Toddler Rejected By Haredi School Because He Is 1/4 Sefardic

As you read this article from Ynet, keep the following in mind:

1. The school rejecting the toddler because he has Sefardic blood is haredi.
2. There is a long history of haredi schools in general, not just this one haredi school in particular, banning students of Sefardic or partially-Sefardic descent. (This is not true of Chabad schools.)
3. The child's mother, who is 1/2 Sefardic, pleaded with the school to let her 4 1/2 year old child in. She did so by assuring the school that the child is Ashkenazi in every way except for 1/4 of his blood, and that the child is Yiddish-speaking.
4. The rejection of the child is purely based on ethnicity.
5. Even though some in the haredi leadership (like Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv) are said to be opposed to this type of bigotry, the bigotry is itself still common in haredi society, even in the second tier of haredi leadership, largely because haredi leaders have not attached any penalties for being and anti-Sefardic bigot or for supporting anti-Sefardic bigotry. You can wear a white sheet and hood and still be in the good graces of haredi leadership.
6. Israel does not enforce its anti-discrimination laws.
7. Nothing will change until either haredi leadership penalizes haredi anti-Sefardic bigots or Israel Israel makes a concerted effort to enforce the law.
8. Because neither is likely to happen soon, haredi anti-Sefardic bigotry will continue unabated.

Ynet reports:

Anyone who thinks that racist rules are a thing of the past is wrong, according to the mother of a four-and-a-half year old child who was rejected from a Talmud Torah school because of his grandfather’s ethnicity.

“They are alive and kicking in all their ugliness in Ashkenazi haredi educational institutions,” the mother said.

The child was denied admission to a Talmlud Torah school in Beit Shemesh because of what its principal called a “stain” in his genealogy.

“Tell the child’s dear father that although he himself is completely Ashkenazi, his wife’s father is Sephardic, and we therefore cannot accept his son into our institution. We have to maintain a certain standard,” the principal said.…

“I begged the principal. I explained that my child is truly Ashkenazi and looks exactly like his father. Our son also speaks Yiddish, but nothing helped,” the mother said. “They explained to a friend of ours that they didn’t want to ruin their Talmud Torah with ‘damaged goods’.”

The Talmud Torah school had previously given the same explanation to several other frustrated parents who petitioned MK Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) for help.

The Knesset member tried several times to convince the principal to allow the rejected children admission to the school, but the principal insisted there was “no room” in the institution.

“This is a complicated problem. I don’t deal with condemning these things, just like I don’t condemn kibbutzim, which sometimes select who to accept as a member. There are communities that wish to be strict about their religion or social character. It’s not simple,” Porush said.

The school’s principal, who had previously said he only wanted “100% Ashkenazim” at his institution, told Yedioth Ahronoth he had no idea how many, if any, Sephardic children were enrolled in the school.…

[Hat Tip: The Beadle.]

Comments

[Isa]

This is good-They will wake up and see Heredism for what it is. It is like a a white person being rejected for KKK membership cause they are 1/4 something not acceptable. Maybe the thought of wearing a white sheet or an ' armband on a brown shirt' is not appealing anymore.

[Alex]

The principal should be parachuted in the middle of Iran so that these people can give it to him the way the company executive was killed at the last few scenes in Resident Evil Apocalypse.

[yona loriner]

i think the school should be shut down!! what mamzairim run that place!!!

[yona loriner]

i think the school should be shut down!! what mamzairim run that place!!! yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner

[yona loriner]

i think the school should be shut down!! what mamzairim run that place!!! yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner yona loriner

[yona loriner]

once in a while this site is right on the money..

[Rebitzman]

I can really understand why they wouldn't want the kid - after all it was the Sephardim that gave us the RamBam (among others)and we sure don't need anymore that think like HIM, now do we?

[Marc]

Guess what. If you know anything about genealogy the original Jews are the sefardic (middle eastern looking ones) The European Jews became Jews about 1300 years ago. If you look like a Russian, A German, or a Pole, you probably don't look like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Moses.

I'm Askenazi, and while all Jews are Jews, the original bloodline comes from Israel, not Europe. Wake up dumb Hareidi shmucks!

Also, please realize that when the goyim come for us, and they will again, they don't give a rat's ass if you look like a Russian or a Syrian. Shalom everyone. Love your brother, and forget the mean spirited BS you learned in Cheder.

