Jewish School Launches Legal Action Against Schools Lockdown

TORONTO, May 20, 2021 /CNW/ - A legal challenge launched by a Jewish private school accuses Toronto and the Ontario government of harming the religious rights of its students by imposing an inflexible COVID-19 lockdown that fails to account for their unique religious needs and obligations.

In legal documents filed Thursday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Yeshiva Yesodei Hatorah (YYH) and a representative student seek to have the lockdown restrictions struck down.

The case is expected to be heard within weeks on an urgent basis.

YYH argues that the religious and equality rights of its students and their parents were violated by a provincial lockdown regulation and a one-size-fits-all public health order, hastily imposed earlier this month, that failed to recognize the impossibility of providing adequate remote education and religious services to its unique school population.

YYH, a combination of private school and synagogue, is highly orthodox in its orientation. It receives no educational government funding and staff are not part of any union. The school has 445 school-aged children and 225 children in its daycare and kindergarten-aged program. Staff have consistently expressed an overwhelming desire throughout the pandemic to teach and provide religious services in-person.

Only children from families who accept the school's rigorous adherence to religious principles and practices are eligible to attend. These homes reject the internet on account of the access it provides to explicit, immoral and destructive material that threatens the core belief system YYH seeks to instill in its students.

As a consequence of this bedrock belief, YYH cannot deliver its religious program through internet-based learning platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet. The current lockdown restrictions, in effect, require children to lose all meaningful access to religious services and observance in order to uphold core teachings and beliefs.

YYH's legal application argues that the new order treats YYH and its students differently than other institutions that are permitted to host religious services. And the provincial regulation places YYH students at a tremendous disadvantage in that the only form of remote learning available to them - telephone - is a grossly inadequate substitute.

Prior to the most recent restrictions (in the Toronto Medical Officer of Health's s. 22 order), YYH was able to provide religious services to students in gatherings of 10. At the time, YYH was operating on a reduced schedule and in full compliance with the law.

However, under pressure from vocal community critics and some media outlets, political and public health officials crafted a new order specifically to foreclose this option. The new order prevents YYH from holding religious services in any area of the school that is normally used for regular school operations.

SOURCE Yeshiva Yesodei Hatorah

Rabbi Binyomin Septon, [email protected]