The Freedom to Educate

By Moshe Feiglin

Ever since G-d redeemed us from Egypt and gave us the Torah on Mt. Sinai, we have been a free People. We are servants of G-d alone and not servants of servants.

Israel's High Court declaration that its decisions take precedence over the word of G-d obligates every Jew and every citizen who considers himself a free person to support the Haredim on the Emanuel issue. We may disagree with the Haredim on many topics. There is no doubt that discrimination is a serious contradiction of G-d's word. What we certainly do have in common with the Haredim, though, is the principle that G-d's Torah is the ultimate authority.

"You are not in favor of democracy?" Ynet reporter Atilla Shumfalvi asked me at the Haredi protest tent outside the prison where the Emanuel fathers are incarcerated. His question revealed Israel's mainstream media's distorted view of freedom and civil rights. "Democracy that dictates what values parents much teach their children and jails those parents who educate according to their own values is the democracy of Stalin." I answered.

The Emanuel parents removed their daughters from the school in question months ago. They remodeled a private school building at their own expense, paid for armored buses to transport their daughters to the new school, paid the teachers' salaries and also paid a daily fine of 400 shekels (over $100) for every day that they did not send their daughters to the Emauel school. From the moment that the parents had removed their daughters from the Emanuel school, which receives partial state-funding, the High Court has no moral authority to interfere. When parents choose to privately educate their children, no authority should be able to compromise their right to educate their children as they see fit.

The Religious Zionists who hurried to side with the High Court and to decry the Haredi discrimination may find themselves once again holding the short end of the stick. What will they say when the "enlightened" High Court justices rule that they must allow their Arab neighbors' children into their schools and teach their children the poems of Mohammed Darwish instead of the Torah of Moses?

Click here for Moshe Feiglin's short film on the Emanuel case.