Israel offers free public education from age three through high school. Prior to age three, some Israelis are eligible for state-subsidized daycare for their children, but not all. The criteria for receiving subsidized care are published annually by Israel’s labor ministry prior to each school year.
The general idea is that the state provides subsidized daycare for parents who otherwise would not be able to afford it. Relevant cases include low-income households, single-parent households, or households in which one or both parents are undergoing professional studies or training and, therefore, not working. Eligibility and the size of the subsidy also change according to the number of children in the household in general and the number of children under the age of three in particular.
For approximately 20 years, in addition to professional studies, households in which one parent works and the other is in religious studies at a yeshiva, which is the case in a large number of haredi households, also have been eligible for subsidies. The initial reason was to enable haredi women to join the workforce, as they would otherwise remain at home in order to care for their young children.
Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled in late June that all military-age haredi men were required to enlist in the IDF and that there was no longer any legal basis for their exemption. Following the ruling, the attorney-general’s office listed four state benefits that had been given to yeshiva students but could no longer be provided to those who were legally required to enlist in the IDF, i.e., yeshiva students between the ages of 18 and 26. According to the attorney general’s office, the reason that they could no longer be provided was that the state could not legally provide financial incentives to break the law, in this case, to avoid enlisting for IDF service.
The daycare subsidy was one of these four subsidies, and the attorney general ruled that they could no longer be provided to yeshiva students of the relevant age.
Haredi lawmakers, who oppose haredi IDF service despite criticizing the decision, argue that rather than push haredi men to enlist in the IDF, the decision will lead to a regression in the employment of haredi women, who will be forced to leave their jobs in order to care for children they can no longer afford to send to daycare.
Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur of Shas requested that, at minimum, the sanction not apply for the 2024-2025 school year. The AG’s office consented in September to delay the cancellation of the subsidies for three months, until the end of November, in order to enable the Labor Ministry to prepare for the change.
Trying to legislate a new bill
The government has attempted but failed to legislate a new bill to exempt haredi yeshiva students from IDF service. With the end of November nearing, the current bill proposal, authored by United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler but supported by both haredi political parties, has a more modest goal – not to exempt yeshiva students from service, but merely to remove a significant financial sanction against those who continue to evade their legal duty to report for IDF service.
The bill simply says that daycare subsidies will no longer take into account the status of the father but rather only that of the mother. This would enable haredi households in which the mother works, and the father is a yeshiva student to continue receiving the subsidies.
The bill, in effect, would encourage yeshiva students to continue evading service, and for this reason, the attorney general’s office wrote this week that it was unconstitutional. This is also the reason why a number of members of the coalition have said publicly that they will oppose the law, as the IDF needs more manpower.
The haredi parties, however, are unwilling to accept a scenario where the majority of their constituents are forced to leave yeshivot and join the IDF. If the bill does not pass, the haredim will again be left without a legal way to avoid the draft and, therefore, may threaten the coalition’s stability as leverage for the bill to pass.
This could lead to a crisis within the coalition and is the reason why coalition leaders, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are applying pressure on renegade MKs in order to support the bill.
