“It’s like putting Americans and Africans together. They can’t study together with such huge mental differences,” an ultra-Orthodox Jewish parent said when explaining why he cannot allow his daughters to share a classroom with Sephardi Jewish girls.
It’s hard to countenance the concept of a “demographic threat” and treat it as socially acceptable without also opening the door to other forms of bigotry that a liberal Zionist cannot possibly tolerate.
This is the dilemma many Israelis now face: How do you justify the idea that the rights of a non-Jewish minority can be restricted (this being a practical necessity if Israel is to remain a Jewish state), and then stand up in defense of religious and racial pluralism when ultra-Orthodox Jews insist that the “purity” of their children will be tainted if they are forced to share classrooms with Sephardi Jews?
Today, as 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem in support of segregation, many Israelis probably feel conflicted about which particular demographic threat now poses the greatest danger to Israel.
The liberal commentator, Yossi Sarid, expresses what I take to be commonplace Israeli secular Jewish contempt for and exasperation with the ultra-Orthodox when he writes: “[T]he rebellious Haredim must be put in their place.”
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