Whenever the words "Chabad" and "Haredi" are used together (such as describing something a haredi person did and then mentioning the person is affiliated with Chabad), many people will automatically jump up and say something like "everybody knows Chabad is not really haredi"...

Whether that is a true statement or not is almost impossible to determine, as there is no real hard definition of what a haredi is, and who can or cannot be included in that social group.

However, it seems what so many people know, is now becoming official policy of the Israeli government.

The Council of Higher Education has announced that schools in which the students take the bagrut exams during high school, rather than the alternate system of exams used in Haredi schools, will not get the status of being Haredi schools.

This mostly affects Chabad schools (in addition to some others).

Chabad has found ways, I imagine by implementing the regular educational curriculum into their system and taking the bagrut exams, in getting their schools classified as public schools. It helps them with funding of the schools, but I guess you cannot have your cake and eat it too. They want to be called "mamlachti dati" for that purpose, so they can no longer be called "haredi".

The ramification of the latest announcement is that they will no longer benefit from some funding that haredi schools get.

There are some other schools affected by this, and Bechadrei mentions Sanz in Netanya as well. Interestingly, neither Chabad nor Sanz has criticized the decision, as they think it will help ensure that their kids stay in their own school systems, as they will no longer be able to leave for other Haredi schools.

Perhaps this will help solve another problem the Ministry of Education has encountered. Minister Peron had announced plans to open a new stream of public schools that would be classified as Haredi - it would be called "Mamlachti Haredi". The Haredi community obviously opposed the idea, and called on Haredi school administrators to not be tempted and seduced by the honeypot of government funding, and not to cooperate with Peron. Peron was, reportedly, having trouble getting the program off the ground.

Perhaps they can use these schools, who are no longer going to be part of the haredi system anyway, to get the mamlachti haredi off the ground. Reclassify them as mamlachti haredi,and hit the ground running. They already teach the curriculum, they already take the exams, they already, socially at least, consider themselves somewhat haredi, they already have their schools classified as public schools - seems perfect to me. I do not know Chabad's position on this matter. I am just musing..

And I guess this means that one cannot determine someone is haredi just because he wears a black hat and his wife wears a sheitel. The real determining factor is if the kids take the bagrut exams in high school.