1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:06,750 Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon. Our speaker today is Dr. Lawton, Perry Hasan, 2 00:00:07,350 --> 00:00:15,630 who is the head of the Centre for Jewish and Democratic Education and the Education and Management Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. 3 00:00:17,130 --> 00:00:25,740 Her research interests include the intersection of law, religion and culture in education and children's rights in education. 4 00:00:26,100 --> 00:00:30,810 Maybe I should mention that tomorrow she will be lecturing on children's rights in education. 5 00:00:31,230 --> 00:00:37,770 Many of her studies have focussed on already education in Israel and other countries. 6 00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:45,420 She's a graduate of NYU School of Law and the University of Haifa's Faculty of Law. 7 00:00:46,020 --> 00:00:52,350 She was also a visiting scholar at various institutions in Europe, America and Australia. 8 00:00:53,370 --> 00:01:00,540 And the title of her talk today is Ethnic Segregation in the Family, Education in Israel Policies and Practices. 9 00:01:01,020 --> 00:01:11,850 Thank you for coming. Thank you for inviting me. The talk today will be based on two studies published lately. 10 00:01:12,900 --> 00:01:16,650 One is a comparative studies and is a comparative study. 11 00:01:16,650 --> 00:01:20,460 I'll focus on the section that deals with Israel. 12 00:01:21,060 --> 00:01:31,500 And the other is a study about ready parents who complained about discrimination in their admission policies in the school. 13 00:01:31,560 --> 00:01:43,130 We heard that you heard another talk last week about the division between Sephardic and this can ask strains or groups in the community. 14 00:01:43,140 --> 00:01:52,600 So I'll try to be short in the introduction and then I'll see in your face if you are already familiar with that. 15 00:01:53,220 --> 00:01:56,220 Yeah. Yeah. With the things that I'll say. 16 00:01:57,330 --> 00:02:09,120 Well, the community in Israel is now around 12% of the population and 20% of primary school pupils. 17 00:02:11,160 --> 00:02:20,130 Strong political influence. And during the last two decades, the parties are like a balance pivot in Israeli politics. 18 00:02:21,540 --> 00:02:26,520 They recruit politicians to promote their own interests. 19 00:02:27,210 --> 00:02:31,200 Usually it's a core curriculum in education, in the educational arena. 20 00:02:32,910 --> 00:02:39,600 I think the two are the most pressing political issues and related to the core curriculum, 21 00:02:40,020 --> 00:02:47,700 the admission policies are considered like an issue that is untouchable for the politicians. 22 00:02:48,090 --> 00:02:58,499 And as because I will explain later a most current Sephardi code, the politicians who are members of the parties, 23 00:02:58,500 --> 00:03:05,220 the Shas represent the Shas party represents the Sephardic Jews. 24 00:03:05,460 --> 00:03:09,810 So most of them send their own children to the Ashkenazi yeshivas. 25 00:03:10,140 --> 00:03:20,790 Okay. So they don't, like have an interest to promote the issue or issues that relate to admission policies in the Israeli Knesset. 26 00:03:21,750 --> 00:03:35,610 And a few words about groups and subgroups that are considered to be ready, because ready Jews is not like one community we usually see like this. 27 00:03:35,610 --> 00:03:40,970 They are all like wearing the blue cards and the special, special outfit. 28 00:03:40,990 --> 00:03:54,390 But in fact, there are huge differences between the groups and we usually divide the community to three main groups which are Hasidic, 29 00:03:54,630 --> 00:03:57,660 the Lithuanian or resistors poseur. 30 00:03:58,260 --> 00:04:07,709 And the Sephardi community is a Hasidic and the Lithuanian groups are Skenazy and meaning. 31 00:04:07,710 --> 00:04:12,420 They came like from Eastern European countries. 32 00:04:13,860 --> 00:04:19,560 The main difference between the two groups in relates to their worldview. 33 00:04:20,070 --> 00:04:32,550 The Hasidic community, Hasidic Jews was the most important factor in the worldview is the belonging to the court, to the Hasidic court. 34 00:04:32,970 --> 00:04:36,870 The court is led by an admiral who is a spiritual leader. 35 00:04:38,430 --> 00:04:46,560 And the most important factor for the Lithuanian Jews is the study of Torah. 36 00:04:47,340 --> 00:04:59,790 Okay. Not just in schools, but among the life like to be a religious scholar, to study in a yeshiva and not to work for the living and. 37 00:04:59,960 --> 00:05:09,020 The quality in Hebrew taught totalement. So this is the main difference between the Hasidic and the Lithuanian and the Sephardi community. 38 00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:18,440 Actually it is in eukaryotic community because the traditional religious society in Morocco, 39 00:05:18,860 --> 00:05:28,190 in North Africa was mostly all traditional and opened to modernity and to integration in the general society. 40 00:05:28,760 --> 00:05:42,470 But after the Holocaust and I will explain it more later, Sephardic Jews became closer and closer to the Lithuanian group. 41 00:05:43,520 --> 00:05:48,740 They wanted to study in the yeshivas, both in Morocco and in Israel. 42 00:05:49,070 --> 00:05:55,790 And I would explain this process later. But the outcome is that now in Israel, 43 00:05:56,450 --> 00:06:04,340 the Sephardic community focuses on religious studies in their schools and they try to resemble 44 00:06:04,850 --> 00:06:12,860 the Lithuanian community in terms of emphasising the importance of religious studies. 45 00:06:13,250 --> 00:06:21,050 Yet they are more integrated in the general society and in politics, in Israeli politics. 46 00:06:21,290 --> 00:06:29,300 They are relatively more open to modernity, but within strict limits. 47 00:06:29,700 --> 00:06:35,330 And there are a lot of variations between the Sephardic community. 48 00:06:35,630 --> 00:06:40,160 And so we can divide also two or three or more groups. 49 00:06:41,210 --> 00:06:54,560 And the Hasidic community are scholars usually divided to traditional courts like Bells Slonim, who if you know the names. 50 00:06:55,040 --> 00:06:58,560 These are quotes that are entitled. 51 00:06:59,160 --> 00:07:04,790 And according to cities in Eastern Europe where they are, 52 00:07:04,820 --> 00:07:16,790 the communities were established and there are two sub streams within the general term in the communities. 53 00:07:16,820 --> 00:07:21,160 One is about which for many are the Jews. 54 00:07:21,170 --> 00:07:30,950 They are not worried at all. They say treat it like something else because the most important issue for Abboud is to 55 00:07:30,950 --> 00:07:37,730 spread Judaism around the world to attract more and more Jews to the global community. 56 00:07:39,650 --> 00:07:41,930 So the worldview is different. 57 00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:55,250 And Chabad, usually the Jews do not integrate with other Hasidic groups and generally they are more integrated into Florida society in their schools. 58 00:07:56,060 --> 00:08:02,150 Most of them are even public schools, which is different than the other schools. 59 00:08:03,050 --> 00:08:09,260 I will explain it later. The legal status of the schools in Israel. 60 00:08:09,920 --> 00:08:13,340 And there are also radical communities in Meshulam. 61 00:08:13,340 --> 00:08:18,350 If you know the already neighbourhood in Jerusalem, which is a very famous holiday neighbourhood. 