It is one thing for a parent to express concern and something quite different and indeed usually morally and halachically repugnant for a parent to, in effect, engage in bullying of this kind. The school is hurt, the child and family being bullied are hurt and there is collateral damage from the wrongful lesson being taught to one’s child.
School officials need to be firm and not yield to parental bullying. Unfortunately, prospects are not good because there is an excess of timidity. I am greatly disheartened when a principal or yeshiva dean tells me he cannot accept or retain a student because to do so would anger some parents. If a child is not to be accepted or retained, that decision must be based on the merits – not on the determination of one or more parents to harm someone else’s child.
As I near the conclusion of my sixtieth year of involvement in Torah education, nothing saddens me more than my realization that with respect to this issue, as well as several others, what I stand for is against the tide and the tide is getting stronger. The children we turn away are out of sight and too often out of mind. They leave no fingerprints, although they should in the form of emotional scars.
But the truth is that those who turn away children, at times without a second thought, think they are doing sacred work. They aren’t. If the attitude that prevails today had prevailed decades ago in the more formative period of religious Jewish life on American shores, many who are today communal leaders and even roshei yeshiva would have been lost.
Fortunately, there were Torah giants and teachers in that period who recognized the potential in children from marginally observant and even non-religious homes. They nurtured these children, bringing them closer to our great heritage and bringing out in them their spiritual and intellectual capabilities. The results are evident in what has been achieved during the past generations in North American Jewish life.
We need today’s Torah leaders to follow in this path.
