{"id":252561,"date":"2026-01-22T23:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/252561\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T23:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:01:10","slug":"mother-of-baby-boy-found-dead-at-unlicensed-daycare-says-caregivers-are-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/252561\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother of baby boy found dead at unlicensed daycare says caregivers are innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chani Katz, the mother of one of the two infants found dead in an unlicensed ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem daycare earlier this week, spoke out against legal proceedings against the caregivers held responsible and said the death of her 6-month-old son Ari was preordained.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiriam and Mali also buried a child. It\u2019ll never leave them. They\u2019re innocent,\u201d said Katz, referring to caregivers Miriam Friedman and Mali Shmuel Eliyahu, whom the Jerusalem Magistrate\u2019s Court released to house arrest on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The caregivers will be kept under house arrest for nine days, barred from working for 45 days, and prevented from contacting the families of the deceased for 30 days. Speaking to the press ahead of the court hearing, Katz said, \u201cWhat\u2019s being done to them is an injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that her son Ari had died by \u201cdivine decree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Ari had to die on the very day, at the very hour that he passed,\u201d she said, refusing to speculate on his cause of death. \u201cIf he had to pass away, it had to be with Miriam Friedman, and I chose Miriam.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Katz said she has known Friedman for seven years and sent three children to her daycare. She described Friedman as Ari\u2019s \u201csecond mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if she\u2019s the second mother or the first. We\u2019re competing,\u201d said Katz. \u201cIt\u2019s too bad for Ari that he couldn\u2019t be with her for longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce justice is done \u2014 that\u2019s when he\u2019ll rest in peace,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tRescue and security forces work at the scene of a mass-casualty incident at an illegal daycare in Jerusalem\u2019s Haredi-majority Romema neighborhood, on January 19, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

The bodies of Katz\u2019s son and of 4-month-old Leah Goloventzitz were found<\/a> Monday morning at the overcrowded Haredi daycare center in Jerusalem\u2019s Haredi neighborhood of Romema, along with 53 other babies and toddlers with varying degrees of injuries.<\/p>\n

Police reportedly believe the two deaths may have been due to heat exhaustion and dehydration linked to a faulty heating system in the daycare. Authorities sought to perform autopsies on the two deceased infants, but were blocked by the High Court amid parents\u2019 opposition to the operation and Haredi riots<\/a> against it.<\/p>\n

Haredi lawmakers have blamed<\/a> the deaths on the state, pointing to cuts made to daycare<\/a> subsidies for young Haredi men who fail to draft to the military. The Attorney General\u2019s Office ordered the budgets be slashed after the High Court in June 2024 ruled that the decades-long Haredi exemption from military service had no legal basis.<\/p>\n


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\t\t\tAlready a member? Sign in to stop seeing this<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chani Katz, the mother of one of the two infants found dead in an unlicensed ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem daycare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-252561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}