62 00:08:18,900 --> 00:08:28,370 These radical communities, which are mostly in Satmar, told the town they don't take money from the states, 63 00:08:29,540 --> 00:08:34,490 they don't pay taxes, and many of them even don't have like an Israeli I.D. 64 00:08:35,270 --> 00:08:45,179 So. It's important to make the distinction between the mainstream Hasidic groups and the radical communities, because, 65 00:08:45,180 --> 00:08:53,010 you know, the worldview is different, the lifestyle is different, and the relationship with the state is totally different. 66 00:08:53,250 --> 00:09:04,140 Okay, so a few words about the Sephardic community, because my talk will focus on this community. 67 00:09:05,970 --> 00:09:13,080 Some history already struggled to save the Sephardic Jews after the Holocaust. 68 00:09:13,680 --> 00:09:18,299 I was in in Morocco, as I said earlier. 69 00:09:18,300 --> 00:09:32,610 And in Israel, many young men from Eastern Europe came to Morocco after the Holocaust to save the Sephardic community from modernity, 70 00:09:33,900 --> 00:09:37,500 mostly from Alliance School. Do you know Alliance Network? 71 00:09:37,510 --> 00:09:43,980 It's a French network of schools which is very open to modernity and secular studies. 72 00:09:44,310 --> 00:09:51,660 So they established yeshiva already young men in Morocco and in Israel to 73 00:09:51,660 --> 00:09:58,350 attract Sephardic Jews to become more religious and join the family community. 74 00:09:59,100 --> 00:10:11,400 So this, like safe struggle to save is a Sephardi community influence the relationship between this group until today, 75 00:10:12,060 --> 00:10:16,810 because many Sephardic Jews still see the Lithuanian, 76 00:10:16,810 --> 00:10:22,610 the Caridi as their saviours and they like it, 77 00:10:22,650 --> 00:10:32,970 feel very thankful for the struggle to establish this Shiva's in Morocco and in Israel, and to save them from secularity. 78 00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:47,130 But then Sephardic Jews who came to the Ashkenazi yeshivas in Israel and they encountered discrimination, they didn't accept them as equals. 79 00:10:47,580 --> 00:10:52,650 And there are there were specific quotas for Sephardic students in the yeshivas. 80 00:10:53,370 --> 00:10:59,880 So during the eighties, as the Sephardic community established its its own school network, 81 00:11:00,120 --> 00:11:08,230 it is called My Young Heart Only and which is operative until today. 82 00:11:08,670 --> 00:11:16,560 It's an official network in Israel, and it includes a lot of schools, Sephardic schools. 83 00:11:17,660 --> 00:11:31,400 But still many of the strong families strong both politically and financially, as they prefer to send their own children to the Ashkenazi schools. 84 00:11:31,700 --> 00:11:46,700 OC y. Generally they are considered more prestigious OC and we see this phenomenon in other places around the world, like acting white. 85 00:11:46,730 --> 00:11:49,910 This is the term borrowed from the American context. 86 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:54,950 When someone is acting white or passing as white. 87 00:11:55,370 --> 00:12:04,730 He's trying to resemble like people who are considered more prestigious than him. 88 00:12:04,940 --> 00:12:12,769 Okay, so the whole vision of Chasse, which is in Hebrew here, the zeal of Tali, 89 00:12:12,770 --> 00:12:19,580 of Schneid is says here Sha la zero to Hollywood is not a $0 not is to restore the former glory. 90 00:12:19,740 --> 00:12:32,210 Okay. But in fact, chess, in terms of admission policies, they do not restore the glory of Sephardic, the Sephardic community. 91 00:12:32,580 --> 00:12:38,870 But all of them are acting white and trying like to resemble the Ashkenazi Jews. 92 00:12:39,500 --> 00:12:48,500 This is a picture of a Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who led the Shah's parties, and he was a spiritual leader for many years. 93 00:12:49,160 --> 00:13:02,480 He died recently. But I think that's the most important quote or vision that represents trusted to restore the former glory. 94 00:13:03,950 --> 00:13:11,810 And this acting white phenomenon or the relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardic. 95 00:13:12,140 --> 00:13:23,360 Jews are, of course, part of the broader political issues of relationships between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews in Israel. 96 00:13:24,020 --> 00:13:36,050 And it portrays some a book and TV show, and the Israeli minister and minister of culture, which is it is Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. 97 00:13:36,380 --> 00:13:41,720 And she she's promoting issues relating to Sephardic Jews in Israel. 98 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:44,660 So it's part of a debate in Israel. 99 00:13:44,690 --> 00:13:56,150 But in the community, the debate is stronger and the limits are much, much more clear between the different groups, 100 00:13:56,540 --> 00:14:07,640 because in Israel, for example, you can find many couples which are like one over one spouse is Ashkenazi and the other is Sephardic. 101 00:14:08,110 --> 00:14:18,680 Okay, so you find it a lot in Israel. And this is a debate, but the division I use in academic terms are less bright boundaries. 102 00:14:19,430 --> 00:14:23,720 And there's a lot of literature about right boundaries between groups. 103 00:14:24,020 --> 00:14:30,139 So there is no bright boundaries between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel. 104 00:14:30,140 --> 00:14:35,090 But in the community the boundaries are very, very bright. 105 00:14:35,660 --> 00:14:38,690 And they include, for example, the surname of his family, 106 00:14:39,290 --> 00:14:51,160 which like it can and almost always hints to them to the fact of their affiliation, to that in Sephardi community or Ashkenazi community. 107 00:14:51,200 --> 00:14:56,720 Okay. It's not mostly about skin colour, but the name of the family. 108 00:14:57,080 --> 00:15:05,900 And they are doing in many cases they're doing like investigation actually to see where did the parents come from. 109 00:15:07,130 --> 00:15:15,680 I use the terms Mizrahi and Sephardic, which are actually similar, but when we talk about the community. 110 00:15:16,040 --> 00:15:22,100 Sephardic is like a religious group. Mizrahi is more like ethnic origin. 111 00:15:22,910 --> 00:15:27,660 It's a same thing we see in Israel, like, you know, to indicate the same thing. 112 00:15:27,690 --> 00:15:34,270 But usually when I talk about religious group, I say Sephardic and when I talk about the ethnic origin, 113 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:39,490 for example, in this debate, because this debate does not have any connection to the religious issue. 114 00:15:39,500 --> 00:15:43,470 Okay. So I use the term Mizrahi. Okay. 115 00:15:46,770 --> 00:15:50,040 So admission policies in the Israeli community. 116 00:15:50,980 --> 00:16:00,620 Mm hmm. First of all, I, I want to focus on, you know, issues of education because you are Israel studies. 117 00:16:00,920 --> 00:16:10,729 But I have to explain the school system, which is extremely similar to England because we have religion in the public here. 118 00:16:10,730 --> 00:16:19,340 It's a maintained system. Okay. So we have the public schools are organised across religious lines. 119 00:16:19,940 --> 00:16:24,410 We have the main stream, which is the national stream. 120 00:16:24,770 --> 00:16:28,630 And in the national stream we have three different sectors. 121 00:16:28,640 --> 00:16:35,180 We have the Jewish sector, which is mostly secular. We have Arab sector and the sectors. 122 00:16:35,660 --> 00:16:39,890 So the sectors in the three sectors study in different schools. 123 00:16:40,130 --> 00:16:43,370 Okay. So the Jewish secular schools are Jewish. 