Ultra-Orthodox kids deserve better
When I visited a brandnew girls’ yeshiva in Williamsburg as the governor’s education adviser in 2015, the principal was eager to show me the school’s new lab, with a desk-high ledge all the way around the room. I was confused for a moment, knowing that this school would never allow students to use computers. Then the principal told me proudly that this state-of-the-art facility was soon to be filled with sewing machines, a training room for girls on their journey to becoming homemakers.
In the first episode of “My Unorthodox Life,” the new reality show on Netflix, we meet Julia Haart, who grew up in a New York ultra-Orthodox community. She knew all about sewing, but was trapped in an arranged marriage with no other education that would allow her to support herself. She left her community and managed to parlay her seamstress knowhow (and obvious other talents) into becoming the CEO of Elite World Modeling and the designer of the e1972 line of clothing. Now, from her 10,000-square-foot Tribeca penthouse, she advocates for freedom from the confines of her stifling religious upbringing, often expressed in her choices about what to wear and how much skin to expose.
But thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews cannot overcome their lack of secular education to ascend to such heights. For most people, the freedom to make choices relies on getting an education that provides them with the foundational knowledge and skills to navigate a complex world.
Most American Jews value education. But in New York, too many ultra-Orthodox communities reject secular education along with values. Community members have told me that education as others define it is not necessary to their way of life. Although many Jewish schools offer both rigorous secular and religious education, some do not.
In Hasidic and certain other ultra-Orthodox institutions, it is not unusual for boys’ schools to offer just 90 minutes of “English studies” four days per week, at the end of a long day dominated by Talmud, Torah and ritual. Typically, these boys finish their secular education at age 13 with rudimentary arithmetic skills and virtually no knowledge of science, history or literature. Their primary language remains Yiddish and they have minimal English reading and writing skills. The academic goals are limited. As one principal told me, “We want them to know who the president is and if there was a hurricane somewhere.”
Girls, destined for motherhood (often in arranged marriages at a young age), typically get slightly more secular training than their brothers: They learn more English so that they can take kids to doctors’ offices and do shopping — but they are also essentially uneducated in literature, science, history and math. They’ve often never read a secular book, nor have they read the more challenging religious texts the boys study, as those are off-limits for girls. These schools control the educations, destinies, and choices of tens of thousands of students. Due to the high birthrate in the ultra-Orthodox community, the majority of Jewish children in New York City are now Orthodox.
For some, the enclave of ultra-Orthodoxy provides a cocoon of safety and support. But as a result of their poor secular education, in certain ultra-Orthodox communities in New York, the Hasidic ones, more than half the community lives in or near poverty and, in addition to government assistance, they rely on each other for their basic needs. For those who want to experience a life separate from the community, lack of education is often an insurmountable obstacle.
As producer of a new documentary, “An Unorthodox Education,” I’ve helped chronicle the plight of those who have chosen to leave the community and their extraordinary battles to compensate for their lack of preparation not just for college or career, but for basic tasks: how to use a computer, fill out a job application.
We must urge elected officials and political leaders to ensure that all children can find their own paths as adults. As the film explains, New York State law requires all children in private schools to receive an education substantially equivalent to that offered in public schools. When that law is flouted — when students in some ultra-Orthodox yeshivas finish school without a diploma and sometimes unable to write their own names in English or identify what continent we live on — we are restricting the freedom of a generation of Jewish children. One such child appears in our film. Joseph ran away from his home as a teenager and is now struggling to survive with no skills. He’s living in shelters, not penthouses.
The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children does not extend to depriving those kids of a basic education. The Haarts are a one-in-a-million story; the fate of tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who cannot read or write is far more bleak.