Yair Lapid, chairman of the Yesh Atid party and Finance Minister, has agreed to a request from a Jewish Home Knesset Member to cancel a scheduled budget cut of $14 million (50 million shekels) earmarked for foreign students studying in yeshivas in Israel.
The funds will be for Haredi as well as national religious yeshivas although Haredi yeshivas almost were left out of the picture.
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Jewish Home MK Nissan Slomiansky, who also heads the Knesset Finance Committee, rejected a suggestion by Lapid that money be restored only for students at Zionist yeshivas. Slomiansky said that the presence of students, even in non-Zionist yeshiva, is good for Israel because many of the students eventually decide to live in Israel.
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