A panel of chareidi matchmakers on Channel 13’s reality show “Vort” erupted into an open argument over discrimination against Sephardim, both in shidduchim and in admission to the community’s most prestigious yeshivas.
The clash appears in a preview of the next episode of the show’s third season, which airs on Sunday.
It began with a seemingly simple question: would a devout Lithuanian family accept a bride of Moroccan descent? One participant worried about the cultural gap between the two worlds, from wedding customs to daily life. Matchmaker Yossi Benvenisti said the bride would feel it most, describing the atmosphere in Ashkenazi homes as “cold” compared with Sephardi warmth.
Sara Pechter, the show’s host and a matchmaker herself, pushed back immediately. “What coldness? Ashkenazim aren’t cold!” she said. Another panelist tried to smooth things over, calling it restraint rather than coldness.
Benvenisti didn’t back down. “Litvaks who take a Sephardi girl, that’s second-class,” he said, adding that when he suggests an Ashkenazi girl to a young man, “he immediately asks me whether something is wrong with her.” Matchmaker Racheli accused him of exaggerating and asked whether the same happens in reverse. Benvenisti said the Sephardi community also prefers a Lithuanian look, prompting Racheli to ask what draws them “besides the blond.”
Matchmaker Yaki Reisner then offered what he called the practical reason: getting into the top schools. He pointed to Hebron and Ponevezh, the flagship Lithuanian yeshivas with thousands of students, and claimed that the chance of proposing a Sephardi student to them without the other side hanging up the phone was less than 2%.
Benvenisti backed him up with his own experience growing up in Ofakim’s Lithuanian community, describing an unwritten quota system. “For every two of the weakest Litvaks, one top-notch Sephardi gets accepted. That’s how it works, two sugars, one coffee,” he said.
Pechter tried to shut the conversation down, warning that it was damaging the image of the chareidi public. “Stop causing a chillul Hashem, because it isn’t true,” she said.
Reisner refused. “We will get into it because it’s a fact. Why aren’t you ashamed that Ponevezh has only 20% Sephardim? There are no more than 20% Sephardim in Ashkenazi yeshivas,” he said.
Pechter countered that there are enough institutions for everyone. “So let Sephardim study with Sephardim, what’s the problem? I sent my daughter to a Sephardi seminary from the start,” she said.
The claims touch one of the most sensitive fault lines in chareidi society. Allegations of informal quotas for Sephardi students in Ashkenazi yeshivas are not new. More than a decade ago, then-Shas MK Rabbi Chaim Amsalem said such quotas existed in nearly all Ashkenazi yeshivas, ranging from 10% to 15% or more, after a report that some 80% of Hebron yeshiva’s students were of Ashkenazi descent. The issue reached Israel’s Supreme Court in 2010, when it ruled against the separation of Sephardi girls at a school in Emmanuel.
Pechter herself has argued that the barriers run both ways. In an interview last year, she said that these days it is often Sephardi families who refuse a match with Ashkenazim, and urged both sides to let go of the labels.
