60.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Editorial: Feeling the love in Lawrence
Issue of August 14, 2009 / 24 Av 5769
Disgusting.
Simply put, no other words are needed to describe the civil rights lawsuit recently launched by five parents in the Lawrence school district.
In the suit, the five parents — Tara Incantalupo, Stephen Jackson, Andrew Levey, Stacey Sullivan and Fu-Yun Tang -— allege that the Orthodox Jewish residents of the Lawrence School District are engaged in a plot to control the Lawrence schools for their own sinister purposes. The allegation is bizarre; it reads like the plot of a fifties-era comic book or the script of a James Bond film. It would be quite funny were it not so serious. But it is serious, and a mockery of the civil rights the legislation was enacted to protect.
To whit, these parents accuse, “The Orthodox (Jewish) majority on the Board of Education, in a concerted effort to divert public monies to support the religious precept of Yeshiva enrollment... in order to establish Orthodox Judaism as the official religion of the Lawrence Union Free School District.”
("Summon the Caped Crusader, Chief O'Hara — that dastardly fiend, The Joker, is up to his evil tricks again.")
As a paper that covers the Orthodox Jewish community, we’re disappointed that this is the first we’ve heard about this plot. Boy, we wish someone would’ve told us sooner. We would have written a story about it — page 3, at least.
The parents claim that an advertisement in support of Orthodox school board candidates that mentioned both high taxes and high yeshiva tuition is proof positive that the Orthodox majority is trying to raze the school district in order to finance yeshivas. To apply this “logic” in another way, America wants to capture Osama bin Ladin and America wants lower healthcare costs. Therefore, America wants to capture Osama Bin Laden in order to save money on healthcare.
Has the Orthodox majority school board made mistakes? Sure. But there is nothing they have done or could do that would warrant this level of unremitting hate. The lawsuit is a black mark on our local history. Replace the word “Orthodox” with “Black” and the suit is a standard Jim Crow tract from the Civil War-era American South. Replace “Orthodox” with “Jew” and the lawsuit is a stereotypical anti-Semitic canard. The allegations the lawsuit makes are so ridiculous that they leave one to wonder: if the Orthodox community has this much power, why waste time on a small, poorly funded school district? Shouldn’t we have bigger fish to fry?
In our view this lawsuit is not only frivolous, but hateful. It strains credulity and stains the credibility of Barnes and Barnes, the law firm representing the parents.
Like numerous previous suits launched by a small, vindictive group of parents, this, too, is likely to fail outright, but there are real victims nonetheless: the children these parents claim they are trying to help, and who are named in the suit. Dollars the district must spend on legal fees are dollars that could have been spent on extra-curricular activities. Money that should have been an investment in those children will be spent in court instead.
Far worse, though, is the hate these children are likely being imbued with by their parents. Hate for people who are different from them; the hate and fear they may experience whenever they see a religious Jew.
Disgusting.
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