Agudath Israel executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel has asked Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael B. Oren for a face-to-face meeting to discuss the situation in Emmanuel.
Israel’s High Court ruled that a school created in that town by parents seeking to maintain their religious standards was discriminatory against Sephardi Jews, and eventually held the parents in contempt of court for not sending their daughters to the original Emmnuel Beis Yaakov. Dozens of parents were jailed by the court and a massive throng of supporters accompanied them as they marched to the jail on Thursday to turn themselves in.
Rabbi Zwiebel wrote Ambassador Oren that while “Agudath Israel of America rarely involves itself in internal Israeli affairs, “the Emmanuel situation “compels us to insist that some sanity be brought to bear here.”
After reviewing the facts of the case, Rabbi Zwiebel quoted from the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah statement protesting “mightily the wrong that has been done” to the jailed parents.
“There are few if any things more important to a haredi Jew than the education of his or her child,” he wrote further. “It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the haredi community (along with other champions of individual conscience) in Israel and around the world have been understandably distressed, if not horrified, at the sight of parents interested only the welfare of their children being held in prison for refusing to act against that interest.
“This needn’t – this shouldn’t! – have happened…The High Court’s portrayal of parental concerns about the educational needs of their children as mere cover for a pernicious ill will toward Sephardim insults not only good people but truth. The school the parents established did not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity. More than a quarter of its students were Sephardi girls! Little wonder that footage of the parents being taken to prison showed a number of them who were clearly of Sephardi heritage.
“More generally, as an attorney with considerable experience with constitutional and judicial matters in this country, I can assure you that were a court, even the highest in the land, to arrogate to declare a religious matter a secular one in order to bring it under its jurisdiction, the expressions of outrage would be many and loud – and rightly so. That is especially so with respect to any effort by the government to force parents to send their children to a particular school.”
The Agudath Israel leader referenced a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, that struck down an Oregon statute requiring all schoolchildren to attend public school.
In its unanimous ruling, Rabbi Zwiebel noted, the Court focused on parental rights: “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Requesting that the Ambassador convey to the relevant members of Israel’s government that “Agudath Israel of America stands firmly behind the jailed parents’ right to have their children educated according to their religious beliefs,” Rabbi Zwiebel added another excerpt from the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah statement – that “we join wholeheartedly, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews around the globe, in [the] pain [of the jailed parents]. May their hands be strengthened and fortunate are they for bearing the honor of Hashem and the Jewish religious tradition on their shoulders at this time.” And he requested that the Ambassador “grant us the opportunity to discuss this issue face-to-face as soon as humanly possible.”
(YWN Desk – NYC)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
9 Responses
oh please. let’s not make this a start for aguda getting involved in Israeli politics, be smart, keep away
So what’s the Agudah’s position on putting a wall down the middle of a school and a fence down the school yard? When you stare a great injustice in the face and you don’t know why it’s happening to you, do what the שבטי י-ה did. Say אבל אשמים אנחנו! Recognize that חוזרי בתשובה are people too. Perhaps the daughters of these people the students in the בית יעקב don’t meet your requirements, but don’t put up an iron curtain telling them that they are forever different than you. ט’ באב is around the corner perhaps a play on the words of one of the קינות may be appropriate here: תקנא לציון קנאה גדולה, ותאיר לרבתי עם מאור נגהך! In addition to expressing your outrage, show us the light. This injustice cannot stand.
Rabbanim are of course always right.
Thereofr will someone please explain why it is okay to reject people based on sfardi/ashkanaz ?
To #2: You keep on falling for all the liberal lies. There was no Mechiza in school, it was 2 schools on seperate floors in one building! Yes, 2 schools, 2 schwduled, & 2 corriculoums. And Yes, with seperate entrances, with a solid gate in between. That is how seperate schools run, otherwise you are stepping on each others toes.
#4 from your own words it appears that it is not a lie. It’s just that we don’t agree on how to handle children of חוזרי בתשובה. I don’t expect that everyone will agree with me, nor do I care to have a popular opinion. The fact is that we now have a very large population of חוזרי בתשובה who have spiritual needs. We need to address this. Not the Supreme Court, not the Israeli Government, but the people who keep the מצוות need to advocate on their behalf. If this was addressed early on, then this would not have happened. Trying to tie my opinions to the liberals is absolute nonsense. ואהבת לרעך כמוך is not a liberal position. מה דלך שנאי לחברך לא תעשה is the minimum requirement to fulfill this מצוה.
chiefrabbi,
They had no problem with accepting Baalei Tshuva who committed to the rules of the school. They had a problem with accepting those who didn’t agree to the rules of the new school, of whatever ethnicity and religious background.
#3 – There is no racism in Emanuel. What happened was that the Slonimer Chassidim did not want to send their daughters to a school that was attended by girls that did not not have the same religious standards. Because these girls happened to be Sephardim, the Israeli High Court said this was racism, and did not allow the Emanuel parents to send their daughters to a different school. Now the Gedolim have led us in protesting the secular Israeli High Court deciding what schools chaeridim must go to.
#5 – Of course we must cater to the spiritual needs of Baali Teshuvah. Nobody is denying this. However, we cannot compromise on the chinuch of one group in order to further the chinuch of another. The Charaedim and the Sephardim both have unique chinuch needs, and this is precisly why they were seperated in the first place. If we try to educate two totally different types of girls in the same classroom, we are setting ourselves up for total failure.
When was the last time the “not-racist” court ruled in favor of religious people?
My brother is Charedi and moved to Israel a year ago; his 9 year old son who went to Mir in New York was rejected from Yeshiva after Yeshiva for the same reason; the roshei hayeshiva first asked him; why do you not send your kids to a sefaradi yeshiva and then they said we do not accept sefardi kids. Wake up! there is a real problem with discrimination in the charedi community in Israel. When I heard about what happened in Emmanuel I was not surprised. When people claim “its not a matter of racism as there are %35 sefaradi girls in the school dosen’t it bother any one that such a round number is being peddled? My brother found out himself when trying to get his girls and sons in Yeshivas that there are definite quotas in Yeshivas for accepting sefaradim. %35 seems awfully strange, why not %37 or %39? Why are such numbers even kept? They are obviously tracking their ethnic makeup very well for a school that claims no discrimination!