Around 20 Hasidic schools in Israel are joining Mamach, Israel’s public Haredi education system, a development that will require them to teach more secular studies while also allowing them to access more government funding, according to articles in Israeli media. Hebrew language media have described this development as an “earthquake” in the Haredi education system.

Israeli advocates for secular education told Shtetl they hope that adding math, science, language, and history education in some schools will encourage other schools, in Israel and beyond, to follow suit. The schools set to join the system this fall come from Belz, Vizhnitz, Karlin-Stolin, Sanz-Klausenburg, Boyan, and other Hasidic sects

Under Mamach, these schools will offer more secular education than is currently offered at most Haredi schools. Many Haredi leaders strongly oppose joining the Mamach system, and Israeli news outlets reported that leaders of Shas, Israel’s Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi political party, were upset with the Hasidic sects joining Mamach.

The new development has long been in the making. Two years ago, the grand rabbi of Belz, Yissachar Dov Rokeach, approved the inclusion of secular education in Belz elementary schools so that they could qualify for more government funding. Belz did not move forward with the change at that time, after then-candidate Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase funding for Haredi schools, regardless of their curricula.

The decision to join the system requires cooperation between leaders of the yeshiva and the leaders of the municipality in which the school is located. This means that the Hasidic sects now joining Mamach will only do so in some parts of Israel, while other schools associated with those sects will continue offering little to no secular education. But Tali Farkas, who leads an Israeli nonprofit that urges Haredi leaders to join Mamach, believes that Haredi involvement in the system will expand after these 20 schools “test the water.”

According to Farkas, the curriculum for Mamach schools includes all secular subjects but avoids some subjects that are traditionally considered taboo. It approaches Zionism differently from other Israeli curricula in light of Haredim’s historically non-Zionist stance. Plus, “you don’t teach Darwin” and the science of evolution, Farkas said.

Menachem Bombach, an entrepreneur who has set up several Haredi schools in Israel that offer secular education, said he believes the Hasidic schools who joined Mamach are genuinely interested in improving the secular education and were not just motivated by the public funds that come with it, and he’s optimistic that more Haredi schools in Israel and beyond will follow in their footsteps.

“If you ask me, it’s not just about money,” Bombach said. “If you walk in a Hasidic community, every other person, you can ask them, ‘tell me the truth: do you want for your kid a future in which he can finance himself?’” According to Bombach, they would say yes.

This is true not only in Israel, Bombach said, but also in New York — where the Hasidic sects that are joining the Mamach system also have a presence, and where the state recently began trying to enforce standards for secular education. “I think it’s a question of time,” he added. “Once they start with this, more and more and more schools will be a part of it.”