The core is just an excuse: after all, you will approve a much more generous budget for them.

September 16, 2022   

Alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has imposed a silence on himself, found an unusual reason this week to break it: Netanyahu's promise to Torah Judaism to increase the budget for educational institutions that do not teach core subjects, if he forms the next government, is a move, in his opinion, that "endangers the future of the country." At the height of the Corona period, I accompanied Bennett on a visit to Elad, a red Haredi city at the time. Bennett went out of his way to flatter the Haredi public, and attacked Netanyahu's government. "If they would just have a dialogue with the Haredi public, they could find solutions," he said. He did not propose enforcing masks, cutting budgets, or more fines. Dialogue, he asked. But from the height of the alternate throne, just before he goes home, he has something to preach to the Haredi sector. Because how dare Netanyahu promise a Haredi child a budget for studies, the kind that Haredi parents want him to study? But let's leave aside for a moment a discussion about a Jew who in a few months will have to look for a new job. This is not Bennett, this is the hypocrisy that celebrates. When Benny Gantz joined the Netanyahu government, after the third round, he asked about the core education for the Haredi, how much and why? If the Haredi parties had offered Lapid, Gantz and Bennett, just before the dissolution of the government of change, to join on the condition that the Haredi education budgets be tripled - would anyone object? After all, we would have heard high words about the "greatness of the hour" and the "importance of the matter" of saving the government of change, checks would have been written. Even the Minister of Finance would have been replaced, if only it were necessary. Why is it that when the Haredi are partners in the "right coalition" they are wonderful, and when they join Netanyahu, then they are "a danger to the state"? And there is another thing I have difficulty understanding: why are my children and my neighbor's children forced to study in leaky trailers in the winter and hot in the summer? Why do we have to fill out checkbooks at the beginning of each year, hundreds of shekels a month, for the education of children from Torah schools and yeshiva schools - just because the budget is not enough, since the state pours billions of our tax money into sports, culture, and esoteric fields in academia? I know that in the secular world, these are important and honorable things, and worth investing in, even when it's at the expense of the Haredim, but in the world of the Jewish people for generations - studying Torah is a sublime value, and it is appropriate for the Jewish state to be proud of it and invest in it. If the Haredim are here one day in the majority, would anyone like Deri to determine that a school that does not require wearing a kippah will not receive full funding? I don't. Neither will you. So let us educate our own children as we understand. Let us get out of our children's schoolbags, respect our values, and let them breathe air and receive a budget like every secular child receives - each individual and his or her own values. You too, cynical politicians, just before you shoot arrows at our children's money, don't forget that a day will come and maybe you too will rush to approve a much more generous budget for them. Just don't let them pull out today's attack on you. That would be unpleasant.

• The column was published in Yedioth Ahronoth.'