Day 6 - Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

That's kind of a weird way of putting it. I was unaware that I have a fancy capable of being ticked, much less that doing what I want creates a tickly feeling in this...fancy....

I feel like this might be getting dirty.

Anyway.

What so-called "tickles my fancy" today? Ooh! I can ramble about a news story I heard/saw yesterday. I heard it on NPR after seeing it at this link. It's about Ultra-Orthadox (a.k.a. Hassidic) Jews in Israel, which is always kind of interesting. The dynamic between religious and secular Jews in Israel is a whole different ramble, but this article is particularly interesting because it's about how the Ashkenazi Hassidim (the Hassidim descended from Eastern Europe) are resisting the forced integration of their public girls' school with Sephardi Hassidim (descended from Israel, Spain, Northern Africa, and basically everywhere besides Eastern Europe). The Israeli Supreme Court had ruled against the segregation that the Ashkenazi were imposing, not allowing Sephardi girls to attend the school. After forcing integration, the government actually arrested 43 sets of Ashkenazi parents who then refused to send their daughters to this school.

My favorite quote: "Esther Bark, 50, who has seven daughters, said the issue is keeping the girls away from the temptations of the modern world. 'To suddenly put them in an open-minded place is not good for them,' she said."

So this brings up a few things. The first is this discrimination by the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox against the Sephardi. Now as a disclaimer, I'm really not informed about this at all. I don't know what kind of "open-mindedness" the woman is talking about. But I didn't know that this racism existed, although I guess it makes sense since the Ashkenazi and Sephardi have always had slightly different rules based on what their rabbis have said. And don't groups tend to clash when they end up with slightly different rules? I wonder what exactly makes the Sephardi more open-minded or liberal compared to the Ashkenazi.

Also, this is a public school. My reaction is: if you care so much, send your daughters to a segregated private school! And if there isn't one, start one! You have to listen to the government when you're sending your children to state-funded schools. Plus, the school system in Israel is already pretty segregated – there are public Jewish, public secular, orthodox Agudat Israel (partially state-funded), public Arabic, and private schools (source).

My dad's reaction, because he was in the car with me when the story was on NPR, was that the Ultra-Orthodox have always expected to be able to do whatever they wanted on the government's dime. He cited the fact that the Ultra-Orthodox are the only non-Arab Israelis that don't have to join the Israeli Army at age 18, although this isn't true. The Modern Orthodox (only Modern Orthodox women?) don't have to either, although I think that while the Ultra-Orthodox are busy studying Torah during the time they'd be in the army, the Modern Orthodox do community service instead. Bottom line is, I'm not entirely sure what I'm talking about, and I don't think my dad is either.

But my feeling is mixed, because yeah, it's not fair for the Hassidim to expect the government and taxpayers to let them do whatever they want with government money when it's against the laws of Israel or court rulings or whatever. But at the same time, it's a Jewish state. So why is it that the Hassidim have to jump through hoops to be able to practice Judaism the way they want to, and the way that they are miraculously able to in the state of Israel, just because the secular government doesn't agree with it? I'm not saying I agree with it either. But isn't that kind of the point of Israel's existence? Just a thought.

And that said, I still say they should just have a private school, and then the taxpayers wouldn't be funding their discrimination, nor would they be forced to integrate against their beliefs, and then everything would be fine.

And that's my ramble for today.