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Chaim Ingram

Acute Angles: Messing with our kids’ minds

Dear Rabbi. I am a very concerned parent. I received a letter from my daughter’s pluralist Jewish school advising of “LGBTQIA+ training” for Year 8 students. My daughter is in Year 7 and I guess she will be required to do this “training” next year, or, who knows, maybe sooner? I am scared that if I make a fuss, my child may suffer some form of retribution or embarrassment. But I am not at ease about this programming. What do you suggest I do? Regards, Rhoda.

Dear Rhoda,

My clearest advice to you is: take your daughter out of this school at the earliest opportunity.

“Pluralist” Jewish schools claim to cater for all Jewish ‘streams’ from Progressive to Orthodox. Here is unambiguous evidence that they do not. No way is this “training” (read “indoctrination”) program (or “programming” as you aptly put it) in any way compatible with Orthodoxy.

I don’t know whether you are Orthodox or not, but if as I suspect you aren’t, (as most Orthodox parents opt for Orthodox institutions) it proves that the so-called pluralist Jewish school your daughter attends has deviated too far from Jewish values even for some non-Orthodox tastes!

This “training” program has all the hallmarks of the sort of Marxist indoctrination that used to go on in schools in the former Soviet Union.

Even were it not advocating the celebration of lifestyles the Torah regards as immoral (as per the flyer you sent me) and even were it not indoctrination, Torah Judaism does not advocate free public discussion of sexuality in a classroom setting.

The flyer also promises to introduce students to the “basics of …. gender identity”. This of course is a euphemism for the doctrine of “gender fluidity”, i.e. that a person’s gender can be whatever he or she wants it to be – male, female or somewhere in between!

Reading online from a site called “Kids (sic) helpline” – easily accessible via one innocuous Google click – I could almost have been reading missionary literature except here the missionising was not from evangelical Christians but crusading, cultural-Marxist subversives whose dearest wish is to destroy the traditional family, to deride traditional gender roles and indeed to relegate the  Abrahamic ethic and the Abrahamic G-D to a fossil of history.

I note with interest that the body which will be running this program is called “Minus-18”. 18 of course in Hebrew numerology corresponds to the word chai, life. The group is aptly-named. Indeed it appears to negate (minus) every Jewish life value.

It behoves every Jewish parent who truly cares about the perpetuation of our core ethic to stand up and say “No” to programs and workshops of amoral indoctrination such as this.

Ironically, the flyer proclaims its advocacy of “an Australia where all young people are safe”.  In terms of fealty to Jewish principles, this Year 8 workshop  equates to just about the most unsafe place imaginable for a sensitive and impressionable young Jew or Jewess to be.

About the Author
Rabbi Chaim Ingram is the author of five books on Judaism. He is a senior tutor for the Sydney Beth Din and the non-resident rabbi of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. He can be reached at judaim@bigpond.net.au