Belt. Hammer. Plastic hose. Cane. Ruler. Whatever comes to hand – it seems like almost any item can be used as a tool of "punishment" in the ultra-Orthodox Talmud Torah education system in which little children are taught. So long, first grade; hello, house of horror.

​

Director-producer Meni Philip can't exactly remember the violent acts he suffered in the non-Hasidic Haredi school he attended in Petah Tikva in the 1970s. Today, though, he is fully aware of the scars that abuse left on his soul.

​

"I was pretty much the weakest boy in class," he recalls. "I understood the material we were being taught, but school bored me so I would daydream constantly. In recess, I wouldn't play; instead, I would stay in class. I would receive lots-lots-lots of beatings and humiliation. I have an eight-year blackout with just flashes of memories here and there."

​

By opening the gates to Haredi schools in his latest documentary "No Child Spared," Philip delivers a harsh indictment of systemic violence in ultra-Orthodox society. Along the way, he undergoes a private reckoning regarding the way the violence he experienced at school has shaped and disrupted his life, even as a secular adult.

​

"The abuse destroys one's ability to feel the other's pain. You can love, and you want to feel, but you just don't know how."

Meni Philip

​​​

Helping him make his case in the film are 11 victims with better memories than he has. They provide a voice to the many children who have been silenced over the decades. The interviewees, including former members of Haredi society, plus religious and ultra-Orthodox men, describe personal experiences that create a larger picture in which cruel abuse is a daily occurrence.

​

"There was a boy who'd had his hands cable-tied, stuck on a chair and left there for the entire recess," recounts Nathan Kolberg, 11, who used to attend a Hasidic cheder (a traditional Jewish ultra-orthodox school) in Beit Shemesh. His 16-year-old-brother Maor, meanwhile, remembers one teacher "who would put a chili pepper in your mouth and duct-tape your hands behind your back, as well as your mouth, so you wouldn't be able to spit." Moshe Chayim, 25, who attended a Sephardi cheder in Bnei Brak, says that throughout fifth grade, he suffered pains in his neck due to beatings by the rabbi. "But there's no escape," he says. "You have suicidal thoughts and you don't know who to turn to."

​

Philip notes that "the beatings, abuse and humiliation completely destroy a child's independence. The only way for a 4- or 5-year-old to handle such things when they happen is 'not to be there.' I cannot say which beating I took caused me to shut down, but there's a moment when that happens. This fear, this emotional withdrawal, became the greatest suffering of my life. The violent trauma made me feel terribly lonesome, and this lonesomeness is indescribable suffering. I'm not a person who underwent trauma. I am the trauma."

​

The idea for the film, which screened at this year's Haifa Film Festival and is on HOT 8 in Israel, was born of a post written by one of Philip's brothers on the Bokharim Mekhadash (Choosing Anew) Facebook group intended for formerly religious people. The brother, who named himself "Nasich Katan" ("The Little Prince" in Hebrew) on the group (of which they are both administrators), revealed in a 2018 post: "When they beat me, I would keep a straight face in order to be brave. Mainly, though, I didn't want to give them the pleasure. It usually made them beat me twice as hard – sometimes until I broke down and cried out because of the pain."

​

The confession was hashtagged #Zo_Yalduty (#My_Childhood) and it opened a Pandora's box, leading to a wave of shares and testimonies.

​

When it's put to him that, in effect, the film's interviewees sought him out, Philip answers with a smile, "Kind of." Stories began getting posted on ultra-Orthodox Facebook groups and the director said to himself, "Okay, you must document this."

​

Another of his siblings, Oded, features in the film, but he is probably the interviewee who suffered the fewest beatings. This did not save him from memories that still haunt him to this day, such as a former teacher who broke a broom on the body of his friends.

​

"I used to greatly envy Oded, but in the cheder it was as if we lived in two separate worlds," says the director, who is the second of 11 siblings. "Oded is two years younger than me, and always had the talent to be very funny, likable and sociable. Today, in hindsight, he realizes that this was his way of coping with it."

