Disgusting, but not Surprising

Apparently, in my old hometown of Emmanuel (Samaria, Israel), a purportedly "frum" town, Apartheid is happening. The Bais Yaakov there has separated the Sefardi girls from the Ashkenazi ones. Not just separate classes, mind you. separate hallways and playgrounds. They put up walls in the hallways of the school and a fence in the playground in order to keep the apparently spiritually deficient Sefardi girls separate from the apparently spiritually superior Ashkenazi ones. Here's DovBear's take:

A Bais Yakov school in Emanuel, a religious settlement in the West Bank, is emulating the racial segregation methods used by Apartheid.

If you're a religious racist bigot who has free reign in your privatized education system, you start by segregating the Ashkenazi girls from the Sephardic ones, separating them by last names. The eugenic philosophy goes like this: if your grandfather was an illiterate cobbler in Lodz who also was known as the town rapist, and his last name was Finkelstein, you get to be in the Pale Skinned Supremacy class. If your great-grandfather was an illustrious Talmid Chacham, maybe even an Av Beth Din in Toledo, and his last name was Abulafia, too bad for you. You'll be relegated to the Dark Skinned Spiritually Deficient class. When questioned about your Apartheid methods, you protest and say, "No, no, the ethnic background of the girls was not a consideration. It was the differing "spiritual levels" that determined who goes where". And to make sure your racial policies stick, you not only create psychological boundaries, you erect physical barriers within the school so that the two groups don't accidentally bump into each other in the hall or in the play yard.

This week started with a story about hasidic thugs on an Egged bus beating up on a woman who refuses to move to the designated Ezrat Nashim section, and now this. And it's only Thursday.

People, have we become desensitized to moral outrages perpetrated by our Israeli chareidi brethren?

If you are interested in the story in Hebrew, click here for video and here for a written article.

As I said, disgusting, yes. Surprising? Not so much... When I lived in Israel, Ashkenazi Chareidim always found ALL Sefardim to be Jewishly deficient, even really Chareidi Sefardim. Once again, proof positive that this type of Chareidi Judaism is no more kosher, perhaps even less so, than Reform Judaism. It's just they like to hide behind the Torah's skirts and make everything they do seem like it's "Torah True."

Sick. Very sick. I have a feeling Sarah Schneer is rolling and puking in her grave.