Parents protest acceptance of transgender child in Israeli religious school

“Why does my child need to know at such a young age that there are things like this in the world?”

By World Israel News Staff

It appears that U.S. transgender politics has reached the Jewish state. A group of parents of children at a religious public elementary school in central Israel protested Friday over the acceptance of a transgender boy, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The report referred to an article in the Hebrew-language B’Sheva newspaper last week that noted the boy’s presence at the school. B’Sheva caters to a religious audience, and many readers with children at the school were outraged that they had not been informed about the student’s sex at birth. The school administration and the Education Ministry were reportedly aware of the situation.

According to the Post, it was the B’Sheva article, which repeatedly referred to the child using feminine pronouns, that instigated the protest.

“Of course, it’s awful,” said one parent identified by B’Sheva under the pseudonym “David.”

“Why does my child need to know at such a young age that there are things like this in the world?” He added that discovering that “your friend is not what you thought” could “shake up their world.”

Some parents have reportedly not sent their children to school due to their concerns and are threatening to sue. The school year began in Israel on September 1.

On Friday, a group of parents arrived at the school with Religious Zionist MK Michal Woldiger and demanded the resignation of the head of the Council for State-Religious Education, the Post reported.

“Parents are entitled to an education system for their children that fits their worldview and values,” said Roni Sassover, the lawyer representing the parents, according to the Post.

The Havruta organization, which advocates for LGBTQ+ religious Israelis, said that the “hate lobby is working overtime against the community and against our children,” the Post reported.

“Against what [are they protesting]? Against the well-being of a child, while messing with his genitals (a subject that only interests pedophiles) and in favor of transphobia,” the group charged.

“Michal Woldiger, a member of the Knesset who is a member of the lobby for mental health, which usually claims to help the weak, also chose this time to side with those who seek to abuse the most vulnerable group in the population, and a child – who is powerless in the face of the madness that is happening here. The hate lobby did more, when they spread defamatory rumors and lies about the boy and his mother,” Havruta stated.

Woldiger said that a school defined as following the Torah “cannot contain progressive identity confusions and certainly cannot contain such concealment and deception and determine for the parents a reality that is not desirable for them,” according to the Post.

Israeli educationLGBTQReligious Zionismtransgender