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 Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:34 pm |
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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017369582&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Racism in the name of religion
Sep. 23, 2008
ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN , THE JERUSALEM POST
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 Sephardi 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 Ya'acov school is nothing less than the
formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which
Sephardi girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic
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 do not 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 Sephardi 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 High 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.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING in the Beit Ya'acov is outrageous," said Yael Ben-Yefet,
one of the leaders of Ahoti. "The girls get the message that they are
deformed, that they are less good, that there is something inherently wrong
with them. This happens everywhere in Israel, but it is the most prominent in
this school."
This story comes on the heels of a similarly shocking exposure of racist
practice in a religious school in Petah Tikva. Earlier this year, in a state
religious school, the school physically and academically separated the
Ethiopian girls from the rest of the school - separate teachers, separate
curricula, separate rooms, separate recess.
My kids and I spent some time last year at a predominantly Ethiopian
preschool in Mevaseret Zion, shortly after the Petah Tikva events came to
light. One morning, as the kids all played together in the sand, the teacher
said, "This community is very hurt. It just doesn't understand how such a
deep-rooted hatred can exist in the country that its members dreamed of
coming to."
The teacher suggested that as a form of healing, kids from around the country
come and play with Ethiopian kids in preschool. It sounds so basic, and yet
that basic sense of morality and equality is so profoundly lacking.
It's no coincidence that many these stories of racism take place in religious
schools. Religious schools are drenched with practices that created social
hierarchies between those who are "more" and those who are "less," or those
who are "in" and those who are "out." Indeed, for my doctoral research on
religious school culture, I discovered multiple hierarchies intersecting and
intertwining in religious schools via a discourse that takes for granted
Ashkenazi culture as morally, intellectually and religiously superior to
Mizrahi or Sephardi culture.
The demeaning of Mizrahi kids is sometimes subtle, but often strikingly
overt. Discrimination may take the form of teachers casually referring to
"Ashkenazi intellect," and "Mizrahi emotion," or where the highest tracks
become predominantly Ashkenazi and the lowest tracks predominantly Sephardi,
based presumably on "intelligence." Mizrahi students are typically penalized
and suspended more often than Ashkenazi students; they are reprimanded for
the same offenses that Ashkenazi kids get away with, and are lectured on how
to avoid things like dropping out, getting pregnant or turning on a light
switch on Shabbat. Mizrahi students are assumed to be "problems," on the
margins of society, teetering on the edge of an abyss or at high risk of
being deemed the worst of all - non-religious.
Indeed, in religious schools, as opposed to state schools, discriminatory
practices are rationalized on the basis of "religiousness." That is, whereas
in non-religious schools, discrimination revolves primarily around academics
and class, in religious schools, there is an entire extra level of
patronizing in which Mizrahi kids are assumed to be less religious. Thus, for
example, United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz, in an attempt to "explain"
the events in Emanuel and Elad, said that "the ethnic discrimination stems
first and foremost from the desire to maintain the school's educational
atmosphere... We educate on internal and external values and there are
differences among the different ethnic groups."
IN OTHER words, Sephardim have different "values" that threaten the
"educational atmosphere." Mizrahi students are thus viewed as being on the
margins educationally, economically and morally - and in religious schools,
these hierarchies ultimately conflate into the view of Mizrahi students as
less "religious."
This language of Sephardi culture as "threatening" to religiousness is
rampant. Yair Sheleg, in his book Dati'im Hadashim (The New Religious),
documents Ashkenazi fear of "contamination" by Mizrahi families. He writes
that the 21st-century version of "white flight" is among Ashkenazi religious
families. That is, as soon as parents see that Mizrahi students are entering
"their" schools, they open up a new elitist "torani" school in the name of
creating a "higher" religious level, but is in fact simply Mizrahi-free.
These religious hierarchies are the latest version of 19th-century
colonialist racism of the "Great Chain of Being" and "Social Darwinism."
Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid brilliantly write in Dor Hatemura (Generation
in Transition) that Mizrahi and Ashkenazi religious identities take different
forms - not superior and inferior, but simply different. Mizrahi
religiousness is transmitted via people, families and traditions, while
Ashkenazi religiousness is transmitted via the written word.
So a kid who spends Shabbat with her family and flicks a light switch is
keeping the faith in Sephardi culture, whereas a kid who spends Shabbat all
alone but does not flick the light switch is keeping the faith in Ashkenazi
culture. But in state religious schools, only the Ashkenazi version of
religiousness counts, and those who don't abide by the Ashkenazi culture are
just inferior outsiders.
"FOR A girl to make it in this system," said Vardit of the organization
Tmura, "girls in Beit Ya'acov are expected to give up their entire culture,
everything they know and love from at home. They have to accept that their
food, their customs, even their pronunciation of Hebrew, are wrong. They have
to be willing to reject their entire spiritual and cultural heritage as
inferior. It's horrible."
In the Beit Ya'acov in Emanuel, Vardit explained, Sephardi girls who want to
enter the "regular" track are told to actually sign a written contract to the
effect that they will conduct themselves according to Ashkenazi expectations
- and, by the way, pay an extra school fee. "So far, no girls have agreed to
sign," she said.
As I discussed these events at home, my 11-year old daughter was dumbfounded.
"Why won't they let the girls into class?" she demanded. She could not get
her head around this racist reality. Kids can be very wise - wiser, in fact,
than many adults. My daughter understands how such practices violate our
basic humanity.
The writer is an educator, writer, researcher and activist and blogs
regularly for JPost.com at A Woman's Own
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017369582&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Copyright 1995- 2008 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/ |
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