I believe we have done ourselves serious damage by making a media spectacle over a school's thoughtful response the particular needs of some of its students.
I highly doubt that SAR intended to create religious precedent when it allowed two young women from Conservative Jewish backgrounds to engage in what is for them normative Jewish practice. Rather, consistent with its mission to accommodate the individual needs of it children, it allowed the practice to occur within the school's women's prayer group.
Media attention to this particular case, especially the publication of the names of these young children violates their legal rights to privacy.
The issue needs thoughtful conversation amongst poskei Halacha and schools should seek to avoid becoming the battlegrounds for orthodox feminism.
We already live in a polarized religious environment. Our job as educators is to inspire our students to greater degrees of religious commitment. Allowing this issue to become part of the public discourse will only distract us from the task at hand.
Let us leave this one to the poskim and seek to deal with our children as individuals not as poster children for the feminist movement.
