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Thursday, April 07, 2005

What Happenned To The Dulberg Sisters?

For some reason I thought about a scandal that took place five years ago:
Two young Israeli citizens have been essentially imprisoned by their father, with the active assistance of an Italian court. We need your help in order to free them!

The Dulbergs married in Israel, had two daughters, and separated in Italy in 1991. For several years the mother remained the custodial parent. The mother gravitated towards observant Judaism with her daughters, while the father recently converted to Catholicism.

The father was so troubled by his ex-wife's religious choices that he filed in court to have the daughters removed from their mother's care, on the grounds that she was incompetent.

The court agreed -- and what is most alarming in this case is that the court's agreement was based upon little more than the malicious characterization of traditional Judaism as a "religious cult." The human rights of the daughters, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Jewish tradition, were all trampled by the Italian court and a father filled with hate.

We regard this not as an issue of preference of one religion over another, but to the contrary, as an issue of ecumenical respect. Does a secular court have the right to refuse expert testimony about a religion, and simply accept as fact the lie that Jews cannot consume ice cream, pizza or Coca-Cola? Can a court accept religious adherence as prima facia evidence that a mother is unable to raise her child? Is it for a court to determine, without any psychological analysis, that children's claims to desire a religious life are "inauthentic," and are merely evidence that the children need to be forcibly deprogrammed?
Now I ask, whatever happened to these girls? Were they allowed to return to Israel and Judaism? I could not find any information on the WWW. If anybody knows please let me know.

2 comments:

Batya said...

Please let us all know if you do find out.
Horrid story.

Anonymous said...

Yes, please do. I'd also like to know. I mentioned this case in my parting swipe at the recently passed pope.

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