Whether Haredi Yeshivas Are Tantamount To Child Abuse Or Not, No Tax Dollars Should Be Spent On Them

Tax Dollars Shouldn't Be Spent On ANY Religionist Institutions

I have a recollection from when I was in elementary and high school in Brooklyn that some kids went to "the Yeshiva" and that it was a very good school-- like a high end academic school that taught all the stuff we learned in secular school plus the religious stuff from the Torah. In my mind it was one of those special magnet schools for kids... like Bronx High School of Science. Looking back now, I think the school I had in mind was Yeshiva of Flatbush, kind of in my neighborhood. I lived on Avenue P and it was on Avenue J. It was founded as an elementary school in 1927 and a high school was added in 1950 and it was coed, synthesizing Judaic studies and the liberal arts. Kids were prepared-- well prepared in fact-- for the best colleges in the country. I never gave what I thought of as "the Yeshiva" much thought again after my childhood in Brooklyn.

Now it turns out there are plenty of yeshivas in New York-- and not up to the standards of Yeshiva of Flatbush. For example, Yeshiva Derech HaTorah Elementary School and High School opened in 1980 because reactionary parents steeped in ignorance wanted an all boys school completely devoted to Torah study, and firmly committed not to America or American values but to the State of Israel instead. It began operations in 1980 and opened a "high school" in 2006.

There are dozens of ultra-Orthodox and Haredi yeshivas in New York City now-- with tens of thousands of students-- that don't teach history, science, English or math, just superstitious nonsense that ill-prepares young students for life in the modern world. Their communities voted overwhelmingly for Trump both times he ran. The ultra orthodox community votes as a bloc, more so than any other demographic group. They vote, unquestioningly, for whomever their rabbi tells them to vote for. And because of the immense political clout the authorities let them slide when their communities systemically break the law.

A report from Young Advocates for Fair Education asserts, credibly, that "most Hasidic children attend special non-public schools from age 5 or earlier to adulthood or beyond. The language of instruction is Yiddish, the same language the students speak at home, and sometimes includes some Hebrew and/or Aramaic texts. The schools are separated by gender: girls attend a girls’ school, and boys attend a boys’ school, or Yeshiva. Both provide a rigorous religious education intended to build the foundation for a life lived according to Hasidic Jewish principles. Where they differ, however, is in the education they provide beyond this foundation. Girls, who are not allowed to become rabbis learn general subjects such as English, math, science, and social studies during the second half of the school day. Boys, on the other hand, are expected to aspire to become rabbis, so they continue studying Jewish texts, such as the Torah (the Hebrew Bible), Talmud (Jewish law), and other religious subjects for the entire school day... When yeshivas do provide education in secular subjects, it is in just a few grades, for one hour to ninety minutes at the end of the long school day. Typically, instruction is provided in very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing. Teachers are often unqualified-- some barely know English themselves-- and the 'English' class period (as the time devoted to secular studies is called) is often treated as free time for restless students. Textbooks are heavily censored, when they are used at all. High schools for boys typically provide absolutely no secular education. Without secular education, young men lack the requisite skills to obtain employment with a decent income to support themselves and their (often large) families. Furthermore, because most yeshivas choose not to administer the Regents Examinations or to award diplomas, graduates find it nearly impossible to pursue post-secondary education to attain the skills they need. This puts Hasidic families at high risk for poverty and reliance upon government assistance. Approximately 43% of Hasidic households in New York are poor and another 16% are near poor. Hasidic communities in Brooklyn have a greater percentage of families receiving cash assistance, food stamps, public health care coverage, and Section 8 housing vouchers, as compared to Brooklyn and New York City as a whole. The percentage of people in a heavily Hasidic district of Brooklyn utilizing public income support such as cash assistance (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicaid has increased dramatically in the last decade as the population grew rapidly without improvements in education."

