Parents of four Los Angeles area students are suing two Reform Jewish groups for not protecting their children from sand flies that afflicted them in a trip to Israel.
The suit states that the Union for Reform Judaism and the North American Federation of Temple Youth “planned, hosted, conducted, led and supervised” the trip and therefore were responsible for the sand fly attack, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The parents testified to their lawyer that children still suffer from skin ulcers and scars that have not healed since the trip last year.
“The defendants … professed and expressly informed the plaintiffs that they were experts in group tours to and accommodations in Israel,” the suit says.
The parents think that the Reform groups should have warned their dear children, especially since they were supposed to be protecting them in Israel. “Protection” usually means not wandering into Judea and Samaria, which usually are off-limits even to Orthodox students.
The last thing a yeshiva, seminary or host group wants is a lawsuit over a terrorist attack.
Now they can add sand flies to list of pests in Israel that bother American Jews, who apparently never are bitten by mosquitoes or bees in the United States.
And would the parents also have sued if their children came back to the United States with different opinions and beliefs.
Just imagine how parents might react if their pluralistic offspring returned with an understanding that the Torah really is a living scroll and not an ancient book to be read like a novel.
How would parents have reacted if their teenagers came back as raving Zionists or maybe even, oy, with a demand to keep kosher?
And even worse, what would have happened if the Reform youth had met new friends from the forbidden land of Judea and Samaria?
The lawsuits would be flying like sand flies.