Two articles
Jun. 18th, 2010 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel protested the integration of a religious girl's school
Ultra-Orthodox Jews Protest Ruling
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:58 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school.
Protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and another large religious enclave, crowded onto balconies in city squares, and waved posters decrying the court's decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law.
There were a few small scuffles, and a police officer emerged from one of them holding his eye, apparently slightly injured.
It was one of the largest protests in Jerusalem's history, and a stark reminder of the ultra-Orthodox minority's refusal to accept the authority of the state.
Also, the throngs of devout Jews showed to which extent the ultra-Orthodox live by their own rules, some of them archaic, while wielding disproportionate power in the modern state of Israel.
Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at a girls' school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don't want their daughters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.
The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren't racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough.
Israel's Supreme Court rejected that argument, and ruled that the 43 sets of parents who have defied the integration efforts by keeping their daughters from school were to be jailed on Thursday for two weeks.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about 100,000 people converged in downtown Jerusalem in support of the Ashkenazi parents. An additional 20,000 demonstrated in the central city of Bnei Brak. He said 10,000 police were deployed.
Most of the demonstrators were men wearing the long beards and heavy black clothing typical among ultra-Orthodox Jews. ''The Supreme Court is fascist,'' said one poster.
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.
Sephardi religious leaders have not publicly criticized the demonstration or the Ashkenazi parents' conduct.
Nissim Zeev, a lawmaker from the Orthodox Sephardic political party Shas, said the issue should have been settled by a rabbinical court and that the parents' prison sentence was ''puzzling.'' He insisted the Sephardi girls had the right to choose to attend a mixed school.
''Everyone wants to send their children to Ashkenazi schools,'' said another demonstrator, Zion Harounian, 62, a Sephardic father of nine. ''The quality of the Ashkenazi schools is much higher. They are stronger politically, so they get more money.''
Israel's ultra-Orthodox minority of some 650,000 Jews -- just under 10 percent of the nation's population -- is an insular community that has been known to riot over the state's intrusion into its affairs. They have been criticized for maintaining a separate, state-funded school system that focuses on religious studies.
And, in other news, nobody is taking away student metrocards. Truthfully, I think nobody really believed they would, because students and their parents make their school choices depending on getting those cards. When you live in the Bronx and go to school in Queens, you can't just walk to save the fare. They just suggested it so that they could take it off the table later and say "Look, we saved the student metrocards, but we still need to cut the budget so you can't grumble about losing express service at this and that stop". Everybody is scrambling now to produce ads saying "Protest cutting THIS service, protest cutting THAT service, THIS publicly funded something needs the cash", but at this point in the game the state, the city, they have to cut *something* from *somewhere*, and we'll all be unhappy. But at least the kids can get to school.
Deal to Save Student Transit Discounts Is Near
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Students are likely to keep the discounted fares they pay to ride New York City’s buses and subways, with legislators and transit officials close to an agreement on Thursday to save the service.
The state would provide $25 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to help retain the free or cheaper fares under a deal that was being hammered out in Albany.
If approved — never a sure thing in the capital — the deal would lead to only a partial restoration of money for the program. But officials at the transportation authority said early on Friday that they had agreed to cover the rest of the costs.
“The M.T.A. has decided to abandon the proposal to charge students for travel to and from school,” the authority said in a statement. “As a result, the budget deficit that we are facing will increase, but the alternative is worse.”
The authority placed the discounted fares on the chopping block in December to help close an $800 million budget shortfall. The decision to retain the discounts would force the authority to take other cost-saving steps.
The debate over student fares, which played out for months, was notable for the level of opposition to the authority’s plan from politicians and other public officials, which outweighed even the resentment over plans to cut bus service and subway lines.
Transit officials insisted that it was not their responsibility to pay for the program, noting that most cities support student transportation by using state and local money. In New York, those contributions have stagnated or disappeared; the Legislature slashed its financing for the program to $6 million in November, down from $45 million at its peak.
The authority’s threat to cut the student fares may have shaken a few extra dollars from the budget tree, but the $25 million figure being floated on Thursday was far less than what transit officials had hoped to receive. They had suggested that the agency required upward of $200 million to continue the program.
Even as a resolution grew closer, some legislators said that the authority had made a mistake in using the student fares as a bargaining chip.
“These kids should never have been used as a pawn in a larger dispute about M.T.A. funding,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky.
Still, the authority and its chairman, Jay H. Walder, were working from a timeworn playbook: The authority used a similar tactic in 1994, after Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani cut the city’s financing for the program. Mr. Giuliani eventually gave in, and the discounted fares lived on.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews Protest Ruling
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:58 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school.
Protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and another large religious enclave, crowded onto balconies in city squares, and waved posters decrying the court's decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law.
There were a few small scuffles, and a police officer emerged from one of them holding his eye, apparently slightly injured.
It was one of the largest protests in Jerusalem's history, and a stark reminder of the ultra-Orthodox minority's refusal to accept the authority of the state.
Also, the throngs of devout Jews showed to which extent the ultra-Orthodox live by their own rules, some of them archaic, while wielding disproportionate power in the modern state of Israel.
Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at a girls' school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don't want their daughters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.