124 00:16:44,810 --> 00:16:54,410 We have the National Integrated Stream, which actually it's a new stream for Jews who want more Jewish studies in the schools. 125 00:16:54,410 --> 00:16:56,290 They are not religious. They don't work. 126 00:16:56,360 --> 00:17:04,880 POZZI Don't pray in the morning, but they want they want more joysticks, more study of the Bible in the school. 127 00:17:05,720 --> 00:17:11,780 And we have the national religious stream, which is then modern, modern orthodox. 128 00:17:11,780 --> 00:17:15,230 You are more familiar probably with the term modern orthodox stream. 129 00:17:15,890 --> 00:17:21,620 And we have a very in your stream which is called National for the stream. 130 00:17:22,130 --> 00:17:26,959 I have another study that the one present today about this new stream. 131 00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:31,850 It includes this year 40 schools. 132 00:17:32,840 --> 00:17:36,260 It's 2% very, very small stream. 133 00:17:36,470 --> 00:17:44,900 2% of the entire population of the students study is initial and so it is an officially recognised news stream, 134 00:17:44,930 --> 00:17:48,650 not in the law but in the Ministry of Education Policy. 135 00:17:48,830 --> 00:17:51,920 Yeah, since 2015. 136 00:17:54,020 --> 00:18:03,349 So most vast majority of these schools are not public schools that are public private schools and they can be recognised. 137 00:18:03,350 --> 00:18:11,720 Schools are exempt schools. The difference between recognise and exempt and it doesn't matter so much for the talk, 138 00:18:12,230 --> 00:18:19,210 but you should know that exempt schools are at schools that are actually exempt from compulsory education. 139 00:18:20,120 --> 00:18:28,040 They don't have a lot of obligation in terms of curriculum, but they do have obligations in regard to admission policies. 140 00:18:28,510 --> 00:18:35,360 Okay, you will have curriculum. If you will take the curriculum from the government, you will get the money from the government. 141 00:18:35,690 --> 00:18:43,250 And if you will not implement the government. Okay. Well, my talk is about admissions policy, but I will say a few words about the curriculum. 142 00:18:43,430 --> 00:18:54,320 You see here, the percent of the package was a public funding, a school that takes, for example, 75% of the funding. 143 00:18:54,890 --> 00:19:01,110 So it is obliged to apply 75% of the curriculum. 144 00:19:01,400 --> 00:19:13,400 Curriculum is exempt schools which take like 55% of the public funding, they are also obliged to implement 55% of the core curriculum. 145 00:19:13,700 --> 00:19:17,870 In fact, it doesn't happen because there is no supervision. 146 00:19:18,140 --> 00:19:26,120 Nobody knows what they're actually teaching. I just won a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation to explore this issue, 147 00:19:26,120 --> 00:19:31,310 and we receive a lot of money for four years and we are now entering into schools. 148 00:19:31,550 --> 00:19:34,940 We are interviewing principal school principals, teachers. 149 00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:42,770 We are taking like the teaching materials and we are trying to see how many of them do implement the core curriculum. 150 00:19:43,070 --> 00:19:44,780 And most of them are not, 151 00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:57,340 especially not English and subjects which are actually required to a to do their matriculation exams and even enters universities. 152 00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:06,110 So in terms of admission policies, public schools are not selective at all. 153 00:20:06,770 --> 00:20:07,130 Okay. 154 00:20:07,820 --> 00:20:17,930 And according to the lot of public schools that are doing a lot of like bypasses, but they are not allowed to select students according to the law. 155 00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:32,800 And then I added a slide later, which says that not only already Jews discriminate against a low socioeconomic in this specific ethnic origin, 156 00:20:33,950 --> 00:20:39,560 there are also public schools to do it. So I don't want to be hypocritical. 157 00:20:39,770 --> 00:20:44,720 So I added the slide in the end of the of the talk, but according to the law, 158 00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:51,920 they shouldn't be selective and private schools they are allowed to make distinctions. 159 00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:59,850 But are based on religious affiliation, but they are not allowed to discriminate according to race or ethnicity. 160 00:21:00,360 --> 00:21:06,930 This is very similar to England, according to the Race Relations Act, the Equality Act, which is in its new name. 161 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:14,460 So schools are allowed to make religious distinctions, but not distinctions that are based on race or ethnicity. 162 00:21:15,140 --> 00:21:25,530 But the problem is that Sephardi group, Sephardic a heretic group, is both a religious group and a group that is based on its ethnic origin. 163 00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:31,079 Okay. And in England, when you make distinctions between religious groups, 164 00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:37,140 so basically you are making make making these distinctions between Jews and non-Jews. 165 00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:45,240 For example, the first case rights of Jews and you know, the problems was the question if he was a Jew, 166 00:21:45,390 --> 00:21:52,130 according to the definition of is it the Orthodox rabbi or not in Israel? 167 00:21:52,140 --> 00:21:58,350 That's not the question. The question is, are you ready enough to be in this school? 168 00:21:58,740 --> 00:22:11,100 Okay. So this is a really complex issue, like to make decisions, both decisions in the school and later legal decisions. 169 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:31,230 So a lot of litigation over the last two decades in 2006 and the court ordered the Minister of Education to shape regulations. 170 00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:38,920 So there are new admission regulations that established pillars committees within the Ministry of Education, 171 00:22:39,430 --> 00:22:48,940 which means that if a Sephardic already parents receive a negative answer from the school as well rejected as a boy or a girl. 172 00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:58,360 So then instead of going to court, which is very expensive now and you need a lawyer and you need to lot of emotional resources to do it. 173 00:22:58,360 --> 00:23:04,240 So you go to appeals committees within the Ministry of Education since 2006. 174 00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:11,080 Still, as I will explain later, until lately, this appeals committee were ineffective. 175 00:23:11,870 --> 00:23:15,850 A lot of politics and they were basically ineffective. 176 00:23:16,960 --> 00:23:25,780 And in 2010 inches Emanuel case, I'm sure that at least some of you heard the name the Emanuel case. 177 00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:31,640 It was a case about very visible segregation in this city. 178 00:23:31,660 --> 00:23:40,149 EMANUEL And actually the school put like a wall inside the school and established 179 00:23:40,150 --> 00:23:45,490 two different tracks for Ashkenazim for the girls and Sephardic girls. 