by Hillel Fendel
It was Besheva that broke the story, just over two weeks ago, of the 3rd-grade pupil in a public-religious school class who had presented herself as a boy throughout 1st and 2nd grades. When her classmates and their parents discovered the truth at the end of last year, anger and resentment were great at the teachers and Education Ministry staffers who knew the truth but hid it.
The parents held a protest earlier this month outside the school, explaining that they had not received "satisfactory" explanations during the course of the summer. Their protest included not sending their children to school for at least a few days.
"Though strong question marks have risen about the religious school, its administration, and the Religious Education Council (Hemed)," writes Besheva editor Emanuel Shilo, "no answers have been given; these bodies refuse to explain their actions."
One irate teacher who did not want her name publicized said, "To allow a girl to act like a boy in a religious school, including wearing tzitzit and kippah and using the boys' bathroom, is like allowing a child to eat non-kosher food during lunch break. This issue has caused much tension among us all." In addition to religious issues, parents cited their children's psychological duress at having discovered that the "boy" with whom they wrestled and played during recess was actually a girl.
In response to the public storm, a group of top religious-Zionist rabbis has issued a proclamation stating that transsexual operations are forbidden and not recognized in Judaism. They make clear, however, that their stance is not directed at the girl in question, but at those who allowed her to present herself as a boy in a religious school.
Parents are upset at Hemed's refusal, thus far, to clarify its stance regarding transsexuals in its schools, or to state whether it will continue in the future to allow religious-school pupils to conceal their true gender.
Shilo decries the attempt to label the parents' protests as "a show of hatred towards an 8-year-old" as a lie that is "characteristic of LGBT propaganda. No one has anything against that poor girl, and everyone wishes her only the best. But consideration of her plight, which requires top-notch and sensitive care, cannot come at the expense of our firm stance in the face of the LGBT offensive which seeks to take over religious education as well."
Israel's religious educational network cannot accept the progressive outlook that blurs the differences between male and female, Shilo asserts: "Hemed must lead a principled approach opposing declarations that certain little boys or girls have actually been born in the wrong body and must undergo sex-change operations. Not only are such procedures opposed to Jewish Law, those who choose them cause harm to their health, hormone infusion, physical mutilation, and of course to their ability to have children. The religious educational network must do all it can to save children from taking this terrible path, and not allow young children to ruin their future just because of childhood fantasies that generally pass during adolescence."
Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, Chief Rabbi of the city of Ramat Gan and a renowned Halakhic authority in the religious-national public, stated in response to the controversy: "A girl dressing up as a boy cannot be accepted in Jewish Law. A boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl. Dealing with this particular case, involving a little girl, must be done with sensitivity. But she can no longer be integrated as a boy together with other boys."