[WalkingAlongTheShore]

Beit Shemesh. That's in Israel, right? Isn't Israel on the Mediterranean coast, in the Middle East?

So, the joker running this Talmud Torah is living in a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern country - the land of HIS ANSCESTORS (hence, his ancestors were Mediterranean Middle Easterners) - and he has a PROBLEM with Jews with ancestry from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries enrolling in his school.

What a jerk!

Let him go on, living in the Middle East while dressing like a Pole or Lithuanian and speaking a Germanic language, continuing on in his fantasy that that is the one true and proper way for Jews to be.

I hope the child's mother comes back to him one day and is able to say, "Oh, I researched my family tree a little more. It turns out that my father is a direct descendant of the Rambam."

[Abe]

Perhaps the mother of the rejected child will now recognize the perfidy of orthodoxy. Her best hope is to tell them to go to hell and abandon fumkeit in favor of rational secularism.
There is a much more satisying life beyond haredi fundamentalism.

[Alex]

I totally agree with Abe- rational secularists are actually able to talk to girls while haredi fundies can't XD

[Sephardiman]

Well, at last we've found the ideal school for Nachman to send his children to!

My wife works in the office of a charedi Chassidic yeshiva here in Chicago, and I'm proud to say that many Sephardim, including the children of the Chacham of our Bait Knesset, have been enrolled in this school over the years. As our Rav suggested at a school dinner, "The Cheder is a place where Baghdad and Volozhin all come together!"

[R]

I can't believe this still goes on. It's disgusting. The principle should be sacked or the school closed down. I bet one of the things that school probably talks about is Ahavat Yisrael, uuh maybe not...probably your yichus is more important than actually keeping the torah. Such hypocrits, they make me sick.

[yona loriner yona loriner]

how do u know they r ganna come for us again?????????????? yona loriner yona loriner

[Rebitzman]

++how do u know they r ganna come for us again?++

Anyone who thinks they are not - has not studied history.

[AC]

"Anyone who thinks they are not - has not studied history."

We let it happen to us, it's up to us to not let history repeat itself. Instead of being weak ghetto mongers who are still dwelling in the shteitel, we should become proud and strong and beat the crap out of our enemies. I think a big detraction from this is that we are so obsessed with finger pointing within our own people, like this loser rebbe in beit shemesh.

[AC]

And this is the reason why we are still in "galut" as well. We can't stick together enough to stand up against our enemies. That is why it is said the beit hamikdash was destroyed because of sinat chinam.

~Galut is in the mind

[pushkina]

And we teach that it was the Spanish Xtians that introduced the concept of limpieza de sangre --- purity of blood ---into the lives of European Jewry; seems that we have managed to take that lesson onto ourselves very well…...

[pushkina]

RESEND (sorry that it went out before it was a complete thought.)

HA! And we teach that it was the Spanish Xtians that introduced the concept of limpieza de sangre --- purity of blood ---into the lives of European Jewry! It seems that we have managed to take that lesson onto ourselves very well…... This is just one of the reasons that I choose not to send tsedaka to Israeli religious institutions generally: I don't want such 'religious' people spending my money in ways that would profoundly offend me and who (if I needed it) would not even consider me or my family worthy of receiving their help.

In fact, I believe that is the way to get the attention of such folks: WITHHOLD YOUR DONATIONS TO THEM. This is true of all Jewish communal institutions: Deny them access to YOUR money so that they can spend it as they wish, without your input.

I am not saying to withhold all tsedaka, no, not at all. Just make sure that you are knowledgeable of the institution which will receive it, how they will spend it, if they will respect your directions on how to spend it and above all, check what their overheads are. Chances are if only US$ .50 (or less) of US$1.00 actually makes it to the deserving, then it isn’t really a charity, it is a money-making venture and does not fulfill the definition of a tsedaka deserving institution.

[yona loriner]

insane..

[pushkina]

To AC ---

We (at least this is the perception of the Israelis) HAVE (in some ways ) become a hardass folk who beat the crap out of our enemies. What has it gotten us? Instead of (and along with in some places) anti-Semitism, we now have anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism in its place.(“We don’t hate the Jews: we just hate the bloodthirsty Israelis and the ways they are killing the poor Palestinians” etc etc.) Our leaderships are busy screaming “Never Again!” as they collect (or try to collect) more and more money from our communities for protection against our enemies and to build day schools to protect Jewish kids from intermarriage ( a total waste of money to my mind: look at the Catholics, they did the same thing and now, their schools are filled with everybody on earth---except Catholics.) Our leadership is obsessed with amassing political power leading to another myth that Jews are politically omnipotent, which leads to more ant-Semitism.

