Watchdog organization petitions against state funding for talmudei torah

By DAN IZENBERG
The Movement for Quality Government on Wednesday petitioned the High Court of Justice to order the government to stop subsidizing haredi elementary schools that are not recognized by the state and are not under its supervision. According to the petition, the Ministry of Education allocates each year more than NIS 170 million to haredi elementary schools, known as talmudei torah, which are not part of the recognized Independent education and Ma'ayan Hachinuch Hatorani haredi streams, even though there is no legal basis for the funding. "If Israel is based on the rule of law, this situation cannot continue. Not only does it transfer millions of shekels of public money without a legal basis... [the state] transfers the funds to a private body which has no experience or training in supervising the spending of the funds and whose interests are not identical with the public interest," the petition says. Recently, the Knesset passed a law obliging the state to allocate to yeshivot, haredi secondary schools similar in age group to state high schools, 60 percent of the funding that it grants state secular and religious schools, even though the yeshivot refuse to teach the core curriculum.