Jerusalem Gives Slice of Funds to Non-Orthodox for First Time

The city of Jerusalem will provide funding to a group of non-Orthodox institutions for the first time.

The city’s allocations committee provided roughly $10,000 to the institutions for Jewish studies classes, out of about $130,000 the city allocates for that purpose. The institutions receiving the funding, according to Haaretz, include the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, the pluralistic study houses Elul and Kolot, the Jerusalem Secular Yeshiva, the Shalom Hartman Institute and Gesher — a group that bridges between religious and secular in Israel.

Previously, the institutions didn’t qualify for funding because none passed the city’s threshold for hours of classes per week. But this year, about a dozen institutions budled their request together in order to pass the threshold.

“We’re in the loop,” Rabbi Gilad Kariv, CEO of the Israeli Reform Movement, told Haaretz. “The bad news is that 90 percent of the money still goes to ultra-Orthodox institutions.”