SACKED TEACHER WINS SCHOOL CLAIM
A JEWISH teacher has won her claim of discrimination against an Orthodox nursery that fired her after learning she was living with her boyfriend.
Zelda de Groen, 24, lost her job at the Gan Menachem in Hendon, north-west London, in July 2016 after working there for four years.
Watford Employment Tribunal rejected the nursery’s argument that it had been justified in dismissing the teacher.
There was “no dispute” that many Orthodox Jews regarded cohabitation before marriage as contrary to their faith, the tribunal, headed by Employment Judge Andrew Clarke, said in a decision published last Friday, following a four-day hearing in September.
But the nursery, which follows Lubavitch teachings, had not shown there was any occupational requirement by teachers to observe such standards, it found.
Ms de Groen grew up in an “ultraOrthodox Jewish household” but moved from London to Israel when she was 16 after becoming “discontented in her community”, the tribunal said.
On returning to London, she got a job at Gan Menachem whose manager, Miriam Lieberman, knew her mother.
The tribunal heard that while Ms de Groen “did not wish to return to a fully ultra-Orthodox way of life, she considered herself still to be a practising Jew, but one who did not rigorously observe all of the practices which might be expected of an ultra-Orthodox Jew”.
However, she intended to be more observant than she had been in Israel.
Mrs Lieberman and Dina Toron, Gan Menachem’s managing director, had understood that Ms de Groen wanted to return gradually to the strictly Orthodox fold. But the situation was “rather more complex and confused,” the tribunal found.
Ms de Groen was “struggling to establish her own set of life values” within the Jewish spectrum. It was clear she was “vulnerable and disturbed” and has regularly been seeing a psychiatrist.
In January last year, she met Oz Waknin and began living with him a few months later in Pimilico, in central London. The couple married in July 2017.
In May 2016, the couple went to a Lag Ba’Omer barbecue attended by nursery trustees and parents of pupils. When one of the trustees, Mendy Freundlich, asked Mr Waknin where he lived, he replied: “We live in Pimlico”.
A number of parents already knew Ms de Groen and Mr Waknin were living together but had raised no concern, the tribunal said.
But after the barbecue, one or two parents raised her living arrangements with the nursery.
Ms de Groen was asked to attend a meeting with Mrs Toron and Mrs Lieberman and was told that living with a man she was not married to was wrong and that if she had children out of wedlock, she would be dismissed. One solution put to Ms de Groen was to say she was not living with Mr Waknin.
Although the nursery disputed it had asked the teacher to lie about her living arrangements, the tribunal found that she had been asked to do so, commenting that it was “repugnant to generally accepted standards of morality to require someone to lie”.
After the meeting, Ms de Groen was “tearful and distressed” but when she later sought an apology, the nursery began disciplinary proceedings against her and subsequently dismissed her.
The tribunal noted she was regarded as “a very good teacher” by Gan Menachem. It also found that although the nursery had a dress code for staff, its handbook contained nothing which set out that they “must adhere to the beliefs and practices of the ultra-Orthodox community”.
The tribunal upheld Ms de Groen’s claim of religious and sex discrimination, finding that a man would not have been treated in the same way. A further hearing will decide “appropriate remedies”.
Both Ms de Groen and the nursery declined to comment.
Ms de Groen was regarded as a very good teacher