After seven years of exploration, innovation, and collaboration, the Coalition to Promote Haredi Employment has ended, having laid the policy, networking, and knowledge groundwork to significantly increase the number of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews working in quality jobs.
In 2018, The Russell Berrie Foundation joined a consortium of 10 funders to confront the problem of stagnant Haredi employment in Israel. While overall employment rates among Haredim were rising, many who entered the workforce held low-skill, dead-end jobs. What emerged was the Coalition to Promote Haredi Employment, a joint philanthropic endeavor to boost employment and harness talent within this underutilized workforce — a critical step toward integrating the Haredim into Israeli society by growing their stake in the nation’s economic and societal wellbeing.
The founding Coalition grew into a US-Israel partnership of 17 organizations including the Kirsch, Harry and Jeannette Weinberg, Bader, and Glazer Foundations, Yad Hanadiv, Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Start-Up Nation Central, and UJA Federation of New York. Coordinated by the Jewish Funders Network and implemented by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the Coalition exemplifies how a network of funders learned and led change together on issues of shared concern.
Naomi Feiner, co-director of the Russell Berrie Foundation’s Israel office, co-chaired the Coalition between 2022 and 2024. At its closing event in July, she remarked, “It’s important that we recognize the significant progress the Coalition made in partnership with the government, employers, and the Haredi community — as well as the courage it took to set a defined end point for this important initiative. There is certainly much to celebrate in our collective participation, and we can be confident that the momentum it created will continue to grow, creating a win-win for members of the Haredi community and employers alike.”
Forming a research-driven strategy
At the start, the Coalition commissioned research that highlighted the need to diversify the fields in which Haredim can work, align job training with employers’ needs and market demand, and develop culturally appropriate vocational training and financing models. The Coalition went on to identify five strategic industries of focus where meaningful job growth was possible: hi-tech, metal manufacturing, construction, dental healthcare, and banking/finance.
“By linking strategic funding with government partnership, civic society organizations, and employer engagement, the initiative created groundbreaking change that individual funders could never have achieved alone”
A record of scale and impact
Working with stakeholders across the government, business, and civic sectors, the Coalition developed and implemented comprehensive workplans for each target industry. Over time, this systematic approach generated remarkable results:
Securing nearly NIS 50 million in government allocations for vocational training for Haredi men.
Launching three joint government ventures, including high-tech sector employment initiatives.
Preparing 15,000 ultra-Orthodox participants across 11 different programs to secure more lucrative employment.
Creating three new vocational training models aligned with companies’ needs and workforce gaps.
Demonstrating strong employment potential in low-tech professions like construction and metal work; the large majority of these training program graduates earn above-average salaries.
Beyond these numbers, this progress changed the lives of people like Chaim, a father of four, who once earned minimum wage as a school melamed. He transitioned into construction after helping to renovate a family home — now, trained as a foreman through a Coalition-backed program, he earns twice the average salary and actively recruits others from his community.
Innovative Employer Engagement
Knowing that industry buy-in was essential, in 2022 the Coalition launched employer hubs working directly with 25 companies including Deloitte, Coca-Cola Bottling, and Tidhar Construction. Rather than relying on intermediaries, the hubs’ intensive partnership model equipped companies with the capacity and cultural sensitivity to recruit, hire, and retain Haredi staff on their own. The hubs also helped create conditions for a significant and immediate response to the severe staffing shortages caused by the October 7th attacks and subsequent mobilization of reservists needed to support Israel’s military response.
Sustaining the momentum
Looking back at the Coalition’s tenure, Rani Dudai, former director general, JDC Tevet, said “the Coalition demonstrated that solutions to complex social challenges require sustained, research-driven collaboration across institutions and sectors. By linking strategic funding with government partnership, civic society organizations, and employer engagement, the initiative created groundbreaking change that individual funders could never have achieved alone.״
As the Coalition’s work ends, JDC and Zionism 2000 will continue operating its established models to meet the growing demand in this arena. Chaviva Eisler, former director of the Coalition to Promote Haredi Employment, underscores the continued and significant potential of this work to change Israel’s workforce and society. “The opportunity today is immense — according to our research, 90% of Haredim support employment for Haredi men, a major shift from when we first began,” she notes. “The current challenge lies in where they work and how to preserve Haredi identity in the workplace, in order to fully realize the potential contribution to the Israeli economy.”