Religion in Israeli Schools

The architecture of religion in Israeli schools traces directly to two foundational laws. The 1949 Compulsory Education Law made education free and compulsory from age three through the end of secondary school (grade 12).[2] Four years later, the State Education Law of 1953 established the system's enduring structure, abolishing the pre-state ideological "trends" — party-affiliated school streams — and replacing them with state general and state religious systems.[3] Religious Zionist schools were consolidated into the state-religious stream, while ultra-Orthodox schools remained outside the state system as independent institutions receiving state support.[3]

The 1953 law defines state education as education provided under a curriculum approved by the Minister of Education, without attachment to a party, communal, or other nongovernmental body, and under ministerial supervision.[4] It formally establishes two trends within the state system: state education and state-religious education. The law also permits an additional institutional curriculum of up to 25 percent of the existing curriculum if requested by 75 percent of parents, or an additional curriculum financed by the local authority or parents.[4]

A separate Arabic-speaking subsystem was established alongside the Hebrew-language streams, intended to allow Muslim, Druze, Christian, and other Arabic-speaking minorities — including Circassians — to express their language, culture, and religion within the national framework.[3] Arab state schools use Arabic as the language of instruction.[5]

The law was approved in its third reading on August 12, 1953, and was presented as ending the divisive party-school system of the pre-state period.[6] In practice, it did not produce a single uniform curriculum. The Haredi stream remained outside the law's direct authority and retained substantial independence.[6] Mapam's Ya'akov Hazan argued during the political dispute that the law abolished the workers' stream while preserving the religious stream and granting it special rights.[6]

Subsequent legislative amendments deepened the system's engagement with religious and cultural diversity. The 2000 amendments to the State Education Law introduced official programs concerning minority communities, including "Heritage of Islam," "Druze Heritage," and "Heritage of Christianity."[7] The amendments call on students to recognize the language, culture, history, heritage, and distinctive traditions of the Arab population and other population groups, as well as the equal rights of all Israeli citizens.[7]

Israeli schooling is organized into several recognized tracks, with government materials offering slightly different classifications depending on context. One official classification lists four main tracks from kindergarten through primary school: State Education (mamlachti), State Religious Education (mamlachti dati), Independent Education, and the Religious Ma'ayan HaTorah network.[2] Parents may choose a type of institution within their residential district.[2]

State (mamlachti) schools follow a Ministry of Education-mandated core curriculum, with uniform subject matter and teaching methods.[2] Jewish studies are included but taught from a cultural rather than religious perspective.[8] Bible and Jewish and world history are among the subjects taught in most elementary schools.[2] Required subjects comprise roughly three-quarters of the curriculum, with the remaining portion available for each school community to supplement through approved choices.[8] School educational committees may select supplementary subjects, and parents can establish alternative programs within that variable portion.[3]

State-religious (mamlachti-dati) schools follow the same core curriculum as state schools, but approximately 40 percent of Ministry-allocated teaching hours are devoted to religious studies.[2] Daily prayer is part of the school day, and students are expected to meet the school's standards for dress and behavior.[2] Jewish studies receive special emphasis throughout, and these institutions are religious both in their curriculum and in the lifestyle maintained by pupils, teachers, and supervisors.[9] Some state-religious schools offer more intensive study of religious texts.[3]

At the high-school level, matriculation requirements differ by stream: the state-school core includes two study units of Tanach (Bible) and two of Literature/Jewish philosophy, while the state-religious core includes three units of Tanach, three of Oral Torah, and one of Jewish philosophy.[2] The Ministry supervises curricula and matriculation examinations throughout both streams.[2]

Alongside these two main tracks, integrated state schools bring religious and non-religious students together and incorporate Jewish sources into the curriculum and school life.[2] Tali schools provide an additional alternative positioned between state-secular and state-religious education, while experimental schools bring together religious and secular Jews or Jews and Arabs.[10]

Jewish religious and Jewish secular schools share similar curricula in most subjects, while religious schools place greater emphasis on Jewish and religious studies.[11] Bible and the Oral Law are central subjects in Jewish religious schools alongside science, history, and language, and the combination of Jewish and secular subjects reflects the ethos of "torah im derech eretz" — preparing students both for a religious way of life and for the labor market.[11]

