New York State vs. the Yeshivas

In recent years, New York State has become the scene of an increasingly fierce battle over the provision of secular education in ḥasidic boys’ schools (yeshivas), a battle that brings to the surface many of the latent contradictions in liberal society. These contradictions, because of the ḥasidic community’s relentless growth, will soon enough have to be arbitrated one way or another both in New York and wherever else ḥasidic Jews can be found.

While there had been rumblings for decades about the quality of the secular education that ḥasidic yeshivas offer their students, the issue became one of state-wide political concern in New York after the founding of an advocacy group, Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED), in 2011. The leaders of this organization—young Jewish men and women who had grown up in the ḥasidic community and made the decision to leave—alleged that they had been personally failed by an education that left them ill-equipped to pursue careers of their choice, and that many yeshivas were in flagrant breach of New York State laws requiring education provided by private schools to be “substantially equivalent” to that offered in the public-education system.

YAFFED successfully lobbied the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to change its laissez-faire policy and enforce rules that would require yeshivas to teach the full secular curriculum—which includes social studies and computer skills as well as English, math, and science—or face legal sanctions. The ḥasidic community has responded in two ways: by challenging the sanctions in the state senate, and by filing legal challenges alleging that the state’s behavior infringes on its First- and Fourteenth- Amendment rights. In so doing it has successfully leveraged a coalition of Jewish and non-Jewish religious schools for whom the proposed regulations pose no direct threat but who are concerned about potential long-term ramifications for the independence of religious schools. Most legal experts concur that these constitutional challenges to state regulation of ḥasidic education will ultimately prove unsuccessful, but the wheels of justice grind slowly and the community is counting on a mayoral or gubernatorial candidate looking for the support of the ḥasidic bloc to save the day before that happens.