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Photo Credit: Oholei Torah
Students at the Chassidic school Oholei Torah in Brooklyn, N.Y.
(JNS) The New York State and City Education Departments discriminate against Chassidic Jews and threaten their ability to maintain a Jewish-centered education, according to a federal complaint filed on Monday by four yeshivahs in Brooklyn.
Bobover Yeshiva Bnei Zion, Oholei Torah (Chabad), United Talmudical Academy (Satmar), and Yeshiva and Mesivta Arugas Habosem (Tzelemer) argue in the complaint that the city’s and state’s bias “pervades every aspect of their schools.”
“New York categorically refuses to credit any instruction that is a part of their Jewish studies curriculum, despite its academic value and content. It prohibits the yeshivas from teaching required classes with instruction and texts in a foreign language, even though such texts and instruction are central to their heritage and public schools are encouraged to provide foreign language instruction,” according to the complaint, which Yeshiva World News posted.
The city and the state also impose “a government-approved reading list on the schools, for the express purpose of exposing their students ‘to a range of materials that their parents and schools wouldn’t otherwise permit them to read,’” per the complaint. “It interferes in the process by which the yeshivas hire their faculty, and it refuses to accommodate their values as it relates to the gender profile of their classrooms.”
Those practices “would strip the yeshivahs of their essential Jewish character,” the schools state.
Students at the Chassidic school Oholei Torah in Brooklyn, N.Y.“If they can’t devote sufficient time to Jewish studies with instruction in their original language that utilizes primary texts taught by a faculty hand-picked by them to model behavior in conformity with their values and heritage while maintaining the autonomy and authority to select which material students read in a classroom whose composition reflects their principles,” according to the complaint, “then they are no longer Jewish schools.”
New York appears to have acted in a “calculated” way “to make it too difficult for the yeshivahs to fulfill their educational missions and to sustain their heritage,” the complaint adds. “But New York is badly mistaken if it thinks complainants will cave to the pressure and standardize and secularize their schools.”
Among the claims in the complaint is that New York City “flatly refused” to accommodate yeshivah requests in line with their religious beliefs about modesty.
“There is no educational reason why the city must insist on sending an all-female evaluation team to sit in a classroom packed with 13-year-old Chassidic boys,” per the complaint. “Nor does the city’s intransigence comport with the state’s ‘culturally responsive-sustaining education framework’ that is intended ‘to assist in the promotion and perpetuation of cultures.’”
The complaint further notes that the New York State Education Department states that it does not review religious studies and that it “is unaware of any religious texts which alone or in combination would provide sufficient depth and breadth across grade levels to demonstrate substantial equivalence to the instruction in public schools in the required courses of study.”
A “Black Studies Curriculum for New York City Public Schools” is, according to the city, “enriched by the tapestry of cultural histories and perspectives” and includes “the experiences of peoples of African descent in the U.S. and throughout the world,” per the complaint, which adds that “sixth-graders will study Egyptian Nile boats for science credit.”
“New York’s position is that studying Egyptian Nile boats satisfies its educational requirements when students learn about those boats in a public school. But when students learn about Noah’s ark in a yeshiva, the instruction categorically fails to satisfy core educational requirements,” it states. “Likewise, public school students can receive credit for learning about Toussaint L’Ouverture but yeshivah students studying Judah ha-Nasi cannot.”
“Jewish studies taught by yeshivahs is real academic learning which aligns with the learning standards and should be credited,” it adds.
Rabbi Mendel Blau, head of school at Oholei Torah, told JNS that the Chabad school had a positive relationship with the state’s education department until recently.
“Rather than focusing on the quality of education our talmidim receive and their many achievements, the Department of Education appears intent on imposing specific frameworks for how and what we teach,” he said. (The Hebrew word refers to students.)
“Families choose Oholei Torah because they value an education rooted in Torah and guided by the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” he added. “The complaint was filed to ensure that the rights of our yeshivah and its families are protected, and to safeguard the diversity and richness of New York’s educational landscape.”
Oholei Torah, which will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year, has educated thousands of students, according to Blau.
