Politicians in New York City and New York State eagerly seek the endorsement of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community because it tends to vote as a bloc, favoring whoever supports their interests. One of their highest goals is to make sure that their religious schools are free of any state mandates. Andrew Yang has emerged as the leading defender of the yeshivas and their “right” not to provide a secular education.
An investigation of yeshivas by New York City officials that started in 2015 wasn’t completed until 2019. The investigation was prompted as a result of complaints by a group of yeshiva graduates called YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education), led by Naftuli Moser. YAFFED said that some yeshivas failed to teach basic secular subjects such as English, science, and mathematics, leaving their students unprepared to enter secular society. YAFFED accused Mayor de Blasio of slowing down the investigation to placate his allies in the politically powerful Orthodox Jewish community.
In 2018, the New York Times ran an opinion piece by a graduate of a yeshiva complaining that all of his schooling had been taught in Yiddish or Hebrew, leaving him with no skills for the modern economy.
I was raised in New York’s Hasidic community and educated in its schools. At my yeshiva elementary school, I received robust instruction in Talmudic discourse and Jewish religious law, but not a word about history, geography, science, literature, art or most other subjects required by New York State law. I received rudimentary instruction in English and arithmetic — an afterthought after a long day of religious studies — but by high school, secular studies were dispensed with altogether.
The language of instruction was, for the most part, Yiddish. English, our teachers would remind us, was profane.
During my senior year of high school, a common sight in our study hall was of students learning to sign their names in English, practicing for their marriage license. For many, it was the first time writing their names in anything but Yiddish or Hebrew.
When I was in my 20s, already a father of three, I had no marketable skills, despite 18 years of schooling. I could rely only on an ill-paid position as a teacher of religious studies at the local boys’ yeshiva, which required no special training or certification. As our family grew steadily — birth control, or even basic sexual education, wasn’t part of the curriculum — my then-wife and I struggled, even with food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers, which are officially factored into the budgets of many of New York’s Hasidic families.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, reported that the yeshivas “receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding, through federal programs like Title I and Head Start and state programs like Academic Intervention Services and universal pre-K. For New York City’s yeshivas, $120 million comes from the state-funded, city-run Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidy program: nearly a quarter of the allocation to the entire city.”
When the state or city says that the yeshivas should provide an education for their students that is “substantially equivalent” to secular education, their leaders cry “separation of church and state!” But, inconsistently, their representatives in the legislature actively lobby for tuition tax credits and vouchers. They want the state’s money but not its oversight of the education they provide.
Only two out of 28 yeshivas investigated by the city’s Department of Education were deemed to be providing an education “substantially equivalent“ to that given at secular public schools, with another nine on their way to providing it, according to the city’s report on the long-delayed investigation into failing yeshivas.
The group Young Advocates for Fair Education, or YAFFED, lodged complaints against 39 yeshivas it deemed failing in 2015, which is when the city ostensibly began its investigation. After years of delay, the city narrowed its scope to only 28 of the schools. The DOE finished its visits to those schools this year, according to a letter schools Chancellor Richard Carranza sent to Shannon Tahoe, the interim state education commissioner, on
Out of those 28 schools, the DOE said only two were found to be substantially equivalent to legally mandated secular education standards; nine schools were found to be moving toward substantial equivalency; 12 were cited as “developing in their provision of substantially equivalent instruction,” and another five were deemed “underdeveloped in demonstrating or providing evidence of substantially equivalent instruction.
Some yeshivas refused to allow the investigators to enter.
Now comes an election for Mayor in 2021, and Andrew Yang is a prominent candidate.
Yang has made a point of siding with the Orthodox community and defending their “right” to ignore state curriculum standards (e.g., teaching secular subjects like mathematics and science in English, not Hebrew or yiddish). Consequently, he has become a favorite among the leaders of the Ultra-Orthodox community. Yang has made a point of his support for parent’s freedom to choose any kind of education they want.
