Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Antwerp Jewish Girls School Forced To Admit Boys

A Belgian court ordered a Jewish school for girls to admit two boys or face heavy fines.

If the Benoth Jeruzalem school in Antwerp fails to admit the boys, it will have to pay $2,600 for every day that the two boys are not allowed to study there, a Belgian judge ruled on Dec. 21, according to the Gazet van Anwerpen, a local paper.

Joods Actueel, a Belgian-Jewish monthly, reported that the father of the boys was Moshe Friedman, an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew who participated in a conference of Holocaust deniers in 2006 in Tehran, Iran. The paper said no school in Antwerp would admit his children.

In an interview with ATV, a Belgian television station, Friedman said the refusal to inscribe his boys into a school for girls was an act of “revenge” by the Jewish community because of his “opinion and good contacts with world leaders.” He added he had no choice but to inscribe the boys there because he needed them to go to a Jewish school.

The report did not say why Freidman chose a school for girls instead of one of Antwerp’s many schools for boys.

The director of Benoth Jeruzalem school told Gazet van Anwerpen that a decision on how to proceed will be made next week.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.