The High Court of Justice was asked in two separate petitions filed over the past week to intervene in government funding systems that the Israel Hofsheet movement says give unfair advantages to the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) sector.
One petition targets how the state determines eligibility for government-backed housing loans. The other targets the Education Ministry funding for haredi youth organizations.
In both cases, Israel Hofsheet argues that public money is being distributed through systems that may look neutral at first glance but, in practice, favor the haredi public.
Justice Ofer Grosskopf has ordered the state to respond to the housing petition by June 11 and to the youth organizations’ petition by June 29.
The housing petition was filed against the Construction and Housing Ministry. It challenges the formula used to determine who qualifies for state-backed housing loans, arguing that the system gives extra benefits to large families in ways not directly connected to financial need.
“It might as well place a sign at the entrance reading: ‘Haredi benefits only’”
State-backed housing loans are meant to help families and individuals who do not own a home to buy or build one. According to Israel Hofsheet, the loans can reach about NIS 250,000 and even more for eligible applicants in certain areas. The loans are given on better terms than ordinary bank loans, including lower interest rates and more flexible repayment conditions.
Israel Hofsheet says this means that the benefit is not just symbolic. According to the movement, for an average loan of NIS 145,000 over 30 years, the benefit is worth about NIS 15,000 per family. For some 15,000 haredi couples marrying each year, the petitioners estimate that this could amount to NIS 225 million in benefits annually.
According to the petition, the current formula gives applicants points based on several factors, including how many years a couple has been married, how many children they have, and how many siblings each applicant has.
Israel Hofsheet argues that some of these criteria have no clear connection to whether a family needs state help buying a home. Instead, the petition says, they benefit people with characteristics more common in the haredi sector, such as early marriage, large families, and many siblings.
The petition focuses in particular on the sibling criterion.
According to Israel Hofsheet, the formula awards 50 points for each sibling up to the third. But then, the fourth sibling is worth 250 points, and the fifth sibling is worth another 200 points. After that, the formula reverts to awarding 50 points per sibling.
Israel Hofsheet says there is no clear reason why an adult applicant’s number of siblings should affect the amount of state assistance they receive to buy a home. The organization argues that siblings are not part of the applicant’s household and do not necessarily show whether the applicant is in financial need.
To show how the formula works in practice, the petition compares two example families using the ministry’s own eligibility calculator.
The first is a couple aged 35, married for 15 years, with six children and six siblings each, and no military service. According to the petition, that family would receive 3,250 points and qualify for a state-backed mortgage of NIS 161,665. The second is also a couple, aged 35, with two children, two siblings each, and significant military service for each parent. That family would receive 1,250 points and qualify for a NIS 99,840 mortgage.
The result, the petition argues, is that the first family – described as having characteristics more typical of a haredi family – would receive more than NIS 60,000 more in state-backed assistance than the second family.
The petition also argues that the formula discriminates against common-law couples, because married couples receive credit based on the number of years they have been married, while common-law couples receive credit only from the birth of their first child.
The system also does not properly count children in single-parent families, even though such families may be in greater need of assistance.
Beyond the formula’s content, Israel Hofsheet also claims that the ministry used the wrong legal tool to create it. The petition argues that the Housing Loans Law requires that eligibility rules be set out in formal rules coordinated with the Finance Ministry, whereas the current system relies on an internal ministry procedure.
Israel Hofsheet says it contacted the ministry several times before filing the petition. According to the petition, the organization first wrote to the ministry in November 2025, sent a reminder in December, received a brief response in January stating the issue was still under review, and sent another reminder in March. Still, no full response was received, the petition says.
Israel Hofsheet Executive Director Uri Keidar said the petition was filed while the broader public was struggling with a growing mortgage burden.
“We filed this petition to halt yet another track through which the government does everything in its power to benefit the haredi sector almost exclusively,” Keidar said. “If it could, it might as well place a sign at the entrance reading: ‘Haredi benefits only.’ The government must not prioritize its base so blatantly. The time for equality has come.”
The second petition focuses on the Education Ministry funding for youth organizations. In that petition, Israel Hofsheet argues that hundreds of millions of shekels have been distributed in recent years to haredi youth organizations without proper checks that the organizations are actually operating as reported.
According to the petition, the Education Ministry relies heavily on reports submitted by the organizations themselves. Those reports include the number of participants, branches, and activities.
Israel Hofsheet argues that this system leaves too much room for false reporting. The petition says field checks attached to the filing found that some reported branches had no real activity, that participant numbers were inflated, and that some activities were not properly separated from schools, despite rules requiring a separation between school activity and youth movement activity.
The petition asks the court to require the state to conduct an independent count of participants in youth organizations that receive or seek state funding. It also asks for stronger enforcement and oversight and for the state to work to recover public funds that were allegedly distributed based on false reports.
According to the petition, the state budget for youth organizations has grown sharply in recent years and now exceeds NIS 100m. a year. A significant share of that money, Israel Hofsheet says, has been directed to haredi organizations through coalition funds.
Keidar said that youth organizations do important work, but argued that the current system had become a funding pipeline for political interests.
“The Education Ministry’s failure to supervise haredi youth organizations stems from a deliberate policy,” Keidar said, adding that every child in Israel deserves high-quality informal education rather than “corrupt and corrupting mechanisms.”
The state has not yet filed its responses to the petitions.
Source:
www.jpost.com