The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren't racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough.
Israel's Supreme Court rejected that argument, and ruled that the 43 sets of parents who have defied the integration efforts by keeping their daughters from school were to be jailed on Thursday for two weeks.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about 100,000 people converged in downtown Jerusalem in support of the Ashkenazi parents. An additional 20,000 demonstrated in the central city of Bnei Brak. He said 10,000 police were deployed.
Most of the demonstrators were men wearing the long beards and heavy black clothing typical among ultra-Orthodox Jews. ''The Supreme Court is fascist,'' said one poster.
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.
Sephardi religious leaders have not publicly criticized the demonstration or the Ashkenazi parents' conduct.
Nissim Zeev, a lawmaker from the Orthodox Sephardic political party Shas, said the issue should have been settled by a rabbinical court and that the parents' prison sentence was ''puzzling.'' He insisted the Sephardi girls had the right to choose to attend a mixed school.
''Everyone wants to send their children to Ashkenazi schools,'' said another demonstrator, Zion Harounian, 62, a Sephardic father of nine. ''The quality of the Ashkenazi schools is much higher. They are stronger politically, so they get more money.''
Israel's ultra-Orthodox minority of some 650,000 Jews -- just under 10 percent of the nation's population -- is an insular community that has been known to riot over the state's intrusion into its affairs. They have been criticized for maintaining a separate, state-funded school system that focuses on religious studies.
And, in other news, nobody is taking away student metrocards. Truthfully, I think nobody really believed they would, because students and their parents make their school choices depending on getting those cards. When you live in the Bronx and go to school in Queens, you can't just walk to save the fare. They just suggested it so that they could take it off the table later and say "Look, we saved the student metrocards, but we still need to cut the budget so you can't grumble about losing express service at this and that stop". Everybody is scrambling now to produce ads saying "Protest cutting THIS service, protest cutting THAT service, THIS publicly funded something needs the cash", but at this point in the game the state, the city, they have to cut *something* from *somewhere*, and we'll all be unhappy. But at least the kids can get to school.
Deal to Save Student Transit Discounts Is Near
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Students are likely to keep the discounted fares they pay to ride New York City’s buses and subways, with legislators and transit officials close to an agreement on Thursday to save the service.
The state would provide $25 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to help retain the free or cheaper fares under a deal that was being hammered out in Albany.
If approved — never a sure thing in the capital — the deal would lead to only a partial restoration of money for the program. But officials at the transportation authority said early on Friday that they had agreed to cover the rest of the costs.
“The M.T.A. has decided to abandon the proposal to charge students for travel to and from school,” the authority said in a statement. “As a result, the budget deficit that we are facing will increase, but the alternative is worse.”
The authority placed the discounted fares on the chopping block in December to help close an $800 million budget shortfall. The decision to retain the discounts would force the authority to take other cost-saving steps.
The debate over student fares, which played out for months, was notable for the level of opposition to the authority’s plan from politicians and other public officials, which outweighed even the resentment over plans to cut bus service and subway lines.
Transit officials insisted that it was not their responsibility to pay for the program, noting that most cities support student transportation by using state and local money. In New York, those contributions have stagnated or disappeared; the Legislature slashed its financing for the program to $6 million in November, down from $45 million at its peak.
The authority’s threat to cut the student fares may have shaken a few extra dollars from the budget tree, but the $25 million figure being floated on Thursday was far less than what transit officials had hoped to receive. They had suggested that the agency required upward of $200 million to continue the program.
Even as a resolution grew closer, some legislators said that the authority had made a mistake in using the student fares as a bargaining chip.
“These kids should never have been used as a pawn in a larger dispute about M.T.A. funding,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky.
Still, the authority and its chairman, Jay H. Walder, were working from a timeworn playbook: The authority used a similar tactic in 1994, after Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani cut the city’s financing for the program. Mr. Giuliani eventually gave in, and the discounted fares lived on.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 02:31 am (UTC)Just... the FUCK? *headdesk*
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 06:11 pm (UTC)I'm suspecting at any rate that "open-minded" doesn't mean "open-minded" but "worldly and antireligious".
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 12:43 am (UTC)On a side note, a couple generations back there was a controversy in my family about the marriage of two ancestors of mine. However, the Sephardic side of my family finally ceased their objections when they found out that the marriage prospect was not 100% Ashkenazi, but was actually already part Spehardic. And thus, I exist.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 12:54 am (UTC)That's certainly a problem.
And given that the article on Judaism at Wikipedia says that in Israel "Sephardic" is used as a lump term to include Mizrahi Jews... does that mean some of these people were there forever before the creation of the modern state of Israel, and the majority (who get better-funded schools) came (came back?) more recently from Eastern Europe (or from wherever they went between there and Israel)? Couldn't that cause some additional tension all on its own?
I have no idea, but I've carefully marked Israel off again the list of places to vacation in. (Well, it never was on in the first place. I already live in a major world city which has seen two major, successful terrorist attacks in my lifetime, I don't need to go *visiting* a country like that.)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 01:01 am (UTC)I don't know too much about Sephardism, especially in Israel. I do know that they eat donuts during Chanukah, so I've always rather liked their traditions.