Why some ultra-Orthodox are up in arms over state funding for their schools
Parents from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox stream are angry at one of their schools for secretly receiving funding from the Israeli Ministry of Education.
The Eda Haharedit community, the prominent anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, has been raging and roiling in recent weeks. The discovery of an episode that touches on the core of the group’s ideology has caused a shock and a conflict that has involved insults, vandalism and even physical violence. The cause of the controversy: The administrators of the community’s educational institutions who claim, seemingly, not to depend in any way on the state’s funding, secretly enjoyed government money.
It all started in June when the parents of the girls’ school Hokhmat Lev, located in the ultra-Orthodox Me’ah She’arim neighborhood in Jerusalem, were surprised to learn that the school, contrary to its principals’ official assertion, secretly receives funding from the Israeli Ministry of Education. This was uncovered after a Ministry of Education supervisor was spotted by one of the parents at the school’s office. From that moment the suspicion arose among parents that there’s secret cooperation between the school and the Ministry of Education, and after an independent investigation by parents it turned out that the institution does indeed secretly receive funding from the state by means of a nonprofit organization unknown to the parents.
Parents, members of the ultra-Orthodox sector who send their girls to this school, belong to one of the anti-Zionist groups in Israel. These groups ideologically oppose any connection to the “Zionist state” including receiving its funds. In their view, receiving funds from the state means creating dependency that invites the government's unacceptable involvement in curricula.
In this case, it wasn’t only parents of the ultra-Orthodox sector who were angry. The ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Satmar community in the United States, which funds the Hokhmat Lev school and other schools through a charity called Shekel Hatahor (Pure Shekel) — on the condition that these institutions will not benefit from government funding — was no less angry. Satmar sources argued in conversation with Al-Monitor that the school enjoys funding from three sources: the state; tuition from parents, levied because the school claims not to receive government funding; and aid from Satmar budgets.
