Orthodox Yeshivas Decry New Guidelines For NY Private Schools

NEW YORK CITY — Orthodox yeshiva leaders are up in arms over potential new guidelines for teaching secular subjects in New York's private schools.

All private academies, including New York City's yeshivas, are required to provide education "substantially equivalent" to that in public schools — and the rules unveiled last week by State Department of Education officials aim to fulfill that goal.

Many critics, including those within Orthodox Jewish communities, argue yeshivas are doing their students a disservice by not teaching the basics of many subjects.

But many yeshiva leaders have long bristled over what they view as secular infringements on religious education. Agudath Israel of America, a group that advocates for yeshivas, criticized the guidelines and argued they failed to value religious studies, some of which are quite rigorous, as part of an equivalent education.

"For a yeshiva to be judged on the quality of its educational program without taking into account these religious studies would make a cruel mockery of the review process," a statement from the group reads. "By ignoring this essential component of yeshiva education, the proposed new regulations may result in yeshivas having to make major changes to their school day schedules to be deemed substantially equivalent. This is entirely unacceptable."

The rules arose are only the latest wrinkle in a debate over education in yeshivas.

As Naftuli Moster, founder and executive director of YAFFED, a group that advocates for ultra-Orthodox children's education rights, put it at a recent news conference: “Hasidic teenagers of high school age typically have never read a novel, do not understand the rudiments of science, have no sense of history or proficiency in English," he said, according to YAFFED's Twitter account.

“I was a student in one of these very schools…I had no sense of the recent history of my people, either, in fact, I only learned about Ellis Island and its connection to my own people from accidentally visiting it at the age 20..."

Moster's group helped marshal a complaint that brought about the potential changes for yeshivas. He told the New York Daily News, however, that the proposed rules had "loopholes" that need to be closed.

But others within the community were fiercely opposed for other reasons.

One Orthodox leader — Rabbi Teitelbaum, grand rabbi of Kiryas Joel — evoked the Holocaust as he criticized the guidelines, New York Jewish Week first reported. The Orthodox Jewish community came to the United States to preserve their traditions, he wrote in a statement.

"Should we attempt to adapt the proposed guidelines, our parent body will revolt and create their own education system providing them what they're looking for," he wrote, according to a report published by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.