SCHOOL EXODUS
Local Orthodox parents are yanking kids out of yeshiva - and getting blackballed for it
Some ultra-Orthodox Jewish families have yanked their children out of yeshivas, and risked being shunned by their communities, to give their kids a chance at a better secular education.
The efforts come even as New York state last month announced new guidelines to beef up the nonreligious curriculum within the yeshiva system.
One father raising his son in a Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood enrolled the 6-year-old in a co-ed Jewish academy — something almost unheard of in the ultra-Orthodox world — for the 2018-19 school year. As a result, the father claims, he was fired from his development job after someone in the community complained. He explained that his boss was sympathetic but couldn’t risk losing business.
“I was there a long time,” he said. “But I knew the risk when I pulled my son out.”
After three years at yeshiva, the boy remained deficient in secular areas including basic reading, said the Brooklyn dad.
“Now he’s learning. And [being] creative — his new school fosters that,” said the father who, like other parents interviewed by The Post, asked that his name be withheld for fear of further community retaliation. “In yeshiva it was, ‘follow the rules, stay in place, and don’t stand out.’
“This [new] education will give my son a fair chance.”
As part of the state’s ruling, the New York City Department of Education is giving yeshivas three years to clean up their act, demanding that the religious schools ensure a curriculum “substantially equivalent” to that of public schools. But some Orthodox officials are resistant.
In a speech on Wednesday in East Williamsburg, Satmar Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum called for defiance of regulations.
“If the commissioner of education wants to fix education in the state of New York, he can go to the public schools and fix the education being offered there,” said Teitelbaum in a speech translated from Yiddish. “The Jewish nation will not bow or give in to the wicked, not even the commissioner of education . . . we will go out to war against the commissioner in every way.”
Risk of religious and community ostracization drove another ultraOrthodox father to recently move his family from Rockland County to another state, enrolling his sons in a secular online school. At yeshiva, “It was crazy long hours and they were not getting an education,” he said of the 10-hour-plus school day, largely focused on Jewish studies.
If they had quit yeshiva but stayed in their Orthodox community, he said, his sons “would be looked upon as second class” and possibly have diminished marriage prospects. It has, he admitted, driven a wedge between him and his wife, who is scared of “rocking the boat.”
The Rockland County father had enrolled his sons in yeshiva to meet the status quo, but began to question things after he realized just how insufficient his own yeshiva education had been. He knows other parents who are also “frustrated” but said that most are scared to speak out.
“By the time people realize [there are other options] . . . they’re locked into the community,” he said.
Naftuli Moster is the founder of YAFFED, an advocacy group pushing for secular education in yeshivas, and he is bothered by the threeyear timeline for reform.
“It’s so long,” Moster said. “The guidelines themselves are designed to be strong. But we’re concerned the yeshivas are going to push to weaken the requirements.”
Running out of time, another New York City family removed their 17year-old son from yeshiva a few years ago, after the teen started skipping classes out of boredom.
“[My son’s] teachers in yeshiva couldn’t tolerate him asking questions — he was just trying to learn,” said the father, who works as a consultant. When his son asked to leave, the NYC dad felt he had two choices: “We could have either taken him to [medical] professionals to medicate him and subjugate him, and force him into the [yeshiva] system. Or we could give him something to thrive on.”
Now his son is in his senior year at an all-boys Jewish high school, spending five hours a day on secular subjects alongside religious teachings. The teen scored more than 1500 on his SATs and is applying to college. While the family still lives in a Hasidic community, the father admits they have been cut off from old friends: “We were shunned socially for what we did.”
According to the Brooklyn father of the 6-year-old, “change has to come from within — people leaving because they want more for their children. People asked me, ‘How can you do this?’ But it’s not antireligion. I want my son to have individuality.”
We could have medicated him and forced him into [yeshiva]. Or we could give him something to thrive on. — NYC dad who removed his ‘bored’ son from yeshiva