The High Court is convening at this time, Wednesday morning 4 Elul, to hear the petition filed by attorney Yoav Lalum against the Zluznik and Ladaas Chachma seminaries (high schools) in Elad.
Lalum has over recent years championed the battle on behalf of Sephardi girls, seeking to bring an end to the discrimination against them.
The Knesset Education Committee has discussed the matter as have officials in the Education Ministry. An internal document reveals that the ministry is compelling the schools to abide by regional registration towards bringing an immediate end to the discrimination. This means girls will be assigned to a specific school by the ministry, based on their home address and location of the school. Schools will not have the right to reject any student assigned by the ministry. Ministry officials are signaling that any school unwilling to comply will lose its operating license and will be compelled to shut its doors.
The schools insist their decision is not discriminatory for they are have rejected girls that are from both Ashkenazi and Sephardi homes. Lalum however insists the new regulation that led to rejecting over 100 girls who graduated Beis Yaakov because their parent’s works is ludicrous. He cites the numbers. Zluznik accepted 74 students this year, of which 22 are Sephardi. Ladaas accepted 49 girls, of which 12 are Sephardi.
Lalum explains the discrimination continues, this time masked by a new regulation pertaining to working parents, which the school realize impact the Sephardim far more than the Ashkenazim.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
If the school accepts zionist money, they need to submit to zionist regulation – and zionist policy is that frum schools are something to be undermined and dismantled. If the school is truely hareidi, they wouldn’t accept money from the zionists, and they wouldn’t have these problems.
YWN please upgrade your jouralistic standards. You cannot report only one side. Please contact the schools, and get their side of the story. Religious schools regularly set requirements according to lifestyle, but to imply that the school requirements are according to race is absurd. But the greatest damage comes from rejecting the religious authorities, beit din, etc, and instead Lalum is bringing in the secular supreme court more and more to intervene in religious education.
May Hashem bless Mr. Lalum and grant him much hatzlacha.
Perhaps journalistic integrity also requires the reporter to ask which halachic authority states that children can be banned from yeshiva because they have “working parents”. Does this include all types of work? Does getting paid as a Rebbe or Morah mean someone works? What if the parent is employed by the local kashrus agency as a mashgiach?
If the school is truely hareidi, they wouldn’t accept money from the zionists, –
IOW if the school is truly hareidi, IT IS ALLOWED TO DISCRIMINATE against other Torah families and their daughters?!?!? This is the news every ELUL and has never been resolved since the Ashkenaz -Sefardic rift keeps getting hotter and hotter mainly in Charedi circles. Most other sectors have already worked out their issues!!