​

Giving up on the dream

​

Meni Philip was a successful Hasidic singer, until ultra-Orthodox society expelled him. In 2007, he co-created with director Noam Reuveni the documentary film "Let There Be Light," in which he recorded his challenging transition from the Haredi to the secular world, his decision to divorce his wife after having five children together, and the alienation from both his former partner and his parents.

​

A year later, upon completing film school at Minshar School of Art, he released the short film "Sinner," about a 13-year-old boy who is being sexually abused by one of the faculty at the yeshiva he attends. The film won the Best European Short Film Award at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. "Some of the things in 'Sinner' happened to me when I attended yeshiva, so I knew how to recount them," he says. "Following this success, I got funding to write a long feature film. I worked on it for five years, but shelved it because I couldn't get to a script that I liked. I gave up."

​

In the past decade, Philip, 57, has been living in Santa Barbara and is speaking to me from his California home. "I found work here in a company that restores old Hollywood films and rereleases them to the market. My cinematic know-how is helpful in the role, though this is more a technical than a creative job. At least it's in my field, though, and I can make a living off of it."

​

Shooting on "No Child Spared" actually began after Philip had already given up on his cinematic dream. But after the flood of testimonies on social media, he decided to devote a film to the issue. Filming began in 2018, but the production wasn't smooth sailing.

​

He originally planned for his film to also include women who had been hurt at Haredi girls' schools. However, "a few months after filming, I got a message from an interviewee who said: 'I don't want you to use my interview.' I was shocked," he recalls. "I told her, 'Let's talk, tell me what happened.' There had been no physical violence in her story.

​

"She said to me on the phone, 'I told you about my worse traumas, but I felt there was no empathy in the room, that you were only looking for more painful stories. It's true that I wasn't beaten, but I was locked up for an entire day without food. Isn't that enough? I feel you're only looking for blood and sensationalism.' That made me despair."

​

The words shook him. "All I'm doing in life is trying to learn how to feel, to be empathic, and I prepared for this filming. What she said to me was so extreme that I realized that whatever I was doing – it wasn't coming through."

​

But this was just one interviewee.​

 

"That's true, but I knew it wasn't just her. I watched the rushes again – and I was mainly watching myself. I saw how I was constantly interrupting and missing the stories I was hearing. In a segment that didn't make it into the final film, there was a child who told me his rabbi had pushed his head into a wall and he bled. And I asked him, 'Okay, how did it feel?' Already in real time I understood: What kind of question is this? I realized I was rushing from question to question, and this realization opened up something huge to me. A few weeks later, all the pennies dropped: I understood that my lack of attentiveness had to do with my inability to feel. For the first time, I realized that I did not emerge unscathed myself" from the school system.

​

Philip took 18 months to process these insights. He eventually resumed work on "No Child Spared" with the help of Penina Adler, a Jewish-American woman who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox community in Cleveland. They'd met during the pandemic, and she became his partner in writing and editing the film.

​

"I hear myself tell the principal: 'Beat other children, just so long as you don't beat up my son.' What the hell? It made me see myself as part of the system."

Meni Philip

​

"I realized that the film is not a story I am telling about how much ultra-Orthodox people hurt children. It became this telling of a personal journey that transformed my life and identity. I always saw myself as a good father, a good person, dealing with hardships that other people pose. I suddenly realized that I was not seeing my children in many ways, and that I hurt people without realizing it."

​

Philip's five children are all over 30 now, with four of them ultra-Orthodox. As part of his soul-searching, he included in the film old recordings of phone calls in which he demanded that the rabbi and principal of a cheder stop using violence against his 5-year-old son. Despite the objections of the rabbi, who insisted that he was relying on a widespread halakhic tradition, Philip got his superior to agree, in principle, not to beat the child.