Ultra-Orthodox schooling in Israel encompasses several institutional types that differ substantially in their relationship to the state curriculum and oversight. Israeli education law recognizes three broad categories: official institutions, including a state-ultra-Orthodox stream; recognized institutions that are not official, many belonging to ultra-Orthodox systems; and exempt institutions, mostly boys' Talmud Torah schools.[12]

The state-Haredi stream (Mamach) was established in the 2013–14 school year following Government Resolution 151.[13] Its institutions are funded as official educational institutions, are supervised by the Ministry of Education's Haredi district, and have pedagogical employees employed directly by the Ministry.[13] Core studies are taught in full alongside expanded religious studies. According to 2020–21 enrollment data, Mamach enrolled 12,666 pupils, including 4,139 preschoolers and 8,527 school-age pupils.[13]

Beyond the state-Haredi stream, two major recognized-but-not-official ultra-Orthodox systems operate with full public-school-equivalent funding: the United Torah Judaism-affiliated Independent Education System and the Shas-affiliated Fountain of Torah Education System.[5] The state provides these systems the equivalent of public-school funding, though many of their schools continue not to offer a basic humanities, mathematics, and science curriculum.[5] In August 2022, the Ministry of Education invited ultra-Orthodox institutions to accept up to full funding if they included a core curriculum of mathematics, science, Hebrew, and English, with student scores taken into consideration.[14] The offer generated significant political disagreement: United Torah Judaism leader Yitzchak Goldknopf questioned the benefit of teaching mathematics and English, and the incoming government's coalition agreements included plans to return to funding conditions that did not incentivize core-curriculum study.[14]

Haredi boys' education typically combines extensive religious study with some general subjects during the Talmud Torah years, generally through age 14; English and other foreign languages are rarely included.[15] The following three years at a small or junior yeshiva focus on religious subjects only.[15] Haredi yeshiva high schools, by contrast, combine religious studies with general subjects and preparation for matriculation examinations, though most graduates continue to higher Haredi yeshivas for further religious study.[15] Resistance to the introduction of general studies has been documented from Haredi rabbinical and political-municipal leadership.[15]

At the far end of the autonomy spectrum, exempt institutions — mostly boys' Talmud Torah schools — are recognized as exempt from general system requirements and are not bound by the Compulsory Education Law.[9] Unrecognized exempt ultra-Orthodox institutions are excluded from official enrollment counts because there is no accepted estimate of their student numbers.[9] Unrecognized religious schools follow their own curricula, with Ministry supervision described as general and mainly concerning building maintenance.[2]

Arab schools in Israel function as a largely separate subsystem within the national education network, with Arabic as the language of instruction.[5] Muslim and Christian Arab schools, as well as Druze schools, are included in this broader Arabic-speaking framework, and their curricula focus in part on Arab and Druze history, religion, and culture.[16] Public Arabic-speaking schools teach religion classes on the Quran and the Bible to Muslim and Christian Arab and Palestinian students.[5]

Arab schools in Jerusalem continued using a religious-studies curriculum largely unchanged from the British Mandate period until the 1980s, when a committee of Muslim educators prepared a new Islamic-studies curriculum for elementary, junior-high, and high-school levels.[17] The new curriculum was intended to replace rote learning of Qur'anic chapters with analytical approaches and universal values.[17]

Beyond the state sector, a few independent mixed Jewish-Arab schools have offered religion classes. At Hand-in-Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education, the curriculum emphasized commonalities in the holy writings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the school received one-third of its funding from the government.[18]

Textbooks approved for the 2022–23 academic year in state and state-religious Hebrew-language schools — sectors representing 74 percent of Hebrew-language students — show that students encounter Islamic and Christian civilizations, including religious tenets, holy texts, and rituals.[7] The reviewed textbooks stress similarities between Islam and Judaism, present Jerusalem as holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and cover Islamic contributions to mathematics, science, and philosophy, as well as religious tolerance and coexistence.[7] The 2000 amendments to the State Education Law also produced official programs on minority communities, including "Heritage of Islam," "Druze Heritage," and "Heritage of Christianity."[7]