180 00:23:46,420 --> 00:23:56,380 They even change the hours of the day so they won't see each other like the breaks in the hour when the school starts and ends. 181 00:23:57,700 --> 00:24:05,020 They established like different rules, different school code that were basically in the same school, 182 00:24:05,230 --> 00:24:09,070 two different schools for Sephardic girls in the scheme, lots of kids. 183 00:24:10,180 --> 00:24:18,339 So Sephardic lawyer named Alan submitted a petition to the Supreme Court and the 184 00:24:18,340 --> 00:24:24,520 Supreme Court after many months of discussions and attempts to reach a compromise. 185 00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:34,420 So the Supreme Court ordered as Minister of Education to stop the segregation and the committee Nazi parents refused. 186 00:24:35,350 --> 00:24:45,100 So there was another another request from the court to declare contempt of court. 187 00:24:45,970 --> 00:24:49,240 And then the court declared contempt. 188 00:24:49,870 --> 00:24:54,310 And what do you do when there's a contempt of court? They're both fines. 189 00:24:54,490 --> 00:24:57,760 So the court gave fines for every day of segregation. 190 00:24:58,030 --> 00:25:04,660 The network, Ashkenazi network, the transit school should like pay the minister of education a certain amount. 191 00:25:05,170 --> 00:25:09,780 And also they, quote, imprisoned the Ashkenazi clergy, 192 00:25:09,820 --> 00:25:17,110 parents who refused to send their children to the integrated school, which was actually a mistake. 193 00:25:17,380 --> 00:25:23,940 Because what's going on when you ordered the Jews, like from a secular court to make an order, 194 00:25:24,580 --> 00:25:32,500 especially when you imprisons them a lot, a lot of struggles in the middle of Jerusalem. 195 00:25:32,710 --> 00:25:40,240 And it becomes like an issue which is like a religious issue, is everybody comes to the streets and a lot of mess. 196 00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:53,770 The case was closed and after many, many months of struggles in the court and the court actually agreed, 197 00:25:54,190 --> 00:26:02,860 this can ask parents to establish a different school, but it put like a condition or to ask for state funds. 198 00:26:04,330 --> 00:26:08,350 The court actually says segregation is illegal. 199 00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,990 We will not accept segregation and discrimination. 200 00:26:12,010 --> 00:26:19,030 It's illegal. You can do it. But if you want to establish a different school, it can be in the same building. 201 00:26:19,390 --> 00:26:21,940 It like authorises a different school. 202 00:26:21,940 --> 00:26:29,860 But it says, I really, really hope that you didn't establish a different school in order to, you know, maintain the discrimination. 203 00:26:29,860 --> 00:26:32,050 But you can request state funds. 204 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:41,860 And it is one of the only private schools in Israel that cannot receive state funds because there's a court order, but it cannot receive state funds. 205 00:26:43,700 --> 00:26:48,080 So I will present 1 to 1 of my studies. 206 00:26:48,890 --> 00:26:51,440 Which is which was an empirical study. 207 00:26:52,640 --> 00:27:01,340 And we asked what was the direct and indirect impact of litigation on the admission policies to Israeli credit scores? 208 00:27:01,940 --> 00:27:08,030 And we also asked which social mechanisms facilitated or hindered it? 209 00:27:08,690 --> 00:27:15,140 We started the study around 2016, something like this. 210 00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:19,070 And and we actually wanted to know if the court order, 211 00:27:19,070 --> 00:27:26,120 the admission regulations and the Emanuel case actually influenced what's going on on the ground. 212 00:27:27,470 --> 00:27:32,840 Because as a legal scholar who works in education, they know that the law doesn't matter at all. 213 00:27:33,170 --> 00:27:36,950 What matters is what you do with the law in the schools. 214 00:27:38,450 --> 00:27:42,320 So we did a qualitative research. 215 00:27:42,740 --> 00:27:47,090 We collected legal and policy documents, school codes, of course, for us. 216 00:27:47,810 --> 00:27:55,850 We looked into corrective websites and we also interviewed 14 policy officials and mostly quality parents. 217 00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:07,160 And it was really, really hard to find the Sephardic parents who will be willing to take part in this research. 218 00:28:07,730 --> 00:28:14,000 We looked for parents who complained that it was like the, you know, the basic requirement. 219 00:28:14,420 --> 00:28:22,460 We wanted to do why did they complain? And to here's a story about to complain and what was the outcome of the case? 220 00:28:23,350 --> 00:28:30,910 So eventually we reached those parents who were willing to be interviewed to the study. 221 00:28:31,510 --> 00:28:38,890 We're also very, very activists. It was not like, you know, accidental that they agreed to be interviewed. 222 00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:43,390 So we called them like the rights agents. We'll explain it later. 223 00:28:43,780 --> 00:28:49,770 There are social activists really like helped other parents and spread information. 224 00:28:50,440 --> 00:29:02,290 So they knew a lot about what's going on in the schools and they knew many, many other cases except for the case of their own children. 225 00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:19,200 So we found that since 2006, until around 2013, I will explain what's what happened in 2013. 226 00:29:20,020 --> 00:29:28,650 There was a lot of politics in the admission in the appeals committee, in the admission policies, 227 00:29:28,660 --> 00:29:33,010 and specifically in the admissions appeals committee and the Ministry of Education. 228 00:29:33,430 --> 00:29:38,290 Political more political motives were pulling the strings. 229 00:29:40,210 --> 00:29:51,130 For example, one of our interviewees said the institutions have studied all tweets, nothing to overcome, all committees, all appeals. 230 00:29:51,640 --> 00:30:02,050 We heard everything is fine. Everything is so sophisticated, sophisticated, sophisticatedly managed, making it tough to specifically locate a problem. 231 00:30:02,470 --> 00:30:06,820 I know that the administrative level is deeply contaminated. 232 00:30:07,210 --> 00:30:09,040 This is a political problem. 233 00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:23,979 So this is one of many examples of the political motives and interests that were like pulling the entire process in the appeals committee, 234 00:30:23,980 --> 00:30:31,390 in the Ministry of Education. As I said earlier, Israeli politics is deeply influenced by the parties. 235 00:30:33,820 --> 00:30:39,870 So there are also various obstacles, the tender for the parents from asserting their rights. 236 00:30:40,210 --> 00:30:47,980 So except for all the politics in the admission committees, so we have factors like in Parliament, ostracising and threats, 237 00:30:47,980 --> 00:30:51,790 because if the parents complain about the school, 238 00:30:52,120 --> 00:31:01,330 there's a high communal price you can pay in the synagogue in the other, you know, communal institutions. 239 00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:06,970 Matchmaking is really, really important issue in the family community. 240 00:31:08,110 --> 00:31:15,069 And so also negative perception of secular courts and unequal battle against school. 241 00:31:15,070 --> 00:31:25,060 The school almost always is part of a big network which has a lot of money, which is it has a lawyer and the parents are individual parents. 242 00:31:25,510 --> 00:31:32,950 And we should, like find their own lawyer and try to navigate their way in the process. 