
'Why bring children to a church on the eve of Shavuot?'
Yad L'Achim demands change in Education Ministry policy after 5th grade class taken to church to learn story of Ruth the Moabite.

The Yad L'Achim organization appealed to Education Minister Naftali Bennett to prohibit the education system from holding meetings between Jewish children and children of other religions.
The appeal was made against the backdrop of the publication of the documentation of the a class of fifth graders who were hosted in honor of Shavuot in a church in Jaffa and who heard explanations about Ruth the Moabite's path to Judaism from Christianity.
Ayelet Nahmias-Rabin, a member of the 'Zionist Union' who shared the tour she attended before the Shavuot holiday together with fifth graders at the Teva School on Facebook, was present at the St. Tabitha Church in Jaffa, during which they talked to the children about Ruth the Moabite who abandoned idolatry and converted to Judaism.
MK Nahmias-Rabin said that she was very proud of the well-publicized visit to the church and wrote: "It was exciting."
The Yad L'Achim organization, which seeks to combat assimilation, responded to the tour with an urgent appeal to Education Minister Naftali Bennett, with the aim that such a visit would not be repeated.
"There is no need to exaggerate the severity of this when young Jewish children (fifth grade!) Are led in a Christian church on the eve of Shavuot and receive a clear Christian preaching," the letter said.
"It is very interesting if these precious Jewish children also arrived on the eve of the holiday of the giving of our Torah to the synagogue ... Did they show them what a Torah scroll is?" The letter asked the Minister of Education to "instruct the educational system in all its diversity, because it will not hold meetings of members of one religion with sources of members of another."
Rabbi Shmuel Lifschitz, one of the leaders of Yad L'Achim, said that "we must see the reality in our face, we are witnessing the confusion of Jewish identity and assimilation, in Yad L'Achim we experience it every day. We expect the Education Ministry to stand up for its Jewish principles with pride."
The Ministry of Education's office has yet to respond to the request.