The State Education Law requires students to become acquainted with the language, culture, history, heritage, and distinctive traditions of the Arab population and other communities in Israel, and to recognize the equal rights of all citizens.[1] The 2000 amendments and subsequent Ministry of Education guidelines extended this to call for instruction in Arab history, Islam, and Arab heritage, and for respect for students' cultural identity and language.[1]

In East Jerusalem, some Israeli-funded public schools, as well as some Christian schools, used a version of the Palestinian Authority curriculum modified by Israel's Ministry of Education.[18] Religious education was mandatory in that curriculum for grades one through six, with separate courses for Muslims and Christians; pupils could choose which religion class to take but could not opt out.[18]

Even in schools formally designated as secular, Jewish religious heritage occupies a meaningful place in the curriculum. An academic study published through the Ben-Gurion University Research Portal argues that Jewish religion and culture remain central to national identity formation in state (mamlakhti) schools officially defined as non-religious.[19] The study highlights Hebrew Bible studies and "Jewish-Israeli Culture" programs, and traces debates from early efforts to create a secular national culture through the 1953 State Education Law, "Jewish Consciousness" programs of subsequent decades, and the 1994 Shenhar Report — which advocated teaching Judaism's religious and cultural heritage through pluralistic and critical examination rather than religious indoctrination.[19][20]

A concrete example of state-mandated Jewish heritage education emerged in 2010, when the Ministry of Education made a subject called "Heritage and Culture of Israel" compulsory in state schools for grades 6–8, at two hours per week.[21] The subject was intended to cover Jewish culture, the Jewish calendar, the Jewish life cycle, and the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, with a planned expansion to additional grades the following year.[21] Its source materials ranged broadly: the Bible, Mishnah, prayer book, Theodor Herzl's Altneuland and The Jewish State, and Israel's Declaration of Independence, combined with themes of social responsibility, Zionism, statehood, Israeli society, and Jewish communities in the Diaspora.[21]

The curriculum question of how the Bible should be taught in secular schools has been the subject of recurring public debate. The Education Ministry's stated aim has been to enable pupils to read the Bible and become familiar with its events, figures, places, content, and values.[22] Disagreement has persisted, however, over whether the Bible should be presented as divine truth, as some religious groups have demanded, or as a human creation open to critical examination.[22]

A 2011 update to the high-school civics curriculum incorporated content on the Balfour Declaration, the 1947 UN partition plan, and Israel's Declaration of Independence, with emphasis on the historical and international rationale for a Jewish state.[23] It also included Jewish law in public life, the Jewish calendar and holidays, Jewish communities in the Diaspora, and differing forms of Jewish identity, approaching Israel as the Jewish people's nation-state alongside democratic values.[23]

In May 2025, Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced the "Roots" program, intended to expand Jewish and Zionist studies in both state and state-religious schools.[24] As announced, the plan included a weekly hour of Bible study for grades 1–12, a required fourth-grade Bible exam, a new elementary subject called "Heritage for Me," and school tours of Jerusalem and Jewish heritage sites.[24] The Ministry stated that the share of the education budget allocated to Jewish studies would rise from one percent to four percent, with the program to be introduced gradually over two academic years.[24]

Israel's school funding arrangements reflect both the system's pluralism and its internal tensions. The public education system is centralized and its curricula are standardized, while religious Jewish groups enjoy considerable organizational and curricular autonomy. Arab state schools do not enjoy similar autonomy, and educational inequality remains pronounced along ethno-religious lines while reflecting wider economic inequality.[25]

Funding differences between streams are documented and contested. A 2026 analysis by the Council for Hebrew State Education of Ministry of Education budget-transparency data for 2023–24 reported that high-school pupils in state-religious education received an average of NIS 48,300 per pupil, compared with NIS 38,300 in regular state education and NIS 35,300 in state Arab education.[26] Religious-stream-specific allocations — including rabbi hours, extra culture and Jewish-studies hours, and prayer hours — accounted for approximately 40 percent of the stated funding gap, according to that analysis.[26] The state acknowledged in a court filing that per-pupil funding for state-religious education was overall higher than for general state education, with the largest gaps at the middle and upper secondary levels, and described its policy as maintaining and strengthening state-religious education as a values-based system.[26] The Ministry of Education was reported to be reviewing the legality and structure of the differences.[26]

