Our yeshivos are once again under attack – this time in Rockland County. Last Tuesday, June 12, a resolution seeking more oversight of non-public schools failed to pass by one vote.
Inspiring this Rockland County resolution was activism by Yaffed (Young Advocates for Fair Education), a group run by former yeshiva students that seeks to force yeshivos to give their students a higher-quality secular education.
The resolution would have urged both the Assembly and Senate of New York State to create a mechanism by which the government could enforce educational standards at non-public schools. Under this mechanism, parents, teachers, and students could file a complaint with the State Education Department if they believed their private school failed to provide a secular education “substantially equivalent” to that offered in public schools.
The state’ education commissioner would then be allowed to investigate the complaint and issue a corrective action plan against any school not offering a sufficient secular education. Among other actions, the commissioner would be able to place a temporary observer in the problematic school as well as cancel student registration altogether for the school.
At the Multi-Services Committee meeting last Tuesday where the resolution was being considered, Rockland County Legislator Aron Wieder spoke against it, arguing that many Jews with yeshiva backgrounds have achieved economic success, quoting a 2015 Pew study that found that 57 percent of charedi Jews make more than $50,000 a year as opposed to just 45 percent of Americans overall.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wieder stated, “this resolution has nothing to do with education. The evidence is right before your eyes. Look around you. Who showed up this evening to support this resolution? It is the same people who have attacked the eruv. The same people who called the chassidic community a cult. And it is the very same people who tolerate – tolerate – labeling the chassidic community as cancerous… This resolution is a continuous, sinister campaign to besmirch and delegitimize chassidic Jews in Rockland County.”
Wieder accused Yaffed of being largely responsible for the resolution, and then took out a 90-page report Yaffed released on the state of education in frum yeshivos. After declaring it “filled with inaccuracies, lies, and innuendos,” Wieder stated, “There is nothing left for me to do but to put this report in its proper place.” Wieder then dropped the report into the nearest trash can.
Following failure of the resolution to pass, its sponsor, Legislator Laurie Santulli, took to Facebook to call Wieder, as well as Phil Soskin, chair of the Multi-Services Committee, “religious zealots” who are “hijacking our government to protect their perceived rights.” She also wrote that Soskin used “Gestapo-like tactics.”
Wieder’s replied: “It’s hard to believe that in the year 2018, Legislator Laurie Santulli would choose to use the words ‘religious zealots’ to characterize observant Jews simply because we hold a different point of view and want to protect religious freedom, the very foundation this great country was built upon. Perhaps even more abhorrent is the use of the term ‘Gestapo-like actions’ of a fellow legislator, who is also Jewish. This is nothing less than shameful and insults the memory of every single victim of the Holocaust, who really were victims of the Gestapo.”