Slippery Slope

In the ”Be’er Hatorah” Yeshiva in Beit Shemesh, Sephardi yeshiva students were not allowed to practice rituals in the Sephardi way, and they were forced to practice them the Ashkenazi way.

(Hebrew)

Despite the Emmanuel local council’s decision to return Sephardic students to the school for girls, they will have to enter through a different gate than the Ashkenazi students, and play during recess in separate yards.

(Hebrew )

During a special hearing at the Knesset Education Committee, representatives of the Bnei Brak and Jerusalem municipalities presented data showing that, since the beginning of the school year, 40 girls remain with no formal educational arrangement. The girls are students of a Sephardic background that religious Ashkenazi seminaries refuse to enroll. Adv. Yoav Lalum, the GM of Noar Kahalacha, claimed during the hearing that the representatives are in fact lying and the phenomenon is much wider.

(Hebrew) and (Hebrew)

People close to Rabbi Ovadyah Yossef, Shas’ spiritual leader, said he asked his son, Rabbi David Yossef, to try and influence Yoav Lalum – who exposed the discrimination against Sephardic girls in Imanuel – so that he won’t appeal to the SCJ in further cases of discrimination. (Hebrew)

Twenty ultra-orthodox (haredi) high school students from Bnei Brak have not been going to school since the beginning of the year. Their parents claim that the “Ashkenazi” seminar schools are refusing to admit them. There are three central seminars which the parents claim to be operating quotas of Sephardic girls: the Wolf Seminar, The Beit Yaakov Seminar (headed by Rabbi Meir), and the Beit Yaakov Seminar (headed by Rabbi Kahane). (Hebrew)

Due to the lack of burial plots in Jerusalem, the Hevra Kadisha has begun burying deceased Jews in multi-story structures. While the Sephardic Hevra Kadisha still has individual burial plots, Ashkenazi Jews are buried in multi-story structures and in double plots, while Sephardic ones are buried underground.