all of its energies to the singular endeavor of preserving tradition and insulating its flock from “evil” outside influences. It must now rise to new challenges. First and foremost among these is ensuring that while an elite few continue to carry the torch of tradition, others receive the skills needed to integrate into a dynamic labor market.