Thousands of seminary girls fundraise for yeshivas after draft dodgers lead to budget cuts - report
KAN reported that 25,000 seminary girls participated in the phone-calling campaign and raised over NIS 11 million. Each girl was given a personal fundraising goal of NIS 8,400.
Thousands of seminary girls in Israel recently participated in a massive fundraising effort for a haredi organization called Keren Olam Hatorah. The campaign aimed to support yeshivas, or Jewish religious schools, after the Israeli government significantly reduced their budgets due to concerns over draft dodgers. According to KAN News, a total of 25,000 girls took part in the phone-calling campaign, collectively raising over NIS 11 million.
Each participant was tasked with raising NIS 8,400, a personal fundraising goal set by the organizers.
During the campaign, rabbis gave motivational speeches to the seminary students from behind a curtain. One rabbi, a prominent spiritual leader for the Degel HaTorah party, advised the girls that the more embarrassed they felt about their fundraising efforts, the greater the mitzvah, or good deed, they were performing. Importantly, the girls were not compensated for their fundraising activities, which took place at the expense of a school day.
The High Court of Justice recently ruled that a law shielding haredi yeshiva students from arrest, investigation, and other proceedings over draft evasion was unconstitutional. The court found that the legislative process used to pass the law was fundamentally flawed, effectively depriving the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of crucial enforcement tools.
While the law never took effect, its provisions were blocked by the High Court on July 15. Justice Ofer Grosskopf froze the law's implementation, and the full nine-justice panel maintained the freeze after a subsequent hearing.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
