Redirect Haredi Subsidies Toward Employment

The next government should preserve equal social protection while redirecting part of sector-specific funding toward audited employment, training, and lasting economic independence.

Public debate over government support for Israel’s Haredi population has become trapped between two familiar positions. One side defends the funding as necessary protection for large families, religious institutions, and an economically vulnerable community. The other argues that current arrangements sustain dependence, discourage employment, and impose an unfair burden on the rest of Israeli society. The result is a recurring argument over whether the government should preserve these allocations or cut them.

There is a third option: instead of continuing to channel sector-specific funding through existing subsidy structures, redirect part of it toward employers willing to hire, train, and retain Haredi workers.

I write neither as an economist nor as an expert on Haredi employment or social-welfare policy, but as a citizen concerned with the fair and effective distribution of limited public resources. Under the present government, substantial allocations benefiting Haredi institutions and interests have formed part of the political bargains on which the Netanyahu coalition has depended.

The coalition funds approved for the 2026 budget — including roughly NIS 800 million in last-minute benefits for Haredi institutions layered on top of the record NIS 850.6 billion spending plan (Times of Israel) — illustrate the scale of these commitments.

Such bargaining is not unique to Haredi parties. Coalition governments are built through agreements among parties representing different constituencies. Nevertheless, the scale and consequences of these allocations justify public scrutiny. The coming elections will give the government formed afterward an opportunity to reconsider not only how much money should be allocated, but what that expenditure is intended to accomplish.

What this is not

This is not a proposal to abolish social-security benefits. A Haredi family should receive the same protection as any other Israeli family in comparable circumstances. Assistance based on income, disability, unemployment, age, dependent children, or other generally applicable criteria should continue to be provided on equal terms.

A citizen should receive social assistance because the relevant circumstances establish an entitlement, not because of membership in a particular community. Conversely, no citizen should be denied assistance because of that membership.

The question concerns additional funding provided to a particular sector, especially funding resulting from coalition negotiations. Could part of it be used to facilitate sustainable employment rather than contribute, directly or indirectly, to prolonged nonparticipation in the labor market?

The distinction matters. Social assistance responds to present need and should not be dismissed as unnecessary simply because it does not produce employment. But it also does not, on its own, provide education, professional qualifications, workplace experience, or a path toward economic independence. Employment-oriented expenditure might.

Why subsidize employers?

Hiring a person who lacks conventional qualifications or has remained outside the labor market may involve costs an employer is unwilling to assume. These might include professional training, assistance in addressing educational gaps, mentoring, or workplace arrangements compatible with a Haredi way of life. Faced with those costs, an employer may choose another candidate who can become productive more quickly.

Temporary public support could bridge that gap, allowing an employer to offer an opportunity that would otherwise not exist. The employer would not be the intended beneficiary, but the institutional means through which public funding creates skills, experience, income, and eventually greater independence.

This approach would not begin from zero. Israel already supports vocational training and employment initiatives for Haredim, some developed through cooperation among government, employers, philanthropic organizations, and the Haredi community. The proposal is to build on that experience while making a more fundamental budgetary choice: redirect a meaningful portion of additional sector-specific funding toward measurable and sustainable employment outcomes.

Israel has used a broadly comparable approach to encourage the professional absorption of new-immigrant and returning-resident scientists, through its Center for Integration in Science: public funding helps a university, research institution, or business employ a qualified person when it is unable or unwilling to bear the entire initial cost.

The circumstances are different, but the underlying principle is relevant: where employment or professional absorption serves a public purpose, the state may share its initial cost.

The danger

The same comparison reveals the proposal’s most serious risk. Giving public money to employers does not guarantee genuine integration.

An employer might receive a subsidy for someone it would have hired anyway. An institution might substitute government money for its own expenditure rather than create an additional position. It might employ a person only while the subsidy continues and terminate the job when public funding ends.

A program intended to reduce dependency could then create another form of dependency — or worse, transfer public money to stronger employers without producing lasting employment or materially improving the position of Haredi families.

Strict auditing would therefore be indispensable.

It would not be enough to show that a qualifying person had been placed temporarily on an employer’s payroll. The government would need to determine whether its funding created an additional and genuine employment opportunity, whether the employee received real training and appropriate compensation, and whether the position offered a reasonable prospect of continuing after the subsidy ended.

The experience of programs for new-immigrant and returning scientists may offer useful lessons. How many subsidized appointments became continuing positions? Did participating institutions contribute their own resources? What happened after government support ended?

These are not minor administrative questions. The ability to audit the use and results of public money is part of the justification for the policy itself.

A necessary caveat

The idea touches, but does not resolve, the controversy over drafting young Haredi men into the Israel Defense Forces or requiring an appropriate form of national service.

Military or national service may contribute to later employment by providing training, experience, and connections outside the Haredi community. But employment subsidies should not become a means of purchasing acceptance of continuing inequality in service obligations. Nor should the denial of basic social assistance be used to compel service indirectly.

In principle, military service and employment support are separable policy questions. In practice, recent political events have fused them more tightly than that distinction allows. Haredi parties have repeatedly linked their support for the state budget to legislation concerning Haredi conscription — most visibly when Shas and United Torah Judaism ultimately backed the 2026 budget only after the coalition granted new benefits for yeshivas and promised a conscription-exemption bill (Jewish Insider). Funding and draft obligations have consequently become parts of the same political negotiations rather than questions addressed entirely on their own merits.

That political entanglement does not eliminate the analytical distinction. It does mean, however, that any government pursuing an employment initiative would have to prevent employment funding and service obligations from becoming bargaining chips for each other. The relationship between these policies deserves its own careful treatment, not a shortcut here.

What remains open

No short opinion article can supply the complete mechanism. What portion of sector-specific funding should be redirected? Which employers and employees should qualify? Should assistance cover wages, training, or both, and for how long? How can the government prevent employers from replacing unsubsidized workers with subsidized ones? How can integration be promoted without stigmatizing Haredi employees as a source of cheap labor?

There is also a necessary balance between integration and respect. Haredi society cannot simply be treated as a problem for the state to solve. Its members are citizens with their own commitments, institutions, and ways of life. A successful policy would have to be developed with Haredi participation and accommodate legitimate religious requirements.

Respect, however, does not require preserving every existing financial arrangement. Nor does cultural autonomy eliminate the state’s responsibility to distribute public resources fairly and encourage the broadest possible participation in Israel’s economic and civic life.

The elections offer an opportunity to move beyond the familiar choice between continuing present allocations and abruptly withdrawing support. A new government could preserve a social safety net based on equal criteria while examining whether some of the additional funding currently directed toward Haredi institutions and interests could be transformed into an audited investment in education, training, and employment.

If such an approach proved effective, elements of it might later be adapted to other populations facing objectively demonstrated barriers to employment. This would not mean pretending that the circumstances of different communities are identical. It would apply a common principle: ordinary social protection should be governed by equal criteria, while additional public intervention should be directed toward overcoming identifiable barriers to participation.

I do not present this as a finished policy. I raise it as a question for public consideration: When Israel allocates additional money to a particular sector, should it merely preserve the existing situation, or should at least part of that money help create a credible path toward greater participation and independence?

The government formed after the elections should consider that possibility.