There is an news item from Ha'Aretz mentioned in Yeshiva World. (Unfortunately for some reason I cannot access the original story directly from Ha’artez). Here is an excerpt:
“The children of Moshe Aryeh Friedman who attended the Holocaust Denial Conference in Iran, have been expelled from their school on Monday - and were told that no other Jewish school in Austria will take them, their father said Tuesday.”
If there is any incident that has united virtually all segments of Orthodox Jewry and even non Orthodox Jewry it is this one. These people are amongst the most despicable to inhabit the face of the planet. And that they claim to be observant and have the appearance of observant Jews makes their Chilul HaShem very great.
But the obvious question is, is the expulsion of their children justified? I am not so sure about that.
I don’t know what kind of school they attend but I doubt that it is a religious Zionist one. It is more than likely a Satmar oriented one. As such their views with respect the illegitimacy of the State of Israel are in harmony with those of Moshe Aryeh Friedman’s Neturei Karta views. The only difference being how far that antipathy should go.
Clearly Satmar believes that a line was more than crossed deserving the response of expulsion of Moshe Aryeh Friedman’s children. But is it in the best interests of those children to leave all indoctrination to their father? Would it not be better to try and teach them another way to express their antipathy? I think so. Expulsion does nothing except publicize how opposed Satmar is to these depraved Neturei Kartaniks. But that message is not worth the cost of contributing to the creation of even more Moshe Aryeh Friedmans. Of course there is no guarantee that these children wouldn’t turn out like their father anyway. But at least in the school they have a chance at learning a more acceptable way to protest the Medina.
This story brings up an incident that happened a few years ago in Chicago. A Frum lesbian parent wanted to enroll her daughter into one of the Orthodox day schools here. Normally it wouldn’t have been a problem except that she chose to reveal her living arrangements with another woman up front thereby making public her status as a lesbian. The three major days schools here all refused admission to the child.
Now I am thoroughly convinced that the statistical probability is pretty high that there already are homosexual parents in at least one if not all the schools. But they are in the closet. No one knows who they are or if they even exist. But when a parent reveals their sexual orientation to be homosexual, it put the schools into the difficult position of knowingly accepting a homosexual individual into the parent body and thereby seeming to endorse their lifestyle choice which, they felt, is tantamount to endorsing a lifestyle of Toevah. Of course for a woman it is not a Toevah. But the the public, they felt, would not make that distinction and they would be seen as endorsing homosexuality, thus creating a Chilul HaShem.
To the best of my knowledge all three of the largest day schools refused to take her. That includes the Modern Orthodox one, the Centrist one, and the Charedi one. I know that there were Shailos asked and Teshuvos given. At the time I supported their actionss but had always had some serious reservations about it. But I felt that a school can no more be seen as supporting a gay lifestyle than they can be seen supporting a lifestyle of Chilul Shabbos.
But over time, my reservations never ceased. The problem of refusing a Jewish education to a child because of the sins of a parent has always troubled me. And because of that very important factor, I have now changed my mind and have taken the opposite view. There are many non-Shomer Shabbos parents in the day school system. Many of those parents are open about it. But we do not expel their children at all. Why should a child be denied a Jewish education because her parent decided to be open about her sexuality? Why is that any worse than being open about Chilul Shabbos?
I think it would have been best had she not revealed it up front. If discovered later on, the child would already be in the school and I doubt that she would have been expelled. The school could have thereby saved face. But for her own reasons, this lesbian woman, a very sincere and knowledgeable Jew, decided to be open about it. She probably believed that it was best to be honest and up front about it rather than to be “exposed” later.
It is a tough call. But just as I believe the Neturei Karta children should be admitted to their school, so too should the lesbian woman’s daughter have been admitted to the day school of her choice. Acceptance of a child into a school should never be seen as an endorsement of the view or the lifestyle of the parent. Nor do I think it would be perceived that way. No Halacha that I know of would be violated. It all boils down to image. Mariyas Ayin. And that, in my view is not enough to sacrifice the Jewish eduaction of a single child.
