Investigate before Jumping on This Ship

YWN reported that Aguda Rabbonim convened to discuss Chinuch Atzmai which is under more financial strain due to a fine imposed by the Israeli court of 5,000NIS per day the school does not comply with the ruling of the courts. The courts became involved in the Emanuel Bais Yaakov schools after accusations of segregation between segregation of Ashkenazim and Sephardim and discrimination against the latter. The gedolim have decried the involvement of the secular court system in Chareidi education and have supported the parents in their actions, rallying behind them. For links to all related stories see YWN here.

When I was the story about the Aguda meeting to discuss the financial strain I can't say my reaction was a nice one. But, not knowing the details of the case, I didn't want to jump to any conclusions either.

My friend Mom in Israel has details of a different case in Bet Shemesh and has kindly posted a transcript of tape in which the Bais Yaakov Principal's remarks to school parents in Bet Shemesh were recorded and later played on an Israeli radio program. What a lovely gem during the Omer. I have never heard such cruelty. There is no possible way that you can build an education on such a foundation. I know no one in the Agudah, but would be more than happy to place this excerpt as translated by Mom in Israel in envelopes to anyone who was at the American Agudah meeting asking them to do some further investigation before supporting Chinuch Atzmai in the Emanuel discrimination case and asking for money from an already struggling American community. This might not be the ship they want to jump on! I certainly wouldn't want to be on that ship.

If you have the home addresses of anyone who was present in the meeting, please send me an email at Orthonomics at gmail dot com. Excerpt follows from the Bet Shemesh principal. See all the links at Mom in Israel for more info.

You, as a mother, are insisting on sending her to a place where she’s not wanted . . . No child wants to sit next to her, no one will be friends with her, no one will go to her house to play, no child will lend her a notebook, no one will approach her at recess, everyone will know that this is the girl, that because of her, we all sat at home for so long.

How can you, as a mother, send your daughter to a place where she is clearly not wanted? not only by me, not only by the teachers, and not only by the rabbi of the neighborhood—all 280 students don’t want her.”


Your daughter will be socially isolated. No girl will sit next to her. No one will invite her over. She’s going to go into a class that has 26 girls, she’ll be number 27. The other class has 32—in either case the class will have an odd number. Your daughter will sit by herself. And in two months when the teacher changes the seating arrangements, your daughter will sit by herself, again.

280 girls are sitting at home. For many of them it’s very hard, the parents are working. No one knows when this will end, I also don’t know. But all of them (kuuulam), did it happily (besimcha). Now if that girl calls on the phone to play, and the mother asks who is on the phone, will she let her daughter play with the girl, that because of her they all stayed home?

She’ll be a museum exhibit. All the girls will look to see who this girl is who caused the commotion. When every [apartment] building has 50 girls living there, what mother would send her daughter to play with a girl that has a “baayah chinuchit” (educational or discipline problem) at home?”