Israel’s Supreme Court rules against Ashkenazi parents demanding segregated classrooms
17 June 2010
The Supreme Court of Israel has confirmed a two-week prison sentence for Orthodox Jewish parents of Ashkenazi descent who refuse to send their daughters to a girls school also attended by Sephardic children. unless they allow their daughters back to school by Thursday. The judges said the parent’s behavior had been racist.
Involved in the case is a group of close to 40 parents from a strictly observant sect of Chassidic Jews called Slonim, which has an Ashkenazi lineage. They currently reside in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel and have refused to allow their daughters to study at a girls' school because it was also attended by students from Sephardic families.
In August 2009 the Supreme Court had ruled that Sephardic girls must be allowed to attend the same classes as the Ashkenazi ones, and as a result, the parents of 74 students removed their children from the school and set up make-shift lessons elsewhere in the settlement.
The Ashkenazi parents insisted they were not racist but wanted to keep the classrooms segregated because the families of the Sephardic girls were not religious enough. The Supreme Court rejected that argument and told the parents that the school must be integrated.
On Thursday, police in Jerusalem were on high alert ahead of protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews against the ruling. More than 10,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews were expected to turn out in support of the Ashkenazi parents in various places, with the main rally scheduled for Jerusalem.
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Oh dear, doesn't this sound familiar?? This reminds me of the shites and sunnis fighting with each other over who interpets their bible correctly. Get over yourselves please !!!!
This article is the result of base ignorance. Israel's Supreme Court (which, far from being ethnically diverse, has only one Sephardic justice) is sending ten *Sephardic* parents to jail for ethnic bias against Sephardim.
Do you get it? The bigotry here is anti-religious in nature, and the court is the guilty party.
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It seems that the Left of Israel has its tentacles into this issue and pretends to be self-righteous about eradicating NONEXISTENT racism. See here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138130
Apparently there are Sephardic Chassidic Jewish people who also object to the mixing of the religious levels between in the school. But that is exactly what the Left wants, to dilute the regard of the children (daughters) toward the adherence of their parents to the Torah by introducing these children to a (forced) integration with other children who are less religious.
It so happens that if the class of less religious girls were Ashkenazi the parents of the Chassidic very religious girls would object just as strongly. So this is only a pretext by the Israeli supreme court to create havoc and disunity among Jewish people of Israel.
The Division is caused by the Court not by the Jewish people of Emmanuel who have been getting along all this time. See here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138121
Whoever wants to play the guilt trip card and pretend this is a fight between Jewish people of different religious levels is simply a fraud. The fight is NOT between Jewish people who are Hassidic and Modern Orthodox. The fight is between the Hassidic people and the Left leaning court of Israel that has no business destroying the strength of these parents' tradition and home-life!