On Friday, reporting on an 8 year investigation, Eliza Shapiro and Brian Rosenthal wrote about the unfolding scandal of Hasidic miseducation: 18 Hasidic Schools Failed to Provide Basic Education, New York City Finds. Who cares if they want to keep their children ignorant? Well, NYC, New York State and the federal government spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on these schools. And the products of these schools are generally unemployable and go right onto public assistance. And it’s illegal. The surprise here is that the report was ever issued at all, given the political power of the Hasidic community and the control it exercises over New York politicians— “remarkable,” wrote Shapiro and Rosenthal, “because it was made by a city government that has shied away from criticizing the politically influential Hasidic community. And it stemmed from a long-stalled investigation that spanned eight years and two mayoral administrations and was often hobbled by political interference and bureaucratic inertia.”

If the state Education Department upholds the findings, as is expected, the schools could be required to submit detailed improvement plans and undergo government monitoring. The law, however, does not make clear what consequences the schools might face if they do not commit to improving.

…A spokesman for some of the yeshivas, Richard Bamberger, said in a statement that the Hasidic community “rejects the attempt to measure the efficacy of yeshiva education by applying a skewed set of technical requirements.”

Utilizing a government checklist devised and enforced by lawyers may help explain the state of public education,” he said. “It is designed to obscure rather than illuminate the beauty and success of yeshiva education.”

Advocates for yeshiva reform said they were cautiously optimistic about what the findings would yield.

“We hope that the completion of this investigation compels the city and Mayor Eric Adams to act on behalf of thousands of students who are being deprived of their right to a sound basic education,” said Beatrice Weber, executive director of Yaffed, the group of former students and parents whose complaints gave rise to the investigation.

The action by the city follows reporting by the New York Times that found that scores of all-boys Hasidic schools in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley had denied their students an adequate secular education, and that teachers in some of the schools had used corporal punishment to enforce order.

The Hasidim, a fervently religious segment of the larger Orthodox Jewish community, operate more than 200 gender-segregated schools of varying quality across the state. Boys schools, in particular, provide less secular education than girls schools do, focusing instead on the parsing of religious texts. The city investigation examined complaints about more than two dozen schools in Brooklyn that collectively enroll thousands of children.

After being informed of The Times’ reporting, Mayor Eric Adams, a longtime ally of the city’s Hasidic leaders, promised to complete the investigation into the schools, which began in 2015 under his predecessor, Bill de Blasio.

The results of the city’s investigation were summarized in letters sent to state education officials on Friday. Of the 18 schools the city found to be deficient, officials made a final determination that four were breaking the law. The city recommended that the state make the same determination about the remaining 14. Under the law, the city has the power to make final determinations about some private schools but not others. A spokesman for the state Education Department said officials there were reviewing the city’s recommendations.

City officials also said five other schools they investigated were complying with the law only because of their affiliations with state-approved high school programs. Those schools will not face additional scrutiny.

Just two of the more than two dozen schools the city investigated were found to be in compliance with the law based on the quality of their instruction, echoing preliminary findings issued by the de Blasio administration late in 2019. One of the schools was a yeshiva for girls.

In the letters summarizing the investigation, officials described visiting schools and finding deficiencies in course planning or proof of teacher training. In some cases, officials reported seeing no instruction at all in core subjects.

After multiple visits to Oholei Torah in Crown Heights, one of the largest yeshivas in the state, inspectors said they had found “insufficient evidence that teachers have the appropriate knowledge, skill and disposition to deliver” adequate secular instruction.

At another school, Bnei Shimon Yisroel of Sopron in Williamsburg, inspectors noted a complete lack of English-language instruction in reading, spelling, writing, math, geography, history, civics and science.

…Over the past eight years, the city investigation has faced a number of hurdles. In conducting the review, the de Blasio administration often deferred to a lawyer representing the yeshivas, The Times found, giving the schools advance notice of visits and allowing the lawyer to accompany inspectors.

Some of the schools put off the inspections for years, and city officials later acknowledged that they did not understand what they were supposed to be evaluating in the classrooms they did inspect.

De Blasio also engaged in “political horse-trading” by delaying the release of the preliminary findings on the schools, according to a report by the city’s Department of Investigation. The preliminary findings were released just before Christmas 2019.

