THE HAGUE (JTA) — A Belgian court lifted an injunction forcing a haredi Orthodox girls’ school in Antwerp to enroll the two sons of haredi pariah Moshe Friedman.
On Thursday, the Antwerp Court of Appeals lifted the injunction obtained last month by Friedman, citing child welfare considerations raised by the Benoth Jerusalem elementary school in appealing the earlier ruling, according to the Joods Actueel monthly. The review process may take several years.
In the meantime, the boys’ enrollment will be nullified and they will not attend the school, Joods Actueel reported.
Unable to enroll his children in the haredi community’s schools, Friedman had petitioned to have his sons, Yosef and Yaacov, attend the publicly funded Benoth Jerusalem.
Belgian law does not permit schools to accept only one gender, though separate classes for boys and girls are permissible. Friedman’s lawsuit was the first case in which a haredi parent petitioned the authorities to make a school coed.
Friedman, 40, is an anti-Zionist haredi activist excommunicated by the haredi community of Antwerp. In 2006 he attended a conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran, where he was photographed hugging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Brooklyn native is married to a Belgian woman.
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