243 00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:37,750 And there's also lack of knowledge about rights and skills to assert them. 244 00:31:37,750 --> 00:31:44,560 And this is where it connects to the core curriculum. You know, and we have a lot of lawyers in Israel, 245 00:31:44,590 --> 00:31:52,330 but we don't have a lot of already lawyers because they usually don't go to higher education, so they can't acquire a law degree. 246 00:31:53,050 --> 00:31:57,550 Two of our interviewees were lawyers. It is not accidental. 247 00:31:57,790 --> 00:32:04,600 They are both parents who whose children were discriminated, but they were lawyers so they could help other parents. 248 00:32:08,790 --> 00:32:18,059 From judicial spaces to political spaces. So what happened that brought the issue of the discrimination, 249 00:32:18,060 --> 00:32:24,690 the issue of admission policy from judicial judicial spaces, manual case to the political spaces. 250 00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,820 First, there was extensive media coverage of the litigation. 251 00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:38,040 Emanuel was all over Israeli news. I knew the case from 2008 because I wrote my Ph.D. about ready education. 252 00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:44,370 But when I told people they couldn't believe there was such a case in Israel, like, you know, this is the most. 253 00:32:45,210 --> 00:32:50,610 It was such a visible segregation like in the US between whites and blacks. 254 00:32:51,060 --> 00:32:57,300 But in 2010, after the contempt of court, the media covered it extensively. 255 00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:09,820 It was really important. Because in 2013 there was after many, many years and the government was out ready parties. 256 00:33:11,330 --> 00:33:19,040 And one of the first missions of the new Minister of Education, whose name is Shai Pujan. 257 00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:25,140 R was to reform the admission policies of early schools. 258 00:33:26,140 --> 00:33:38,800 So the extensive media coverage contributed, you know, to this passage of the issue of admissions policies from the courts to politics. 259 00:33:39,730 --> 00:33:43,580 And then the Ministry of Education reformed the appeals committees. 260 00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:51,490 And there were more and more successful appeals that encouraged parents to mobilise their rights. 261 00:33:52,450 --> 00:34:01,480 Between 2013 to 2015, which were the years without holiday parties in the Knesset, 262 00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:11,590 98% of all the complaints against the schools were found were found justified. 263 00:34:12,340 --> 00:34:20,440 And the Ministry of Education also put a lot of pressure on the school principals to accept the children. 264 00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:25,380 They even threatened like to take their pension and things like that. 265 00:34:26,100 --> 00:34:37,080 A lot a lot of pressure to reform that admission process and a lot of pressure on the school principal to follow the decision of the ministry, 266 00:34:37,140 --> 00:34:43,830 the decisions of the Ministry of Education. So it was like, you know, you put a stone in the water. 267 00:34:44,430 --> 00:34:53,430 The more and more parents found that the appeals are actually successful, and then they decided to submit their own complaints. 268 00:34:54,010 --> 00:34:58,680 There's also a very aggressive campaign within the communities. 269 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:04,200 They distributed flyers. They went through, you know, from one person to another and said, 270 00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:12,240 there are appeals committees and you should submit an appeal by this specific date and we will help you. 271 00:35:12,420 --> 00:35:16,950 And the process is very, very simple. So there was a change. 272 00:35:20,830 --> 00:35:27,159 But we found this a mobilisation of rights could not have occurred without a group 273 00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:33,580 of the agents of rights that was formed and expanded due to the litigation. 274 00:35:34,510 --> 00:35:45,610 So as a political change myth, no specific layer of insecurity community that was ready for the change this agents of rights. 275 00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:52,240 So you heard about the Emmanuel case and the change like in narrative within the Sephardic Florida community. 276 00:35:52,630 --> 00:35:55,630 They call it like rights consciousness explore. 277 00:35:55,630 --> 00:36:01,360 Right, right. Consciousness is, Yaakov said earlier in many aspects this consciousness is, you know, 278 00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:09,610 the moment when you like know that something bad happens to you in your life is not something that you should accept. 279 00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:16,989 You derogate your rights and you if that's, you know, the basic distinction between, you know, 280 00:36:16,990 --> 00:36:26,770 on unpleasant things that we all have to accept because they are part of life and practices that infringe our rights. 281 00:36:27,070 --> 00:36:30,670 And we can go to court and ask for a remedy. 282 00:36:31,710 --> 00:36:42,720 So these parents were already active when the political situation changed in 2013 and they helped the Minister of Education. 283 00:36:44,070 --> 00:36:48,120 The Agents of Rights were a key features in raising the rights consciousness of 284 00:36:48,130 --> 00:36:53,460 already parents and translating the judicial language from theory into practice. 285 00:36:53,940 --> 00:36:58,050 For example, they mobilised legal knowledge. Two of them were lawyers. 286 00:36:58,500 --> 00:37:05,970 The other had legal knowledge from other sources because there was a mother, for example, who helped many other mothers. 287 00:37:06,240 --> 00:37:10,780 So they had the experience. And the knowledge is not so complicated. 288 00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:13,860 You know, discrimination is not a complicated legal issue. 289 00:37:14,220 --> 00:37:17,070 All you have to know is like the procedures of the appeal. 290 00:37:18,510 --> 00:37:26,639 They facilitated access to lawyers and they spread the echo of successful cases, which was very, 291 00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:31,860 very important because for the most for any people, they don't trust the states. 292 00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:38,580 So a lot of alienation towards the states. So it's important that people from within the communities, 293 00:37:38,580 --> 00:37:48,090 they can encourage parents to submit appeals and they recruited rabbinical support, which of course is a very important issue as well. 294 00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:56,970 An example from one of the interviews and then there was a long interview in a radio station. 295 00:37:57,630 --> 00:38:00,720 I was talking anonymously about my experience. 296 00:38:01,140 --> 00:38:08,700 I explained what ethnic discrimination meant that we should not discriminate and that we should not legitimate such cases. 297 00:38:09,060 --> 00:38:12,480 And if there were additional similar cases, I would assist them. 298 00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:19,830 And then I was told, You won't believe it. Since you're talking through radio calls and faxes have not stopped pouring in. 299 00:38:20,310 --> 00:38:27,030 So this was one mother who was interviewed in the radio, and we also had two other interviewees who were journalists. 