In recent years, the state education commissioner, Betty Rosa, has increased enforcement efforts to ensure that yeshivas provide a basic education.

Last fall, Rosa overruled the city’s recommendation that a Hasidic boys school in Brooklyn be found in compliance with the state law. She sharply criticized the city inquiry into that school, found that it was breaking the law and ordered it to come up with an improvement plan.

The New York State Board of Regents also passed new regulations last year, which were advanced by Rosa and laid out consequences for schools that failed to provide a basic education.

Still, those rules had been watered down after years of protest from Hasidic leaders. They were further weakened earlier this year when a judge hearing a lawsuit brought by some yeshivas ruled that the state could not close schools for being noncompliant. The state regulations also give schools a lengthy timeline to show their attempts to make improvements before facing further consequences.

Adams has frequently praised the yeshivas, particularly in recent weeks as the investigation has neared its conclusion. The Department of Education conducted the investigation using its own staff members, but as mayor, Adams controls the department.

“Instead of us focusing on how do we duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivas that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children,” Adams said in May while addressing a crowd of yeshiva administrators.

During a June visit with Hasidic leaders, he offered another strong defense of the schools.

“It’s unfortunate that those outside your community don’t understand that all you want to do is live in peace, educate your children and be able to provide for your community,” Adams said. “I know that because, as I stated, I’m not a new friend, I’m an old friend, and old friends respect each other.”

Then he accepted a plaque from Hasidic leaders thanking him for protecting yeshivas.

Adams in widely considered the worst mayor of New York City since Mob-adjacent William O’Dwyer, who was forced to resign in 1950 in the wake of a massive corruption scandal. The only other mayor of NYC on the same level of sheer horribleness as Adams was Fernando Wood, first elected in 1854, a pro-slavery avatar of authoritarianism and over-the-top corruption, who proposed seceding from the Union at the start of the Civil War.

My friend Jonathan is a historian of New York City and he proposed that both Jimmy Walker (AKA Beau James) and Rudy Giuliani were as bad as Adams but Walker, though incredible corrupt, actually accomplished a lot of good for the City— unlike Adams— and Giuliani’s worst attributes are still playing out at the moment.

In 2015 Pew put together a portrait of the primitive and backward Haredi community that helps explain the yeshiva problem in NYC. “American Jews,” they wrote, “tend to be more highly educated and politically liberal than the U.S. public as a whole, as well as less religiously observant, at least by standard measures such as belief in God and self-reported rates of attendance at religious services. The U.S. Jewish population also is older than the general public and has fewer children. But within the U.S. Jewish community, one important subgroup [about 10%] clearly does not fit the picture of a relatively secular, liberal-leaning, aging population with small families. Unlike most other American Jews, Orthodox Jews tend to identify as Republicans and take conservative positions on social issues such as homosexuality. On average, they also are more religiously committed and much younger than other U.S. Jews, and they have bigger families… [I]n a few ways, Orthodox Jews more closely resemble white evangelical Protestants than they resemble other U.S. Jews. For example, similarly large majorities of Orthodox Jews (83%) and white evangelicals (86%) say that religion is very important in their lives, while only about one-fifth of other Jewish Americans (20%) say the same. Roughly three-quarters of both Orthodox Jews (74%) and white evangelicals (75%) report that they attend religious services at least once a month. And eight-in-ten or more Orthodox Jews (84%) and white evangelicals (82%) say that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God— more than twice the share of other American Jews (35%) who express this belief. Other U.S. Jews lean heavily toward the Democratic Party, but the opposite is true of the Orthodox. As of mid-2013, 57% of Orthodox Jews identified with the Republican Party or said they leaned toward the GOP. Orthodox Jews also tend to express more conservative views on issues such as homosexuality and the size of government; that is, they are more likely than other Jews to say that homosexuality should be discouraged and that they prefer a smaller government with fewer services to a bigger government with more services.”

That's rich since these people exist on public assistance-- both in Brooklyn and in Israel. They contribute least to society-- and consume most... but they oppose few services (for everyone but themselves).