Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israel School Red-Faced After Teachers’ Unvarnished Opinions of Students Go Public

Students at an Israeli high school were in an uproar on Monday after a teacher mistakenly sent them an internal email that spelled out what faculty members really thought about them.

“Not too bright”, “Liar”, “Tactless”, “Big Baby”, “Anti-social”, “Has a thing for boys” and “Sick-o” were some of the descriptions on an Excel spreadsheet that landed in students’ email boxes.

Protesting outside the Yitzhak Rabin High School in Kfar Saba, a town north of Tel Aviv, students pinned some of those descriptions on their shirts and demanded an apology, which its principal made.

“We will draw conclusions about our behaviour and the way we express ourselves,” the principal, Ruth Lazar, was quoted as saying by the YNet news site.

The list, which also contained praise for a number of students, was compiled by teachers as a guide to potential misbehaviour by the teens due to take part in a school visit to Holocaust sites in Poland, a trip that has become a rite of passage for many Israeli youngsters.

One of the teachers inadvertently copied the list to students who signed up for the trip, the school said.

A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren

We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.

With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.

—  Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief 

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.