As other candidates danced around the subject, Yang offered a blunt defense of the embattled Jewish private schools. “I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum unless that curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people’s career trajectories and prospects,” Yang said.
He added, pointing to his own month-long Bible course at a Westchester prep school: “I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning.”
The stance rankled some education advocates, who pointed to a 2019 report that found just a fraction of yeshivas were providing students with adequate secular instruction. Other observers described the comments, which echoed a similar answer recently given to The Forward by Yang, as a transparent attempt to curry favor with the Hasidic voting bloc.
This is a transparently disingenuous response, since studying the Bible as literature for a month is very different from religious indoctrination and studying almost all subjects in Hebrew or Yiddish. Certainly this does not prepare young people to enter the modern economy with the skills they need. (Apparently, Yang attended public high school in Somers, New York, in Westchester County, then the private Phillips Exeter in Massachusetts.)
“It’s like a horse race where one horse comes from last to near the top,” one leader in the Orthodox community, who asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly, told Gothamist. While Eric Adams and Scott Stringer were previously seen as the front-runner candidates, “nobody expected we’d even look at this guy,” the source added of Yang. “All of a sudden it’s ‘Whew!’ He’s certainly in that first tier pool of candidates.”
On Twitter, both the Satmar and Bobov, two of Brooklyn’s most influential Hasidic dynasties, have referred to Yang’s comments as “refreshing.” The head of New York government relations for Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization for Haredi Orthodox synagogues, also commended the candidate on Thursday.
The recent comments mark a shift from an answer Yang gave to Politico last month, in which he suggested that schools not meeting baseline standards should be investigated. In the time since, the outlet noted, the campaign has hired the Borough Park District Leader David Schwartz as director of Jewish Community Outreach.
“The things he’s saying echo with great precision what the pro-yeshiva groups are saying,” another source in the Orthodox community told Gothamist. “He’s very carefully putting these talking points out there.”
Yang defended his stance at a forum moderated by Randi Weingarten:
Gracie Mansion hopeful Andrew Yang on Thursday mounted an extraordinary defense of the Big Apple’s embattled yeshiva schools, telling a Jewish mayoral forum that the city has little business “prescribing” secular curriculum to the religious institutions.
Yang made the comments during a virtual New York City mayoral forum hosted by the New York Jewish Agenda after moderator Randi Weingarten asked him: “As mayor, how would you ensure that every child receives what the New York state Constitution calls a sound basic education on secular topics, including not just the public schools, but including the yeshivas and other religious schools.”
“When I looked at the yeshiva question, Randi, the first thing I wanted to see were — what were the outcomes, what is the data,” Yang responded.
The tech entrepreneur and a leading Democratic front-runner in the mayoral race, continued, “I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum unless that curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people’s career trajectories and prospects afterwards.”
Yang’s remarks fly in the face of a damning 2019 report by the Department of Educationon yeshiva schools in the city that found that just two of 28 provided adequate secular education to their students.
“If a school is delivering the same outcomes, like, I do not think we should be prescribing rigid curricula,” said Yang who then spoke of his experience in high school.
“I will also say that when I was in public school we studied the Bible for a month. Bible as literature,” he said. “If it was good enough for my public school, I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning.”
Andrew Yang is a cynical opportunist.
Yang is a wealthy, smart, ambitious politician. During the 2020 campaign his supporters called themselves “The Yang Gang.” I recall he made a negative comment about unions at one of the debates, although his website contained pro-union pronouncements. Yang is another opportunistic politician.
Democrats in New York have made a deal with the devil, the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community. As a party Democrats have tended to look the other way to the wrong doings of this group. One of Bill Clinton’s last pardons before he left office was to pardon four Hasidic men that had bilked the government out of tens of millions of dollars. In return for their block vote Democrats overlook the many petty, illegal doings of this group that includes the marriage of girls as young as twelve to fifty year old men.
