HANNAH BROWN, The Jerusalem Post
Mar 9, 2025
Director Meni Philip's powerful film gives a voice to survivors of corporal punishment in haredi educational institutions, revealing how widespread abuse shapes an entire community.
No Child Spared (in Hebrew, “Ha’Heder”) is a powerful and disturbing documentary currently available on Hot VOD and Next TV about what its director, Meni Philip, describes as the widespread use of corporal punishment in ultra-Orthodox (haredi) schools and yeshivot.
Philip, who grew up in the haredi community, doesn’t delve into statistics or investigations into this issue, although there have been news stories about it around the world. However, he makes a convincing case that horrifying levels of physical abuse are tolerated in this community.
Philip says he got the idea for the documentary when his brother, Nasich Katan Philip, posted about his experiences being beaten by teachers during his childhood on social media, and the post went viral, opening up a dialogue with many other survivors of this kind of abuse.
The brothers and about a dozen other young men and boys who are interviewed describe harrowing instances of suffering beatings in the classroom and of watching others being beaten. Their testimony is punctuated by childhood photos of them looking innocent and cute, which makes it easier to visualize the abuse and even harder to understand it.
“When I listened to all the stories, I realized how much the blows were only part of what happened to me there,” says Meni Philip. “I went from being not just the child that they hurt, to being the father who doesn’t see his children and doesn’t protect them… Trauma doesn’t affect everyone the same way.
“But everyone [who goes through this experience] in one way or another becomes closed to the possibility of feeling others’ [pain], if from when you’re a little child you see your friends who are abused, and you can’t help them, you have to shut yourself down. And if your friends never help you, you learn that there’s no one in the world you can depend on. That shapes people, and it creates a whole society of people like this. Parents like this, teachers like this, friends like this, rabbis like this, Knesset members like this.”
The film features a few videos of abuse, some from the US and some from Israel, where the beatings take place in state-supported schools. Philip does make the point that there are those fighting against this abuse, but based on the testimonies in the film, the opponents aren’t making much headway. At least if those who have been or are being abused see this film, they will know that someone cares about their suffering, even if no one managed to prevent it.