“Our success speaks for itself,” he told JNS. “In a community that offers over eight schools to choose from—without any stigmas or pressures—generations of parents continue to entrust Oholei Torah with their sons’ education, often returning to the same yeshivah where they themselves were educated.”
“This enduring confidence is a testament to the values-driven education and personal development we provide,” he added.
Blau told JNS that he hopes the New York State Department of Education will “embrace a collaborative and respectful stance moving forward, recognizing the value that our unique educational model brings to the community and beyond.”
‘Substantially equivalent’
The complaint makes clear that it is not challenging a 2022 state regulation that requires nonpublic schools to prove that their curricula are “substantially equivalent” to those of public schools. (Another pending suit centers on that standard.)
Schools failing to meet that standard, which is tied to anti-Catholic rules that date back more than a century, must adjust their curricula or risk losing their status and students’ eligibility to attend.
The yeshivahs “are not challenging the 2022 regulations here. None of New York’s discriminatory practices and conduct is condoned by those regulations, let alone required by them,” per the complaint. “Rather, New York is using the leverage it thinks it has as a result of conducting those reviews to impose its secular views on these Jewish schools.”
“When the nanny state and the secular state converge, it is no surprise that government finds no value in Jewish education and no regard for the educational choices that parents make for their children,” the complaint adds.
“This is not a challenge to the regulations that were passed a few years ago. The complaint makes that clear,” Avi Schick, a partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath and attorney for the yeshivas, told JNS.
“What this does attack is the state and city drive to standardize and secularize the education, philosophy and mission of these yeshivahs,” he said. “What we have seen are bureaucrats focused on making sure that yeshivahs don’t graduate what government thinks are a bunch of narrow-minded Jews of the past. That’s very troubling, and not only is it troubling, it’s illegal.”
‘Essential Jewish character’
The Jewish private schools claim in their complaint that under the guise of “substantial equivalency,” state educational officials have discriminated against Jewish studies; failed to recognize the importance of certain language instruction (Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic); and imposed a state-approved reading list. The state has also interfered in faculty hiring and refuses “to respect cultural and religious classroom norms of the yeshivahs,” they add.
New York “penalizes the yeshivahs for any non-English instruction. It refuses to consider courses—again, for substantial equivalency purposes—that include instruction or texts in a language other than English,” per the complaint. “That means lessons taught in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic or using texts in those languages are considered as if they have zero educational or academic value.”
“That is absurd as a matter of pedagogy and improper as a matter of law,” it adds.
New York State and City are engaging in “what can be described as ‘lawfare’ against yeshivahs, unfairly targeting them with regulations that undermine the independence of religious education,” a leader in the Bobov Chassidic community told JNS.
“Our goal is simple—to preserve the right to raise and educate our children in a religious setting, as has been done for generations,” said the leader, who spoke to JNS on the condition of anonymity.
“Yeshivahs have a proven track record of producing responsible, successful and productive members of society,” he added. “Our graduates contribute positively to their communities, have low crime rates and build strong, values-driven families.”
Michael Helfand, a professor and chair in law and religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in Malibu, Calif., told JNS that the allegations in the complaint suggest that New York State education officials have targeted Jewish institutions unfairly.
“The government has the right, authority and obligation to enforce educational standards that promote core objectives, like making sure every child gets an education that makes them financially self-sufficient and capable of being engaged citizens,” according to Helfand, who is also a Yale Law School visiting professor and a senior legal adviser to the Teach Coalition, a project of the Orthodox Union.
“The problem arises if the government starts applying things differently to the Jewish community,” Helfand said. “That’s the underlying allegation here.”
The allegation that the state is being driven by Jewish bias owes to a “gap between what the standards require and how they’re being implemented” across a wide range of Jewish schools, according to Helfand.
“If it were true that government officials, when trying to implement important educational standards, decided that they would be systematically more skeptical of Jewish institutions, that would be undermining Jewish equality in the United States,” he said. “This is something that goes to the very heart of the American project—to what extent are Jews full-fledged citizens here in the United States?”
“We don’t know the answer to that question, as it is a complaint with allegations,” he added. “But that is what is at stake here.”
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