An unprecedented gathering of principals and administrators of all Torah education institutions in New York State was recently held in a show of unity against new regulations by the state’s Department of Education.
Together, they committed to stand united against “our mutual enemies – those who want to infiltrate, and worse yet, contaminate the sacred education of our next generation,” organizers said.
The hearts stirred with the roar of the speakers, urging to grasp to the urgency of the matter. Remarks portrayed the current situation, which holds a scary resemblance to the times of communism, some said.
Should the bill pass, it would impose on our institutions to comply with government regulation which would taint the pure souls of our innocent Kinderlach with the impurities of the modern culture.
Rabbi Naftali Moshe Weiss repeated the words of Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel of Agudas Yisroel: “The Romans are standing outside our educational facilities, threatening to break the barriers. Who knows where we are headed? We must acknowledge that there is a war; we must proceed and win.”
It was emphasized the fact that the responsibility for the war to guard the purity of our Torah education does not rest exclusively upon the shoulders of the PEARLS organization. “We depend on the full cooperation of the principals and administrators of the many Mosdos HaTorah throughout New York,” they said.
Among the educators present from Crown Heights were Rabbi Leibel Newman, dean of the Beth Rivkah Elementary School; Rabbi Hershel Lustig, dean of Oholei Torah boys school; Rabbi Shmuel Dechter, dean of United Lubavitcher Yeshivoth – Ocean Parkway ULYOP); Rabbi Yossi Langsam, Administrator of United Lubavitcher Yeshiva; Rabbi Aron Ginsberg, Director of Chabad Lubavitch of Boro Park and its Gan Yisroel School.
Also present were Rabbi Eli Cohen, Director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council; and Yaacov Behrman, director of a drug prevention program in Crown Heights, the founder of The Jewish Future Alliance.
Rabbi Efraim Mintz, Director of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), the largest Jewish education network in the world, was one of the featured speakers of the event.
Jewish community leaders in Brooklyn have issued a public call to frum residents of the state of New York to oppose an effort that will alter the identity of private Jewish schools.
They suggested submitting a letter to the State Education Department and Board of Regents to express opposition to their plan. Submit a Letter – Make your voice heard.
Was this for all schools or just Chabad? And is it for all schools or just Yeshivos?
Catholic schools, Solomon Schechter, Montessori, etc…they will all lose from this
What exactly is the government trying to impose on us? Can anyone fill us in?
Painting this issue black and white distorts its reality. Yeshivos take public money as a school. If you’d like to be recognized as as school by the government you have to teach certain things certain ways. You have the choice to keep your curriculum exactly as you wish, but you can’t be called a government funded school. The government does not want to stop yeshivos from teaching everything it wants to; it wants to make sure it ALSO teaches certain things. Specifically what a school must teach, and how, and by who, is where it gets really slippery, and THAT’S… Read more »
Every single dollar that the government spends comes from taxpayers. Our community are taxpayers just like any other and we are entitled to receive our own tax money for our own schools as we see fit, not based on some bureaucrat’s arbitrary determination. This is discrimination against our community and we have every right to demand that it be stopped and that the government continue to provide funds to our yeshivas. The yeshivas have decided what they want to teach and how much, and outsiders who do not understand our community, our history and our traditions should mix out and… Read more »
Yeshivas are,not publicly funded by any stretch of the imagination.Thats why we pay thousands of dollars of tuition. The govt has no right to interfere. PLUS the govt is mandating 6 hours of instruction PER DAY in topics such as theater, visial arts, consumer science and explicit education in adult matters. This is way more than math and english.And does not leave any time for religious instruction. During the time of Chanukah some Jews became hellinized aka learned math, science, language and culture. Those Jews no longer exist. The Jewish nation has only survived due to our pure chinuch which… Read more »
Do you know a thing about the Rebbes opinion on secular studies and the contaminating effects on students?
Chas V’sholom that we should have a next generation that is not dependent on food stamps and section 8
New York spends about $24,000 per public school student. The average frum family has about six children, if they were to send them to public school, it would cost the city about $144,000 per year, that is significantly less than the total aid packages provided to the average frum family, even when you include, Food Stamps, Section Eight, Medicare and any other program, it doesn’t come close to even $100,000 per year. Any suggestion that frum communities take more money than the average family in New York is either baseless ignorance or just good old antisemitism.
I refer you to likkutai sichos chelek aleph page 111 where the Rebbe writes that worrying about the future parnassah of a child amd stressing about his education is the equivilant of drowning him in the Nile. 2. Hashem created a world of people who are poor and people who,are rich.The job of the rich is to give to the poor. No matter what you do and what kind of education there will always be rich and poor people. Hashem decides a person pernossah for the year on rosh hashana and Hashems calculations dont involve how much math and science… Read more »
then teach what helps with parnasa, not Hemingway and drama classes. The Walmarts of America are filled with the fruits of the American public education…
Jewish kids need you !
217 kinds of more vaccines are in the making now! The new planned laws wants to target adults as well !
Unite to give us back our religious exempt that was taking from us during an international public scare , and against the constitution of the United States of America!
to claim a phony religious right not to vaccinate is a big danger to our real religious rights. Thats why all the askonim and organizations like nathan lewin (who fought for jewish religious rights all his life) think it endagers our hard fought rights like yarlmuca shabbos kosher food for prisoners etc.
Vaccinations can cause irreparable harm in adults and children, and I believe each family to learn the risks and make a conscious choice on what is best for THEM and THEIR children.
I’m sure you will all figure something out for YOUR child’s Chinuch as so many of us were told the same by all of YOU when OUR children were being tossed out of the Yeshiva System .
As an ordained Anglican minister, I am appalled and disgusted with NYS. So the Jews suffer first but nobody else speaks for them? If I do not stand up for you and your rights, there will be nobody left to stand up for me when my time comes. We have seen this before elsewhere in the not too distant past. NYS will not stop with our Jewish brethren amongst us. The sons and the daughters of the descendants of the Israelites may be first to be attacked, but you will not be the last. From a purely secular standpoint, the… Read more »
Wake up my Jewish Sisters and Brothers! Stop voting for candidates that, once elected, turn around and stab you in the back! Please stop!!
If you take the state’s money, you allow them to dictate whatever they want. Cut the funding, trust in GD and you can make your own rules.
oh, u mean our tax dollars, ok
The way to fight the board of miseducation is to register 150 thousand Yeshiva kids in public school. They will go crazy for space. They have to accept everyone. Then they will fund yeshivas who are saving the city tons of money.