It is, a leading Israeli publication wrote, “a Lapid bypass plan.” Today's
issue of the Israeli haredi daily Mishpacha reported that a number of
wealthy haredi businessmen have been recruited by haredi leadership to
contribute money to a new fund meant to minimize the damage government
budget cuts will do to yeshivas, and that the financial sanctions
against yeshiva students who refuse to serve in the military will do to
their families.
Haredim Seek To Raise $100 Million In Donations To Offset Possible Gov’t Yeshiva Budget Cuts And Financial Penalties For Haredim Who Dodge Draft
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
It is, a leading Israeli publication wrote, “a Lapid bypass plan.”
Today's issue of the Israeli haredi daily Mishpacha reported that a number of wealthy haredi businessmen have been recruited by haredi leadership to contribute money to a new fund meant to minimize the damage government budget cuts will do to yeshivas, and that the financial sanctions against yeshiva students who refuse to serve in the military will do to their families, the Israeli business daily Globes reports.
“The measures to be imposed on the world of the Torah" will cut $100 million from the government’s allocations to haredi yeshivas over the next 18 months, Mishpacha reportedly claims. The plan is for the new fund to raise that $100 million privately so that the government budget cuts have no effect.
A meeting of wealthy haredim is reportedly set to take place in two weeks. In the meantime, haredi programs other than yeshiva study have reportedly been reduced to the bare minimum in order to direct those funds to the yeshivas, who are forced to "bear a burden which has become too heavy to bear.”
There is also a plan to encourage employment and job training for haredi women in jobs that are consistent with the haredi lifestyle.
The new fund will raise money over the coming 18 months, Mishpacha reported. But the real hope, Mishpacha reportedly wrote, is that it will only be a temporary stop-gap measure.
“[T]he hope [is] that by then [the end of the 18 months], the government will be replaced by a government more congenial to the haredi public,” Mishpacha wrote.
The government now plans to institute cuts to haredi yeshivas and grade schools which do not teach the country's core curriculum in six months, after it has set up an alternative network of haredi grade schools and yeshivas that do teach the core subjects and do receive full government funding. That way, haredi students whose schools close due to the government funding cuts will have schools to attend.