300 00:38:27,210 --> 00:38:36,450 One of them in credit journalism and the other in general journalism in the Wanat, which is a very famous website in Israel. 301 00:38:37,350 --> 00:38:43,240 Another example I urge I urged her to go to the Ministry of Education. 302 00:38:43,260 --> 00:38:45,390 I told her about my personal struggle. 303 00:38:45,690 --> 00:38:53,940 I asked her to talk to the media that she should turn the world upside the upside down for her precious daughter. 304 00:38:54,510 --> 00:38:58,860 I asked her, Do you know why your daughter is being discriminated? 305 00:38:59,220 --> 00:39:04,380 She is rejected because others to follow the girls who had been discriminated before. 306 00:39:04,410 --> 00:39:11,730 Before you stayed passive as well. So these are just like few examples from the interviews. 307 00:39:12,570 --> 00:39:19,350 The interviews interviews were really, really fascinating because as I said earlier, we like the agents of rights. 308 00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:30,300 We didn't mean to do it, but it was like, you know, we always talk in research about when you don't have a representative sample, 309 00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,510 okay, because you have a very high rejection rate. 310 00:39:33,750 --> 00:39:38,520 So that's what happened to us. We didn't have like a representative sample, 311 00:39:39,090 --> 00:39:46,890 but we we made the lemonade from the lemon and we talked about agents of rights because this is where our interview is. 312 00:39:48,360 --> 00:40:02,970 So conclusions of the of this specific study of we had time until and were until full rights and I should talk until 1015. 313 00:40:03,510 --> 00:40:10,169 Okay. Okay, great. And I prepared a very, very long presentation. 314 00:40:10,170 --> 00:40:13,860 So I choose what I want to talk about. Okay. 315 00:40:14,370 --> 00:40:24,960 So I was very short with the theory because it is this is an Israel studies seminar and not the article has many legal aspects. 316 00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:35,250 This is a book, The Hollow Hope Can to Bring About Social Change, a very, very famous book of Gerald Rosenberg from the US. 317 00:40:36,330 --> 00:40:44,880 The basic argument is that courts can never bring about social change without political supports, that they are actually ineffective. 318 00:40:46,020 --> 00:40:52,889 So what Gerald Rosenberg's, Gerald Rosenberg is actually saying that education policy, 319 00:40:52,890 --> 00:41:00,810 litigation in, you know, social issues don't doesn't have all direct impact. 320 00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:13,500 So it's ineffective. But in the long run, it can have indirect impact in terms that it can change the political and public discourse. 321 00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:21,570 And it happens in the monarchies. It changed the public discourse and when there was a political change. 322 00:41:21,570 --> 00:41:25,890 So, you know, the issue was on the table of policymakers. 323 00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:30,900 So we need political cooperation. But what our study. 324 00:41:30,970 --> 00:41:35,100 This shows that there was another kind of indirect impact. 325 00:41:35,850 --> 00:41:42,059 The litigation also raised the rights consciousness of disempowered groups, 326 00:41:42,060 --> 00:41:48,210 in this case the Sephardi Corridor parents and created grassroots activities. 327 00:41:49,420 --> 00:41:54,190 So we showed that riser mobilised in a bi directional process. 328 00:41:54,490 --> 00:42:03,250 The top down judicial rulings empowered the agents of rights who mobilised rights from the bottom up to the appeals committees. 329 00:42:03,730 --> 00:42:09,250 So that's all I say about the legal theory. And they'll come back to the Israelis. 330 00:42:10,330 --> 00:42:13,480 So why was it Courts Hollow hopes in our case? 331 00:42:14,110 --> 00:42:19,930 So as I said, the the Zimmerman case was not effective at all. 332 00:42:20,290 --> 00:42:27,340 But in the long run, the courts the court was not a hollow hope because it did change the discourse. 333 00:42:27,700 --> 00:42:34,130 It did change rights consciousness. The discrimination continues. 334 00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:48,860 Um, I brought you like from May 2019 and the discrimination they read from the Hebrew around 200 simple Sephardic girls. 335 00:42:49,100 --> 00:42:54,320 What's it? Don't have a seminar, which is a school for girls. 336 00:42:54,500 --> 00:43:06,460 What? Simple Sephardic girls. These are girls whose parents don't have political, you know, status and they don't come from high socioeconomic status. 337 00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:16,970 That's that's firms that encourage the media and the term simple Sephardic Jews is very, very strong in the Florida community. 338 00:43:17,180 --> 00:43:22,730 Okay. So the discrimination continues, but still. 339 00:43:24,340 --> 00:43:29,290 I just received this a few days ago before he went to Oxford. 340 00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:39,879 Very interesting. One of my interviewees was a lawyer and he established an association that fights in 341 00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:45,340 the organisation like NGO that finds the discrimination in the Florida community. 342 00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:50,290 And this is like a journal. It has a few pages. It is called blacklists. 343 00:43:50,650 --> 00:43:55,510 Okay, let's see what's called blacklists. And they'll read from the Hebrew Bible. 344 00:43:55,960 --> 00:44:07,930 This is a special issue to raise that awareness to the prohibition on discrimination and exclusion in the educational institutions. 345 00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:18,160 And is it the first page opened with it says, Dear parents know your rights and the rights of your children. 346 00:44:18,430 --> 00:44:25,180 And then it like elaborates the regulation of the appeals and the appeals committees. 347 00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:28,809 Okay. So it elaborates. And he's a lawyer. 348 00:44:28,810 --> 00:44:36,580 So he is dealing with these issues a lot. And then the other pages, they are like bringing stories from parents, from children. 349 00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:42,850 Very, very interesting. So this is like something that they call these like rights consciousness. 350 00:44:44,500 --> 00:44:55,300 Very, very effective in the community. And to finish this specific story, I have to say that the unlawful admissions policies in Israeli education, 351 00:44:55,690 --> 00:45:02,560 they are not only in schools, they are not the only group who discriminate against other children. 352 00:45:02,860 --> 00:45:12,580 So the national religious schools, that they discriminate a lot against the mostly Mizrahi families and families from low socioeconomic status. 353 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:22,719 So you do it in very creative ways. For example, fees, very, very high fees in the schools, the magnet public schools. 354 00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:30,750 If a special schools, they put here some picture of the nature and environment school in Tel Aviv, 355 00:45:31,210 --> 00:45:37,030 which was a subject of several lawsuits in the last two or three years, 356 00:45:37,030 --> 00:45:42,400 of parents who said that the process of admission discriminates against children. 