Religious Racism in Israeli Schools

Read an earlier version this post on the Kolech English Website, Jewish Woman's Voice This essay was published in the Jerusalem Post op-ed pages on September 24. There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from “Ahoti ”, a Sephardic feminist organization waiting for a ruling on the religious girls’ school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim-Crow-like separations in place. What is happening in the Beit Yakov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardic girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or “Hasidic” girls, and they have different teachers, different classes, and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups of girls do not heaven forbid mingle during the breaks. It's not just Emanuel, but in other religious girls’ schools around the country, such as Elad, where parents protested to ensure that a Sephardic girl would not be allowed in to the class. Protested! There have been reports from around the country of girls being rejected or ejected from schools because of the color of their skin or their last name. And even though the Supreme Court ruled last week that the apartheid has to end, the school and parents are refusing to comply, thus rejecting civil as well as moral obligations. This is not the post-Civil war south but Israel of 2008, where I would have expected more people to be outraged by this blatant racism.