This week, as school-aged children across Israel strapped on new backpacks and their working parents finally breathed a sigh of relief, things weren't so rosy in Jerusalem. There, a standoff erupted between the municipality and a handful of ultra-Orthodox school administrators, outraged that a number of girls of Sephardic descent (originating from modern-day Spain and Portugal) had been admitted to their primarily Ashkenazi high schools - institutions that for decades have enforced unofficial but rigid ethnic divides.
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