Bass Report

  My son attends a Chassidic elementary school, in Israel, called "Talmud Torah" or "Cheidar". Today he brought home a half a piece of paper stating, "the standard vaccines for first and eighth grades will be given next Tuesday, send your child's vaccine record to school". No explanation of what the vaccines are, no explanation of possible side effects. During my tenure as school nurse, I built trust with parents over a long time and in many one on one informative conversations. I encouraged some Haredi (ultra-orthodox) families who were opposed to vaccines to complete at least some of them. This meant increased coverage in large families, causing a positive ripple effect. And during my tenure, there were no outbreaks of contagious disease preventable by vaccines. But trust building and the time it takes is not of interest, evidently, to those running vaccine administration in Israel. I have been replaced by a half a page note, implying that you shou...

  This blog contains links to articles regarding the Immanuel Beit Yaakov controversy, 2008-2010, which involved allegations of racism against a school in Israel and an overreach of the Israel Supreme Court's powers. These links are important as many have turned into broken links, that is, you cannot find many of the original articles from these links. Thus I used the WayBack machine to get as many as I could.  Anyone researching this case will have to search for the original articles that claimed an ethnic split. The Israeli public was faced with the fact that this school was not an ethnic split only when the fathers marched to jail. Then, interestingly enough, many of the original articles that claimed racism just disappeared. In September 2007 two new girls' schools opened in Immanuel, Israel: a Chassidic Beit Yaakov and a Sephardic Shas school called Ohel Rachel. The Sephardic girls' school opened in the same building as the Beit Yaakov high school, the Chassidic girls...