​

Listening to these calls, Philip comes across as a caring, involved father – but he judges himself harshly for these too. "I hear myself tell the principal: 'Beat other children, just so long as you don't beat up my son.' What the hell? It made me see myself as part of the system. I wasn't even really protecting my son – it's not like I made a point to ascertain that what I'd requested actually happened. Today, I realize that he may have suffered beatings and only told me that he didn't. It's part of the same blindness: A father who is unaware that he does not see, and carries on for 30 years thinking he rescued his son."

 

'No one to turn to'

​

Many parents in the ultra-Orthodox community accept the cheder schooling system without resistance – either because they agree with it or for lack of choice. "We all live in terror," Rachel Kolberg, Nathan and Maor's supportive mother, says in the film.

​

Daniel Amram, who attended a non-Hasidic cheder in Bnei Brak and is today a well-known social activist, is even harsher. "I took beatings, my head went flying. I called my parents by pay phone – and then realized that I suffered this violence at home as well, and understood that there was no one to turn to.”

​

Philip admits that he chose not to open his childhood traumas in regard to his parents, preferring instead to focus on positive experiences from recent years. "My relationship with them changed; I suddenly managed to see them as people rather than as vague figures."

​

During our conversation, he recalls an incident from his childhood that gets him rethinking the emotional blindness he associates with himself. "When I was 7, I saw a little boy playing in the sandbox in the playground. I asked him to come with me. He gave me his hand and we went to a shelter. I told him I was leaving and that his mother and father wouldn't find him. I felt that I wanted to cause him pain. He scrunched his face getting ready to cry, and it was like a lightning bolt. I couldn't go on. I smiled at him and told him I was just joking. The need to cause pain to somebody never came back."

​

How do you feel about that incident now?

​

"It means there's hope for me; that the inability to feel is not some disability I was born with. It means that if I manage to regain deep attentiveness, things will seep in."

One disturbing matter the film highlights is how many of the children who are exposed to violence become enthusiastic accomplices to the horrors, with the encouragement of the school, losing sensitivity and compassion even between themselves.

 

"The abuse destroys one's ability to feel the other's pain," Philip says. "You can love, and you want to feel, but you just don't know how."

​

The film also reveals a sadly unsurprising tendency in Ashkenazi schools to abuse Sephardi children.

​

Philip says there are some stories he chose not to include in the final film simply because of their terrible violence – for instance, a rabbi who broke a child's fingers. "These are horror stories that you cannot include, because you want people to be able to watch the film without running away screaming after five minutes.

​

"Even when people file a complaint with the police, most cases are closed – whether because of rabbis pressuring the plaintiffs, or because the police themselves close the case due to a 'lack of public interest.'"

​

Sexual violence is not part of the film, though it too exists within the schools system.

​

"This was a dilemma," the director admits. "I was afraid that if I put it in, it would provide an excuse to ignore the systemic physical violence. The system says 'beat the child'; it doesn't say 'sexually abuse them.' However, once you destroy a child's facility for refusal, sexual abuse is a direct result of physical abuse. My concern was that they would say there are just a few 'bad apples' that need to be punished. Whoever thinks that is part of the problem.”

​

Philip believes the collective ultra-Orthodox cheder experience shapes an entire society, whose members are unable to see the other because they are still in that traumatized place.

"I'm reminded of former Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who defended Malka Leifer [who sexually abused some of her students at her religious school in Australia]. As far as he's concerned, he should not shift one iota, lest his life be ruined. This does not go away even after 60 years."

​

And MK Moshe Gafni, who has been insulting hostage families. Or MK Yitzhak Pindrus, who says the LGBTQ community is worse than Hezbollah, Hamas and ISIS?

​

"The cheder child simply grew a beard. The trauma stays with you until you die. This is the blindness I'm talking about.”

​

How do you explain the fact that surveys consistently show that Haredim are the happiest and most optimistic population in Israel?

​

"I don't think that's true. If you take a bird and cut off its wings, at first it will be depressed because it can no longer fly—yet it will still strive to be happy in its lot. Over time, it may not even remember that it once knew how to fly.“