The professional elements in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, senior professionals from the world of care - all are warning against the potentially devastating consequences of the clause in the coalition agreement between Torah Judaism and Shas and the Likud, which will make it possible to train therapists in the health professions in the ultra-Orthodox community without an academic degree.
The meaning is to regulate in law that thousands of young seminary girls will be able to treat the mentally ill, just like experts who studied two degrees under the supervision of the MLA and have years of experience in the field.
Participants received threats, illustration, photo: Yossi Zeliger
During the work on the investigation, interviewees received explicit threats that if they participated in it - they or their family members would be harmed in various ways, and most of them decided after the fact not to reveal their names and faces in the article.
There were also those who decided not to participate in it at all.
The threats continued until the last moments before the newspaper went to press.
Some of the interviewees retracted and demanded that we not publish their words following the threats they received, others agreed that we would publish their words anonymously.
"I have received threats concerning my family if I am interviewed on my behalf. There are prices I cannot pay," one of the interviewees told us, begging us not to publish her candid photos.
"I didn't know basic concepts"
"Later, when I was properly trained at an academic institution, I found out what therapy really is. I realized that I did not know basic basic concepts, and many concepts were perceived as distorted or inaccurate at all. I did not know basic theoretical materials, and of course no one monitored or checked whether and what we read and understood." Says Mi who started her career in a seminary and is now a certified therapist.
"Certificate studies take it back 20 years", Keren Barak, photo: Yossi Zeliger
"A very young therapist, who completed a training program that is not recognized by the MLA, turned to me for treatment after her patient committed suicide."
"It can happen to experienced therapists with extreme cases, but this is an example of severe damage to the therapist's own soul as well," says Mittal Ben Gigi, a visual art therapist from Jerusalem, who works in the Ministry of Education and in private settings.
Diploma studies in controversy
Former member of the Knesset Keren Barak, then a Likud MP, whose mother has been handling the arts for years, and therefore knows the field in depth, said about a year ago in the health committee that discussed this bill:
"I want as many women as possible to go to work, certainly in the ultra-Orthodox sector. It is my dream that as many women as possible in the ultra-orthodox sector will go to work, get paid and not sit at home," but she stated that "certificate studies take it back 20 years."
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