In the 2020 campaign some of the ultra-Orthodox sects voted for Trump. While they did not like him personally, they liked his pro-life position and his support of public money for private schools.https://religionnews.com/2020/11/02/orthodox-jews-may-not-like-trump-but-theyre-voting-for-him/
“Pro-life” equates to the belief that women should be 2nd class citizens.
Oh .. Yang again. Wish he would go away. Yes, he does “pander.” BEWARE.
Yang’s pandering to the chusids has sent him below the bottom of my and my wife’s ranked-choice ballots. Gain some ultra-Orthodox, lose a semi-observant Conservative boychik and a shikse goddess….
Andrew Yang attended Brown and Columbia. He won’t stand up for the same educational opportunities for haredi yeshiva students.
Clearly a case of elitism and brazen hypocrisy.
Diane This reading is way outside my normal range, so I am glad to have read some of the arguments here. Thanks for posting it.
From my admittedly shallow view, my first thought from reading the below paragraph is that to frame the argument in its outcomes of “career” is on its face, ignorant of soooooo many things, especially considering the many facets of the tensional relationship between the institutions of family, government, education, and religion in any culture, but especially in a democratic culture. CBK
“As other candidates danced around the subject, Yang offered a blunt defense of the embattled Jewish private schools. ‘I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum unless that curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people’s career trajectories and prospects,’ Yang said.”
I know southern Protestant schools that provide little or no real instruction for students. So far, however, they have not been funded by state money.
Those Bible schools get public money in Florida and Louisiana and every other state with vouchers.
And if the Governor of Tennessee has his way, the Southern Protestant schools and all other religious schools will get publicly funded vouchers.
And the Supreme Court will give its assent.
True that. I read today where a local state senator was offering a bill to eliminate early voting. They want government by minority.
Republicans across the country are reacting to Trump’s ranting by offering legislation to curtail voting by mail and other strategies to limit voting.
“Andrew Yang is a cynical opportunist.”
This kind of clarity is utterly bracing and refreshing to me. If this man wants to pander to what is essentially a Counter-Enlightenment project, then he should prepare himself for more of this kind of candor. Thank goodness!
I live in NYC, a voter in the upcoming mayoral primary – I tweeted, “I’m deleting Yang from my five,” Ranked Choice Voting allows for you to five candidates, his acolytes defended, other agreed w/ me, Twitter is the forum, if you live in NYC make you voice heard ….
Are the Amish in the same category as the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community as far as schooling and education goes? They have their own schools and separate curricula, I guess. Here is a difference between the Amish and the Hasidic: Instead, the Amish stress the basics, such as reading, math, writing, and penmanship. They are also taught some history, geography, social studies, art, and science. Students learn three languages in school, including Pennsylvania Dutch, High German, and English. Each of these classes are designed to help students be successful in their Amish communities, as well as equipped to do business with the outside world. end quote
https://www.amishvillage.com/blog/education-in-the-amish-community/
Off topic, I got this in my email this A.M., from the NYT morning briefing: Its elementary schools [Texas’s] and middle schools perform well above average in reading and math (and notably ahead of California’s), according to the Urban Institute. end quote
Is this actually true about Texas or just manipulated blarney?
Joe,
I am not sure. The Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York votes as a bloc. They have political power. At one point, when the State Senate was evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the deciding vote on every issue was an Orthodox Senator. So he negotiated for everything his community wanted. In 2020, the Orthodox went for Trump because of his support for school vouchers. I don’t know about the Amish and whether they wield the same political clout.
A powerful voting block
The Amish are a force
To reckon with, of course
The Amish wield the horse
And buggies do endorse
I just looked at the 2019 NAEP scores, which compare states.
The scores of California and Texas are almost identical in 4th and 8th grades
Both states underfund their public schools.
Check it out:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2017_highlights/
Thanks, Diane, for both responses. I don’t think the Amish participate in the political system at all, so they have a lot less clout.