357 00:45:42,910 --> 00:45:49,750 For example, they do like interviews for six year old year old children, interviews and dynamics. 358 00:45:50,020 --> 00:45:55,450 And then you can say, like, who pass the interview? These are not like a correct answer for this. 359 00:45:55,570 --> 00:46:02,680 Okay. And then the court decided it's in unlawful like to do interviews for six year old children. 360 00:46:02,770 --> 00:46:08,200 It's non-Jews who are entering the first grade and are also other private schools in Israel. 361 00:46:08,860 --> 00:46:16,479 This is a picture of the Green Village, which is like a complex of schools which are very like elite schools. 362 00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:23,050 Instruct children from Tel Aviv alumni to Sharon and like from high socioeconomic families. 363 00:46:23,290 --> 00:46:33,549 They have really, really high fees. So we just had a big case about parental fees in these well, I won't say much, 364 00:46:33,550 --> 00:46:45,160 but it is actually a mechanism to be very, very selective and create them in the long run discrimination in schools. 365 00:46:46,450 --> 00:46:58,630 So this was the first study. The second study included the comparative perspective of Israel, England and Belgium. 366 00:46:59,500 --> 00:47:07,150 And they don't want to say much about England and Belgium because we don't have time and because this is a of Israel studies, 367 00:47:07,630 --> 00:47:12,390 they just say that they selected the cases because in this case, 368 00:47:12,430 --> 00:47:24,159 the data that I had enabled me to see how the legal rules are translated on the ground, like in in the schools, 369 00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:35,190 in the local authorities in England, they had documents of specific documents of they always say, I will explain in a minute. 370 00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:41,169 And in Belgium, I did an empirical research. I did interviews in the Florida community, in Antwerp. 371 00:47:41,170 --> 00:47:53,830 In Antwerp. So in England, as I said earlier, the law is very similar to Israel in terms of religious based classifications. 372 00:47:54,490 --> 00:48:01,360 And there is a supervisions of the Office of School Adjudicator, which is called the OCA. 373 00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:06,340 So I read all the decisions of the what we say about the Jewish schools. 374 00:48:07,870 --> 00:48:15,700 So it was a line action. I'm sure you will know the JFS case from 2009, which is really famous here in England, 375 00:48:16,510 --> 00:48:23,380 and also reports revealed that many Jewish schools were not in compliance with the school admissions. 376 00:48:23,460 --> 00:48:33,780 It's cold because, for example, in many schools there's a request to receive a recommendation from the rabbi. 377 00:48:34,380 --> 00:48:38,240 So, as, say said, that's not equal. 378 00:48:38,250 --> 00:48:44,670 It cannot be an objective factor to receive a recommendation from the rabbi. 379 00:48:45,420 --> 00:48:49,590 And there are also social selectivity in other faiths, schools. 380 00:48:50,010 --> 00:48:53,700 So it's not, you know, not about only about the Jews. 381 00:48:54,690 --> 00:48:56,250 So I'm really, really fast, too. 382 00:48:57,270 --> 00:49:07,560 In Belgium, we have in other situation, school are not authorised at all to classify pupils by their religious affiliation. 383 00:49:07,950 --> 00:49:11,610 Okay. Not in private schools. Not in public schools. 384 00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:20,070 Public schools, of course, because they are like for many children, for many faith, but not in the schools, for example. 385 00:49:20,970 --> 00:49:28,380 They can't have like admission policies into, say, this girl can be admitted into the school and this girl cannot be admitted to the school. 386 00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:36,120 So anyone who can pay should go. Yes, I told them, for example, I asked very, very conservative build school in Antwerp. 387 00:49:36,390 --> 00:49:42,480 Can I apply for the school? Can I? Can my daughters apply for the school? 388 00:49:42,690 --> 00:49:49,440 They said, No problem, but you must agree to the educational scheme and the school rules. 389 00:49:49,740 --> 00:49:57,990 You should respect the rules. You know, you should come with the proper outfit and to behave according to the rules. 390 00:49:57,990 --> 00:50:01,220 That's your choice. But they said, no problem. 391 00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:04,590 Your daughters and I'm secular can come to this school. 392 00:50:04,650 --> 00:50:07,680 And this is a very conservative school already school, 393 00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:16,530 not a modern Jewish school in and with a commission on pupils rights was established to supervise enrolment 394 00:50:16,530 --> 00:50:25,290 procedures and to treat complaints related to infractions of the right to involvement in action. 395 00:50:26,010 --> 00:50:29,870 Jewish community schools integrate various priority groups. 396 00:50:31,350 --> 00:50:38,069 And the Commission on Pupils Rights has consistently maintained that it's not the school's 397 00:50:38,070 --> 00:50:44,490 responsibility to predict whether the pupil will be able to adhere to the educational scheme. 398 00:50:45,270 --> 00:50:52,230 And there is a very effective when I talked to parents, they said there's a lot of quiet in Antwerp. 399 00:50:52,470 --> 00:50:58,650 This was like, you know, the term quiet. We don't have to fight all the time in the first grade. 400 00:50:58,650 --> 00:51:07,170 And then in another fight in the seventh grade when you finished like the primary school or in some of the school is a seventh grade. 401 00:51:07,170 --> 00:51:12,420 In other school, it's a ninth grade. There's a lot of quiet. 402 00:51:12,660 --> 00:51:17,760 You start in the first grade and you finish in the 12th grade within the same school. 403 00:51:18,030 --> 00:51:30,839 Most schools, like they include 12th grades. Nobody complained, not even the Ashkenazi credentials noncompliant and said the quality is not enough. 404 00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:33,840 And there's problems regarding the integration. 405 00:51:34,230 --> 00:51:42,750 And there's there are no secular Jews on answer ready Jews in the Florida schools because no one want to send his children to a school that, 406 00:51:42,750 --> 00:51:46,829 you know, the children will feel unwelcomed or that they don't belong. 407 00:51:46,830 --> 00:51:56,190 So it happens naturally. Those schools from the for the modern also this community from the secular community and from for the haredi communities. 408 00:51:56,850 --> 00:52:06,329 There are transitions between this between the schools. I talked to people, for example, who are builth and they prefer a school of another group. 409 00:52:06,330 --> 00:52:16,310 Why? So they had their own reasons. Sometimes one mother told me that she even wants her children to be familiar with other groups. 410 00:52:17,130 --> 00:52:22,830 One mother, who was actually a vice principal, she was she wasn't sympathetic. 411 00:52:23,100 --> 00:52:26,670 She had like a very high status in the community. 412 00:52:27,270 --> 00:52:32,040 And she even said that she sent her daughters to, like, 413 00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:38,670 be a guide in the secular schools during the summer for the young children in the secular schools, 414 00:52:38,940 --> 00:52:45,450 because she really wanted her girls to be more open and to know many kinds of Jews. 415 00:52:47,820 --> 00:53:03,930 So my normative argument in the paper was, first of all, that we have to study and this is this is a basic argument about education policy. 