50,000 ultra-Orthodox rally in Israel over school desegregation

“There are 30,000 in Jerusalem and 20,000 in Bnei Brak,” near Tel Aviv, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. “Streets in the immediate vicinity of the demonstrations are closed to traffic.”

Thousands of police were on high alert as protestors rallied against a supreme court ruling to jail a group of parents of European origin, or Ashkenazis, who are refusing to send their daughters to a school with Jewish girls of Middle Eastern descent, or Sephardis.

Although the ruling effectively pitted the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazis against the Sephardis, both communities have come together for a mass protest against what they see as the intolerable intervention of the secular state in their religious affairs.