A seven-member panel of Supreme Court justices ruled that as of the fiscal year 2011, the budget clause covering the payment of amounts needed to reach “guaranteed minimum income” to kollel students – those whose days are spent in the study of Torah – can no longer be approved.
The panel ruled, by a 6-1 margin, that the clause violates the principle according to which government stipends must be distributed equally. Dissenting justice Edmond Levy said that Torah study is a commandment rooted in Biblical Law, and that Israel’s Parliament and Government decided that such study should be subsidized by the Jewish State.
In Levy’s opinion, the differentiation made in this clause between university students and kollel students is based on “relevant variance,” and that even if the principle of equality is not sustained, the harm caused is not disproportionate.
The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, and was supported by Justices Procaccia, Gronis, Naor, Jubran, and Hayut.
MK Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) said, “The Supreme Court simply makes a mockery of the Knesset. We sit here and work hard to find compromises and pass laws, and the Supreme Court just comes and overturns everything. In this case, the Knesset Labor Committee stipulated, 28 years ago, that while the unemployed would receive 40 percent of the average national salary, a kollel student would receive only 20 percent, and even that only under certain conditions – no car, three children, wife doesn’t work, etc. Then the Court comes and decides that it doesn’t like that. I’m just waiting for the day when there will be a body that is above the Supreme Court.”
Beinisch wrote that the law specifically precludes minimum-income stipends to students in universities, colleges and yeshivot, and that therefore kollel students must also be included in this category. She wrote that support for public institutions of this nature must be done in a manner that would enable other similar institutions to receive equal stipends.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) promised that the Knesset would pass legislation to overturn the ruling.
MK Menachem Moses (UTJ) explained why Beinisch's comparison is faulty: “This was an arrangement that was rooted in law and regulations for decades and was agreed upon in the Knesset. No one ever claimed it was illegal. The Supreme Court’s intervention in legislation goes too far. It is ridiculous to depict a Kollel student receiving a tiny stipend - and only if he has no car, three children, etc. - as if he is stealing from the public coffers, when the cost of a university student to the State of Israel is at least ten times more.”
MK Uri Maklev (UTJ): “Anyone who could make such a ruling is captive to his own beliefs and the anti-hareidi environment in which he lives. Our party will work with others to fight this ruling.”
The suit was originally filed ten years ago by a woman who was rejected a minimal income stipend when she was a university student.