ABSTRACT
Most of the discussion so far has been about the individual. What are the individual's interests, needs, rights and responsibilities? Yet when deal ing with the problems of treating disabled children within a minority community, it is the identity of the group as a whole that is the overriding influence. The factor that determines what in practice can and cannot be done, and what is and is not acceptable, is the group's concept of itself and what is needed to maintain its own integrity. For example, all of the children within the Hasidic community, disabled or able-bodied, attend schools that are run and maintained by the com munity. However, even within the community there are a number of different sects, each owing allegiance to its own Rebbe, and each with its own religious practice. This results in sects running their own schools to which children of other sects are not sent. In an article purporting to be a conversation between the headmaster of one of these sectarian schools and his daughter,1 the latter asked why the local education authority Roman Catholic school was so new and bright and clean, compared with their old broken-down schmaterlich (messy, unkempt) building. The headmaster explained to her that the local education authority cares for Christians and supports their schools, but does not care for Jews, and that 'this is called anti-Semitism'.1 What he did not say was that there are two Jewish schools maintained by the same local education authority - one orthodox and the other reform, but neither conforming to the tenets of his sect. The existence of these mutually exclusive sectarian schools has practical consequences. For example, one way to enable the Hasidic children to receive therapy within their own community, with out putting too great a burden on the services available, would be to resource one school to which all of the disabled children would be sent. However, this idea did not get off the ground because of the refusal of the parents of one sect to send their children to a school run by another sect.