As for Texas, ha, no better than California.
Many states leave the Amish alone as they do not use public resources. They largely have a self-contained society. Last year I was shocked to see a “buggy brigade” in Lancaster, PA, supporting TRUMP. I had never seen the Amish take a political stand before.
Retired Teacher….Could they have been Mennonites? They are a more “liberal” sect of the Amish but use some modern conveniences along with holding employment in the general society. The true Amish would never take a political stance.
Anecdotally, on a national television show former Amish students criticized the education they received in terms of preparedness for
life.
The Urban Institute changed from its liberal roots. John Arnold became a funder.
At least the Amish are not demanding hundreds of millions to subsidize their schools.
Gates gave $7.5 mil. to the Urban Institute in 2019.
Amish have no political clout
A powerful voting block
The Amish are a force
To reckon with, of course
The Amish wield the horse
And buggies do endorse
The Ultra Orthodox have no kids in public schools but dominate the school board in the most students of color school district – they use school district $$ as a piggy bank
NYCLU WANTS EAST RAMAPO CONTRACT VOIDED — Journal News’ Thomas C. Zambito: “The New York Civil Liberties Union is urging state officials to void a $15.3 million contract the East Ramapo school board awarded last month to a Monsey non-profit led by a religious leader with a pivotal role in choosing candidates elected to the board. The NYCLU says the board ignored the concerns of a state monitor and a possible conflict of interest when it awarded the contract on Jan. 19 to the Community Education Center (CEC), whose executive director is Rabbi Hersh Horowitz. Horowitz emerged as a behind-the-scenes player in board elections during a voting rights trial last year in White Plains federal court, which pitted the district against the Spring Valley chapter of the NAACP.”
The East Ramapo, NY, story is a scandal. The NY Board of Regents should step in and protect the education of black and brown students, whose funds are controlled by ultra-orthodox who don’t send their kids to public schools. The Regents did something earlier, didn’t they, Peter?
I’m not sure when the logic of a slippery slope stops being a logical fallacy. City streets in some urban cities have experience increasing of dumping of garbage. At one point a little garbage dumping stopped being a small event and the amount of small dumping added up and became a health hazard and problem for urban city governments. Urban garbage dumping is no longer a logic fallacy with the behavior have grown from few examples to many urban cities having a problem with garbage dumping.
I thought Andrew Yang might be defended by arguing that Dr. Diane Ravitch was guilty of “slippery slope fallacy in her posting “New York City: Andrew Yang Panders to Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Community”.
The number of private schools, and privately managed charter schools, that currently exist in this Nation funded with taxpayers education dollars are relatively small compared to public schools that are funded by taxpayers’ education dollars and governed by each states’ education code, that is suppose to be secular.
And because the number of publicly funded privately managed schools is relatively small compared to public schools, one could argue Dr. Ravitch committed a “slippery slope fallacy” by arguing small number of government education dollars is a sign of a growing problem.
The government is suppose to provide an education without religious indoctrination. Betsy DeVos’s agenda of government education dollars to be spent on vouchers that provide parent choice to spend government vouchers on religious schools should not come with expectation of no government regulation but government funding. The size of government money should not matter, Any Government money means government regulation.
Andrew Yang argued that he as a student studied, (I assumed the Protestant bible) as literature. I missed his point he made in mentioning his Bible study in public school. Surely, he was not advocating for religious institutions that receive government education dollars be to only teach religious text as literature?
Logic of government dollars come with government regulation is at play in the including of religious schools in the voucher movement. And as government taxpayer education dollars slide down the voucher slippery slope, so does government regulation. History has shown government regulation accompanying government money to be a reality and not a logical fallacy.
They assigned monitors w/o any authority.. maybe w/ Betty’s appointment they’ll act more forcefully
“The language of instruction was, for the most part, Yiddish.”
The Yid and the Yang?