The two major recognized-but-not-official ultra-Orthodox systems — the United Torah Judaism-affiliated Independent Education System and the Shas-affiliated Fountain of Torah Education System — receive the equivalent of public-school funding from the state.[5] By contrast, Christian school systems in the recognized-but-not-official category received approximately 34 percent of their budget from the government while retaining autonomy over teacher hiring, student admissions, and use of school property.[5] Church leaders criticized this funding disparity as substantially lower than what was provided to the ultra-Orthodox party-affiliated systems.[5]

Families have broad formal rights of school choice. They may choose any public school regardless of ethnicity or religious observance, and children may choose a public secular school instead of a religious school even if their parents prefer otherwise.[5] Public schools provide instruction in Hebrew or Arabic.[5]

A 2010 enrollment snapshot described Haredi, Arab, and national public education as three large systems, with an education expert estimating that each enrolled approximately one-third of students, and noting particularly strong growth in Haredi and Arab nursery and kindergarten enrollment from 2000 to 2009 — 47.5 percent and 54 percent respectively — compared with 2.4 percent growth in the public state sector over the same period.[27] State and state-religious schools together represented 74 percent of Hebrew-language students in 2022–23.[7]

Several aspects of religion in Israeli schools are genuinely contested, reflecting broader tensions within Israeli society over religious identity, national character, and minority rights.

The boundary between secular and religious education in state schools has been challenged by critics who argue that religion has been creeping into formally non-religious settings. The Secular Forum has attributed the phenomenon of "religionization" (hadata) to textbooks and programs taught by Orthodox Jewish NGOs in state schools.[18] In 2019, the Israel Reform movement and Panim petitioned the High Court over changes to Ministry funding criteria for nonprofits providing Jewish education in secular schools, alleging that removing a criterion for pluralistic character reduced support for pluralistic organizations and threatened the balance established by the 1994 Shenhar Committee's principles.[20] The Ministry explained that the criterion was removed because most relevant groups had already adopted a pluralistic outlook.[20]

The debate over Bible teaching in secular schools has likewise been persistent. Rabbi Michael Melchior, identified as a founder of the integrative Jewish-studies stream in state schools, welcomed teaching Jewish heritage to non-religious students but warned that a centrally imposed subject could feel coercive, arguing that success depended on teachers connecting with the material and making it meaningful to pupils.[21] Broader disagreement has continued over whether Bible study should approach scripture as divine truth or as a human text open to critical analysis.[22]

The 2025 "Roots" announcement drew criticism from parent and education groups about proposed budget trade-offs, educational autonomy, and whether the approach adequately reflected diversity.[24]

Within the Haredi sector, questions about access to general education have been politically fraught. The core-curriculum incentive offered by the Ministry in 2022 generated public opposition from ultra-Orthodox political leadership.[14] Funding parity with Haredi systems has been a source of grievance for Christian schools, which received only approximately 34 percent of their budgets from the government.[5] In 2023, two high-school seminaries for Sephardic-only ultra-Orthodox girls opened in Jerusalem following persistent denial of admission to existing ultra-Orthodox schools on ethnic grounds, notwithstanding a 2009 court ruling prohibiting ethnic segregation of Sephardic and Ashkenazi schoolgirls.[5]

In East Jerusalem, the Israeli Ministry of Education's editing of Palestinian Authority-issued textbooks has been disputed. Israeli authorities reviewed the textbooks to remove material considered antisemitic or inciting violence; Palestinians and Palestinian Authority officials complained that the approved changes removed or whitewashed references to Palestinian identity and national aspirations, including flags, leaders, and texts about the right of return.[5]

Civics curriculum reforms have also prompted debate about how national and religious identity are balanced against democratic pluralism and minority inclusion. When a 2011 civics curriculum update incorporated stronger emphasis on Jewish statehood and identity, an Arab civics teacher reported that it neglected Arab pupils' needs and could make them feel alienated, while a civics academic warned that the program should be monitored to protect democratic values and minority rights.[23] Separately, the Biton Committee had recommended expanding instruction about Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish heritage and history, though one report noted this recommendation had not been fully reflected in the curriculum in practice.[22]