Protests against school integration — in Israel

by David Safier

I usually stay out of all matters having to do with Israel on the blog. It's such a frighteningly complex issue. When I listen to the heated debates, with each side hurling grievances and injustices at the other, I keep hearing the words of an old 60s song in my head: "Nobody's right if everybody's wrong."

[For the record, I'm Jewish and lean strongly toward the pro-peace, two-state side of the debate.]

But as someone who writes about education, this is an issue I can't ignore.

There was a huge — as in up to 100,000 person — protest by ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. They were protesting a Supreme Court ruling that a religious girl's school which has only girls of Ashkenazi (European Jewish) descent must also allow girls of Sephardi (Mideast and North African Jewish) descent to attend.

The protesters say the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough and will pollute the minds of the more devout Ashkenazi girls.

But it also happens that the Ashkenazi schools offer higher quality education than most Sephardi schools, in part because ultra-Orthodox Jews wield lots of political power, which means money and resources flow to their schools.

This sounds like an echo of our own shameful history with separate-but-unequal education. Jews in Israel are not above shameful racism and xenophobia within the Jewish community.

For those who look at the Jewish community in the U.S. and/or in Israel from the outside and imagine there is general unanimity on important issues or that Jews belong to one big, exclusive, cohesive club, it ain't so.

BY THE WAY, IF YOU'RE PLANNING TO COMMENT: I will delete any comments that get into Israeli-Palestinian issues, Gaza, anti-Israel/Jewish/Arab/Muslim comments etc. That's not what this post is about, and I won't let it be hijacked by people on any side of those polarizing issues. If you want to comment on something directly related to the issue I address in the post, feel free.