Those same day school kids learn and take away with themselves two things about being Jewish: the holocaust and the importance of Israel’s power; they take away with themselves those two identity markers and learn (from my experience and observation) very little about the beauty of Judaism, the importance of Halacha, the importance of any kind of relationship with G/d. They seem to learn that the Jews are always under siege which equals either the Shoah or the continuing armed might of Israel AND that the Jewish people are superior to all others.

So how do we protect ourselves if and when the time will come when “they” come for us again? I have no idea but I do know that we are not educating Jewish children (or adults) in any effective ways of self-preservation and good civics.

Currently I am reading a book by Yehuda Bauer “Rethinking the Holocaust” which touches on some of these exact thoughts. I encourage anyone who thinks of these things to take a read of this book too. As a community, we have become so invested in the Shoah as OUR thing (unser cosa nostra) that we take no notice of anyone else who is suffering from genocide (as per the original and/or UN definitions). As a result, we lose opportunities to make allies of others who have suffered as we have, and indeed, make enemies of those who we refuse to acknowledge as fellow sufferers.

I am glad that Shmarya is showing us all these incidents of our inter-tribal bad behaviours at this time of Elul. We need to think about them, reflect upon them and dedicate ourselves to treating other Jews (at least, a good place to start and include non-Jews as well) with kindness, justice and righteousness. Perhaps that will be the way we can defend/save ourselves.

[pushkina]

As a toddler, I was asked to leave our Reform preschool after the first day, not because I was a bad kid, but because the other ‘Jewish’ PARENTS were uncomfortable with having a black child (no matter how Jewish) in the midst of all the other little Jewish kids. Even though that was almost half a century ago, and that attitude would not be tolerated in any reformed (Reform, Conservative, etc) congregation now, it is still indicative of how Jews have felt insecure in their ‘whiteness’ (in the US) and how racism was and is and will remain part of the Jewish people’s worldview.

I often wonder how my white-skinned daughter would be percived in the US and what kinds of racism she will encounter there, if and when we ever leave Oz. At least here Jewish people don't bat an eyelid at a Jew of color, as they are so very connected with the concept of Jewish multi-ethnicity because of their exposure to Israeli (chiloni) society.

Now, I wonder why that mother was so hell-bent on sending her fine youngster to that Ashkenazi sewer, rather than say, one of Shas's fine (and well-financed) 'el haMa'ayan' institutions, for example?

[Yos]

Jews, I think, have a way of adopting the worst characteristics of their goyish neighbors. The Ashy love of Germanic Yiddish and light skin is a dead straight imitation of E. European goyim. Do they think Moshe Rabbenu was blonde?

I agee with the anonymous guy who asked why the mother was keen on sending her kid there. Fishy story.

[Shmarya]

Because she is only 1/2 Sefardi, and her husband is 100% Ashkenazi. The child would follow the father's customs. Her father was Ashkenazi, as well, so she, presumably, grew up following Ashkenazi customs.

[Shmorgel]

" You can wear a white sheet and hood and still be in the good graces of haredi leadership."

I agree with the rest of Shmarya's post except that part ---- I am not so sure the haredi leaders approve of that as the proper "levush".

[Shmorgel]

Just a few pedantic comments regarding Marc, who said "Guess what. If you know anything about genealogy the original Jews are the sefardic (middle eastern looking ones)"
Most of the people reading this blog know this already-but there are several mistakes in Marc's statements, and I feel that if he is reading this or anyone else who reads it accepts his statements at face value that they should be corrected. First off, "sephardic", contrary to what Marc wrote, does NOT mean "Middle Eastern-looking". It means Jews whose ancestors lived in the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal). He is conflating "Sepharadim" and "Mizrahim", which is a common mistake, since the various Mizrahi groups have a similar nusach to Sepharadim and Ashkenazim have long termed anyone who is not Ashkenazi as "Sepharadi", and additionally, after the Expulsion from Spain, many Spanish Jews settled amongst Mizrahi Jews(again--I am aware that I am being pedantic and most of the well-informed blog readers on FM are aware of these facts).

Marc also wrote: ""The European Jews became Jews about 1300 years ago. If you look like a Russian, A German, or a Pole, you probably don't look like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Moses."

