Israeli Parents Jailed for Defying School Integration

JERUSALEM (June 17) -- Dozens of Israeli parents were sent to jail today after defying the Israeli Supreme Court's order to integrate a religious girls' school in a West Bank Jewish settlement. Jerusalem was a sea of black today as some 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrated in support of the parents.

The parents of students at the Beit Yaakov School for Girls had refused to obey the court's order to allow Sephardic girls -- whose parents or grandparents came from Morocco, Iraq or Yemen -- to study with Ashkenazi girls, whose forbears came from Eastern Europe.

The supporters of the jailed parents insist they are not racist and said the Sephardic girls are not as religiously committed as the Ashkenazi girls.

"The court is trying to make this an issue of racism, but I don't believe it really is one," Yerachmiel Fuchs, an ultra-Orthodox lawyer, told Israel Television. "Every parent has a right to educate his children in a way that they see fit."

The Supreme Court disagreed and said that as long as the school, which is in the Jewish settlement of Emmanuel, received state funding, it must be integrated.

The parents' refusal to comply and the large demonstration today also show the deep divisions in Israeli society between the secular majority and the ultra-Orthodox minority.

The ultra-Orthodox have had far more power than their numbers would indicate, as they have often been the deciding votes in an Israeli government coalition. They are also in charge of issues of personal status in Israel, such as marriage and divorce. Most do not serve in the army, and many men do not enter the workforce, instead spending their time studying Torah.

"The Israeli public has been tolerant of the ultra-Orthodox until now," Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Reform movement in Israel, told AOL News. "But this has somehow crossed a red line. This is one of the most dramatic clashes between the ultra-Orthodox and the institutes of the state."

Until the last moment, there were efforts to achieve a compromise that would enable the 61 parents to stay out of jail. But they seemed determined to go, and during the demonstration the men who were going to jail were draped in red sashes, lifted on men's shoulders and paraded through the streets.

The men and women will go to separate prisons for their two-week sentences. The court said that one parent could stay home to take care of the children and then serve his or her sentence when the spouse was finished. Israeli officials also said the prison will bring in food of the strictest kosher standard and help the parents to celebrate the Sabbath, which begins Friday night.

Several parents told Israel media they believed that they were "sanctifying the name of the Holy One" by going to jail, and it would only deepen their commitment not to integrate the school.