416 00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:08,910 You know, some of the some of the agents here create laws. 417 00:53:09,300 --> 00:53:17,820 Okay? Many of them, actually. But it doesn't matter at all if you create a rule and you can't like, you know, 418 00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:27,390 put the ball in the right place, you have to think about how education policy is constituted. 419 00:53:27,390 --> 00:53:34,530 It's like cog wheels. You have to be smart to know how the cog wheels are actually working, 420 00:53:34,530 --> 00:53:40,440 to know the context, to know the society, and then to decide how to shape the law. 421 00:53:41,010 --> 00:53:47,340 Because the law can sound great, but it can have like no impact at all. 422 00:53:48,630 --> 00:53:54,810 So if you look at the admissions policies, we see a slippery slope. 423 00:53:54,810 --> 00:54:03,870 A slippery slope is a legal term. It actually says the slippery slope is when you have a legal war, which sounds really great, 424 00:54:04,590 --> 00:54:12,000 but then it's is very, very reasonable that you will go from this point to this point very easy. 425 00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:19,380 It happens a lot in privacy law because when we agree for, you know, a certain practice, 426 00:54:19,380 --> 00:54:26,880 the debates are in privacy, it's very reasonable that we will see more and more practices and we will get used to. 427 00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:31,800 Everyone is collecting information about us. And it's the same thing here. 428 00:54:31,980 --> 00:54:41,700 It's a slippery slope. You allow one school to choose pupils according to religious affiliation and you can very, 429 00:54:41,700 --> 00:54:49,710 very first serious self allowing distinctions that are based on social class and ethnicity. 430 00:54:51,950 --> 00:54:54,620 That in this radical ready community. 431 00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:08,330 The religious aspects of the Sephardic community are really close to the ethnic origin aspects, so you can't really make the distinctions. 432 00:55:09,420 --> 00:55:13,830 There is no reasonable way to make such such distinctions. 433 00:55:14,340 --> 00:55:25,970 For example, many schools and they put in the school code a requirement that some prayer in the school will be in an Ashkenazi style. 434 00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:30,210 So that's discrimination or a reasonable requirement. 435 00:55:30,810 --> 00:55:34,800 It's very hard to make these distinctions. 436 00:55:35,250 --> 00:55:39,840 So this is one aspect that we should take into account. 437 00:55:40,020 --> 00:55:49,860 It is a slippery slope, and you can always say that it is a religion, but actually it's also ethnicity and social class. 438 00:55:51,610 --> 00:56:03,519 And the other aspect that we should take into account is there are asymmetric power relations between individual parents on one hand and very, 439 00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:10,300 very strong institutional systems in the other site. 440 00:56:10,720 --> 00:56:20,140 And they said, they say institutional systems and not schools because the schools are always part of an institutional system. 441 00:56:20,500 --> 00:56:23,409 It can be the school association, it can be the rabbis. 442 00:56:23,410 --> 00:56:30,670 It can be even a political party, because most Corelli schools are affiliated with certain political parties. 443 00:56:31,300 --> 00:56:37,900 Okay. So we have an unequal, extremely unequal power relations. 444 00:56:38,380 --> 00:56:43,510 And when we have extremely unequal power relations, so the strong usually wins. 445 00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:55,420 We should take that into account when we shapes the law. The parents don't have many chances in view of this asymmetric power relations. 446 00:56:56,200 --> 00:57:02,710 And I think if we connect it to what we do, cultural issues in Israel. 447 00:57:04,110 --> 00:57:14,780 Do you know the tribes speech of an hour a president who all very Rivlin. 448 00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:19,770 It's a very famous speech that he gave two years ago. 449 00:57:19,770 --> 00:57:23,280 And it has really, really high impact on Israeli society. 450 00:57:23,700 --> 00:57:33,960 He actually said that Israeli society is composed of four tribes Arab, secular, national, religious and ultra-Orthodox. 451 00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:48,570 Well, I don't like this speech at all because he looks at many other people in Israel, looks at ultra orthodox a tribe as a tribe as a same quarrel. 452 00:57:48,930 --> 00:57:53,190 Okay. And it's really it's a wrong view of reality. 453 00:57:53,850 --> 00:58:03,180 They have so many qualities and some of them are much closer to the secular tribe and others are in really extreme. 454 00:58:03,660 --> 00:58:06,870 And if you see the ultra-Orthodox as a tribe, 455 00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:16,290 so you don't see these internal variations and you don't see what we call in political theory, minority within a minority. 456 00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,830 So when you have a minority within a minority, 457 00:58:20,490 --> 00:58:33,180 you have the state has to recognise this and equal power relations and to help minorities within the minorities to assert their rights. 458 00:58:33,630 --> 00:58:40,350 The state has a moral obligation, especially when the minority is an illiberal community, 459 00:58:41,010 --> 00:58:47,200 especially and you have many political theorists write about this issue will can become is one of the famous. 460 00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:57,270 But this is a classic issue of minority within a minority who needs the help of the state to assert the rights. 461 00:58:57,270 --> 00:59:05,960 And and the tribes are really a wrong picture, I think, of Israeli society with a venom. 462 00:59:06,180 --> 00:59:11,040 Okay. So this is this is a last word. 463 00:59:11,220 --> 00:59:17,670 What I suggest, I suggest. I think that we don't have in Israel, we don't have another option. 464 00:59:17,670 --> 00:59:26,850 But to prohibit in distinctions, to prohibit the schools actually to make distinctions between students, 465 00:59:27,150 --> 00:59:34,410 because equality is sometimes like antibiotics. You have like to kill good intentions with bad intentions. 466 00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:38,100 Okay. You can't. Of course. Sorry. 467 00:59:38,850 --> 00:59:49,950 It can be very, I think, positive in certain circumstances to allow a minority group to handle admission 468 00:59:49,950 --> 00:59:55,110 policies to its schools and make sure that the school actually fits the group. 469 00:59:56,100 --> 01:00:01,110 But in Israel, at least in it comes with a lot of bad intentions. 470 01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:07,830 And because we can't we don't have like a reasonable way to make the distinctions between the good and the bad. 471 01:00:08,610 --> 01:00:16,140 We should kill all the intentions together and to like the Belgian example, like in Antwerp, 472 01:00:16,470 --> 01:00:26,340 we should like creating the law a very, very clear prohibition on this, on the discrimination and on selective admission policies. 473 01:00:26,700 --> 01:00:31,110 And the schools can set school codes, but not selective students. 474 01:00:31,420 --> 01:00:31,870 Okay.