There are a lot of things wrong with that statement. Nevertheless, it is partly true and it may be much more accurate to say--"Ashkenazi Jewry had its roots about 1,300 years ago" --remember, SPAIN IS IN EUROPE-- and the "proto"-Ashkenazi Jews arriving in the Germanic and Slavic lands may have intermingled with the local inhabitants, most likely local women--SHIKSAS!-- who they converted, resulting in more fairer-skinned Ashkenazi Jews than you find amongst Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish populations. That said--just as "Sefaradi" does not automatically mean "a darker-skin toned Jew" (and neither does Mizrahi, for that matter)--there are PLENTY of fair Sephardim-especially from Greece, Turkey,Bulgaria--not to mention that you can find many fair skinned, blue and green-eyed, blond and red-haired Syrian and Iraqi Jews--BUT you also find a lot of olive-skinned, swarthy, dark and kinky-haired, so-called stereotypically "Middle Eastern-looking" Ashkenazim. My own father is in that category. His "yikhus" is in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania going back several generations. In fact, in countries in which Ashkenazim lived where the local gentile host population was overwhelmingly fair-skinned--(e.g., Germany, Poland) Jews as a whole were stereotyped by the local Gentiles as being swarthy and dark. Not because a majority of those Ashkenazim were so dark-skinned, by the 20th century probably most Ashkenazim in Eastern Europe tended to be as fair-skinned as their non-Jewish neighbors -but because there were more olive-skinned Jews in Poland than there were olive-skinned Polish Gentiles, for example.Marc IS probably correct when he says if you look Germanic or Slavic, that you probably don't look like Abraham , Isaac or Moses, however.
Marc also wrote:
"Also, please realize that when the goyim come for us, and they will again, they don't give a rat's ass if you look like a Russian or a Syrian. Shalom everyone. Love your brother, and forget the mean spirited BS you learned in Cheder."

I mostly agree with that statement--and recoginze Marc meant well but he is propagating ignorance and half-truths by identifying "Ashkenaziness" and "Sefardiness" soleley with skin tones. (That said, it obviously does come into play). Sorry for the pedantry again--but it just annoys me when people confuse the two things.

[Dr Fred]

How sad, really. Sad that there are those ( so, so frum) who say that redemption doesn't come because some non-religious person eats the proverbial ham sandwich on Yom Kippur.This is Elul,and I have come to the radical notion that any religiou practice that doesn't prompt one to do Teshuva is, maybe, just maybe, a gateway to idolatry.

[pushkina]

FYI to shmorgel and marc:

the first reference in writing to jews in germany was in about 330 CE, in the roman census of the settlement of what became frankfurt. jews were there to coolect taxes for the roman government.

that is WAY more than 1300 years ago AND does not agree with marc's original thesis of jewish origin.

suffice to say that in ages past, two things were true:

1. jews had feet and went whereever they wanted;
2. once there, there was not what we call a "haredi" rabbinate minding their business for them; they were allowed to live the lives they wanted and marry /or not whomeer they wanted.

[Schmorgel]

Pushkina--you are correct in stating that the first documentary evidence of Jews living in Germanic lands goes back to the Roman era and about 330 CE --however--the extent to which those early communities had a continuity with later communities that settled in those same areas and later came to be known as culturally "Ashkenazic" is unclear. Those early Jews mentioned in the census who settled in the far reaches of the Roman empire may have assimilated, intermarried, or died out and left the area, and later communities of Jews may have taken their place to evolve what we now know as the "Ashkenazi culture". So, I think Ashkenazim qua Ashkenazim can only be definitively dated to the 9th century of the common era or even later... no? That said, I think that even though we are both being pedantic, we can both agree that Marc meant well in wishing for unity among all Jews regardless of our backgrounds and an end to petty discrimination like the disgraceful behaviour of this particular yeshiva. However, it just annoys the heck out of me (because of my occasionally pedantic nature) when people assert things like being fair-skinned is an essential condition of "Ashkenaziness" and being dark or olive toned is an essential condition of "Sefardiness" or "MizraHiness". Anyway, I'm repeating myself, sorry.

[Lev]

WalkingAlongTheShore, Hareidim(I don't defend anything or anyone) are dressed NOT AT ALL like Poles and, espessially, Lithuanians--two totally different people and nations, BTW
Lived there, seen that.
All Western European languages are of Romano-Germanic group.