For many parents in the Shomron community of Emanuel, the coming days are days filled with tension, demanding focus and strengthening one’s inner fortitude as they will on Thursday be compelled to appear before the High Court of Justice in the case involving the community’s Beis Yaakov and allegations of ongoing discrimination.
The parents plan to tell the court that when it comes to providing a Torah education for their daughters, they are compelled to adhere to the directives of rabbonim, and they are unwilling to compromise despite the court’s blatant intervention. They have refused directives from the Ministry of Education and court orders to return their children to the controversial school.
A court decision has resulted in a NIS 5,000 daily fine against Chinuch Atzmai, despite the fact that attorneys representing the educational network explained to the court that the parents in Emanuel are acting on their own, without connection to Chinuch Atzmai.
The court’s unprecedented actions compelled Agudas Yisrael Rabbonim and lay leaders around the world to take action, convening in NYC in the home of the Novominsker Rebbe Shlita. In Europe, rabbonim met as well and Agudas Yisrael in London sent a strongly worded letter to Israeli diplomatic officials, warning of the dire consequences surrounding the state’s position against chareidi chinuch.
Askanim and rabbonim alike are holding consultations ahead of Thursday’s hearing, seeking to prepare for what appears to be a hard-handed attitude adopted by the court against the Beis Yaakov School, seeking to prepare themselves for what awaits them on Thursday.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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9 Responses
Quite a confusing story.
I havent seen ANYWHERE the simple facts laid out.
1) ive heard they threw out sfardi kids,
2) ive heard its a matter of dress code,
3) here it says the parents DONT want the kids there.
Can anyone (including YWN) just lay down all the facts in one place without editorializing?
Ditto to #1’s comments.
I hate when people express strong views on a subject without knowing the facts.
To#1,2
all started with making the sefardic girls to read with an ashkenazi accent, when the parents of the sefardic girls opposed to this, then the ashkenazi Rav that runs the school called for a separation of the two groups, then it got beyond the realm of discrimination when the ashkenazi side put up a wall/mechitza in the playground to further separate both groups, and then scaleted a bit more until now, all this others “stories” are to camoflage the truth and to present a complete distortion of the facts by making the Goverment guilty of something they have nothing to do.
This sounds bad.
Does anyone dispute these facts?
1: The Hamodia had a very informative, unbiased article on this whole issue. It explained everyone’s position very clearly. This school never threw out anyone; they’ve accepted anyone that wants to apply, and no sefardi kids wanted to apply because they prefer the other school which caters more for them. Most of the differences between the schools are a matter of dress code, true, which represents the different element that this school was designed for, and the parents very much want to keep their kids in their school.
3 and 5: According to the unbiased sources that I have seen (see comment above, amongst others), what happened was that a group of parents were unahappy with some of the elements in the regular school that were teasing their kids for being more frum, so they decided to start a new school, hire new teachers and renovate an empty wing of the school for their own school. Everyone was fine with this, however, some kids in the other school started throwing things at the kids, so they put up a tarp to block, which they now admit was a mistake. In the meantime, a leftist faction got wind of the story and incited the parents in the regular school to take the matter to court. The two schools reached an agreement outside of court that the new school would move to a different building and completely break off. Everyone was satisfied (in fact, a third school just opened up in town and no one has seemed to care), but this leftist party decided to keep the fires burning and twisted judgement to bring these parents to court, even though nobody cared anymore about what was happening. These people have sued Chinuch Atzmai for “allowing” this to go on, despite that their is no connection to them, and wish to imprison the parents for not sending their children to school, despite the fact that this school has been approved as a legal private school.
Thus, at the end of the day, this is not a story of segregation, discrimination or elitism, but rather a story of how some anti-charedi individuals are seeking legislation to impact the chareidi school system.
Us Americans can never understand the Israeli mindset. What we see is discrimination and whoever dosen’t see it isn’t looking. But their opinion is never explained. I’m sure they have a good excuse but I dout we will be able to understand it. אל תדין את חבירך עד תגיע למקומו
To#8,
I also read theread the 2 page article in the HaModia, believe me, is far from the truth just like this article here in YWN, this is a very old story that broke out over a year and a half ago, and with time things get distorted (with new stories to go around) to the point of missing the main issue that was discrimination.
that was for # 5 and 6