A cache of internal Excel documents stored on Yerushalayim Municipality servers — containing records of thousands of Chareidi girls applying to schools — was exposed Thursday night by Channel 13 News.
The files offer a rare and troubling look into how admissions decisions were made for years: not by academic merit or personal achievement, but by appearance, ethnic background, and even family political views.
According to the documents, each applicant’s name and personal details were accompanied by comments from municipal officials involved in seminary placement. The remarks paint a picture of a discriminatory system in which acceptance was influenced by demeaning and wholly irrelevant criteria.
Examples included: “Yemenites, Ashkenazified family, father learned in Ponovezh”; “Sefardi, functioning family, descendants of the Ohr HaChaim, she is short”; “Sefardim, franken, nebach family, the mother came with a sheitel the principal didn’t like”; and “Issues with percentages, divorced Russian mother, not OK.”
Other notes explicitly referenced protektsia, signaling preferential treatment for certain families: “Very important family, the new principal is making trouble because of the child’s disability — unacceptable”; “Granddaughter of a major Shas rabbi, no need to worry, protektsia is strong”; and “Good family, ‘Beis Yosef,’ she has protektsia — strong.”
Some comments reflected both racism and class bias: “Sefardim, cultured, Ashkenazi in mentality, but no room in the quota”; “Excellent student, but the family is a bit frank, doesn’t fit the codes — quota issue”; “They’re one-eighth Ashkenazi, Sefardi girl, the family is too righteous, very simple”; and “Kushim, the mother looks like a fair-skinned Ashkenazi.”
One internal method described in the notes was labeled “One coffee, two sugars.” The meaning: to accept one Sefardi girl, the seminary demanded two Ashkenazi girls be admitted alongside her. This system, according to the files, was not a private initiative of the schools alone.
The documents were found on the personal computer of Chaya Mishan, the municipal coordinator responsible for Chareidi post-primary education and the official overseeing the city’s seminaries. Their presence indicates active cooperation between the Yerushalayim Municipality and the schools, which are publicly funded through the Ministry of Education.
Two weeks ago, it was revealed that Mishan had been reinstated to her role. Following that announcement, the Movement for Quality Government sent a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara demanding disciplinary proceedings against her.
The Ministry of Education issued a statement: “Any finding within the Ministry’s supervisory authority will be examined thoroughly. The Ministry will utilize every tool granted by law to combat this phenomenon and ensure full equality in registration procedures for all students.”
The Yerushalayim Municipality said: “The employee was summoned for a clarification meeting, during which the severity of the matter was explained to her and her operational boundaries were redefined.”
{Matzav.com}
The first report about this came from the Am Ha’Aretz news rag, which hates both charedi and Sefardim.
And now Channel 13…
These are really not reliable sources.
They seek to destroy anything connected to Torah or morality at all costs.
not just the girl schools
Mi Keamcha!!! Baruch HaShem we prioritze the rights things!!!!!
You don’t have to go to E’Y to see that . How many children were destroyed in NY and NJ because of such rules ..yes my child included , so please excuse the bitterness
Acceptance into school is often like sausages. You never want to see how it happens.
You need the schools to have systems in place, otherwise you will wind up with with zero diversity (of thought or of background) which is unhealthy for the students.
As far as “protektsia” goes, there is nothing wrong with it per se. The idea of protektsia is that someone of a certain category of likelihood they get priority over others in the same category. So, for example, if a school has determined that after obligations (such as siblings of existing students and children of staff) they have fourteen slots, they may allocate two slots for Yesomim, a slot for a child of a broken home, four slots for family of those who go above and beyond in supporting the school, three slots for children from a particular background and four from another background. Protektsia gets you ahead of others in the same category as you, not ahead of everyone else in the world.
Most of these quotes are not objectionable at all.
I suspect that the few quotes here that seem objectionable are either being misconstrued or have a simple explanation
We are living a lie.
We are the bad apples.
We have betrayed ourselves.
This behavior has been repeated by generations.
We are now the unchosen people
Stop printing such leftist Haaretz type libels.
Sephardim should have their own seminaries, in line with their mesorah, which they should attend. Why are you pushing to put them in institutions which are foreign to their traditions???
Discrimination based simply on color or appearance is abhorrent.
but culture and ideology is not!
We are all bombarded with the liberal mindset that there are ZERO practical differences between races, and that is simply untrue.
So, if what is being looked at here is whom I like or not based on the shade of their skin, thats bad, but if, which is what I believe, its about culture, then they are doing the correct thing.
ANother foolishness is this anti-protektzia garbage. The reality is, we are all beneficiaries of the virtues, or lack there of, of those around us. Protektzia is a real thing, and has a place. While those who wish to virtue signal would leave their brothers unemployed to not give an “impression of impropriety”, the rest of us sane people should and would happily repay a favor, as long as all else is equal.
If u know the right people u don’t need protekzia
How is it that these records can be viewed by the public, and the liberal media no less? And why in the world are they stored on the secular Yerushalayim Municipality servers? Don’t chareidi schools have the brains to keep this stuff private?