“Now that they have been exposed, they should do the only decent thing they can do: issue a public apology to the yeshiva community.”

By World Israel News Staff

A spate of recent reports in The New York Times on the Orthodox Jewish school system in New York have ignited widespread criticism due to allegations of inaccuracies, a lack of context, and outright falsehoods, the most recent of which was an email which proves the so-called newspaper of record was aware that data it was citing was incorrect.

At the heart of the controversy is a NYT article published on December 29, 2022, authored by Brian Rosenthal, which claimed an unusually high percentage of students at Brooklyn yeshivas were recipients of special education services. The Times ignored appeals from numerous yeshivas about the inaccuracy of the figures before the story went to print.

Adding fuel to the fire is an email, reportedly sent by Rosenthal to the State Education Department, which suggests he was aware that the data underpinning his claims were flawed. In the email, he purportedly pointed out inconsistencies in the state’s data, where the recorded number of special education students exceeded total enrollment for several schools.

The revelation of this email has amplified the controversy, with many within the yeshiva community viewing it as evidence of the newspaper’s lack of journalistic integrity in this matter. Rabbi Moshe Dovid Niederman, a member of Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools (PEARLS) executive board, has called for the Times to issue a public apology to the yeshiva community.

“This proves what we and the Orthodox community have been saying all along,” Niederman said. “The Times wasn’t objectively reporting facts about yeshivas but was pushing its anti-yeshiva narrative. Now that they have been exposed, they should do the only decent thing they can do: issue a public apology to yeshivas and the yeshiva community.”

Education experts consulted by Yeshiva World News (YWN) suggested that the state’s data, which the NYT relied on, likely represented cumulative figures rather than annual student numbers – which explains the reason why, as Rosenthal’s own clarifying email to the state asked, the number students “classified as special ed is higher than their overall enrollment.” The experts argued that the data may have included students who had received services in previous years but had since graduated or left the school.

As Attorney Avi Schick told YWN, the incident could potentially lead to legal scrutiny of the Times, highlighting the serious implications of this ongoing situation.

“It is normally very difficult to establish that a journalist acted with actual malice. But the revelation of this email demonstrates that Rosenthal knew the data he was relying on wasn’t accurate,” Schick said. “That is the kind of thing that can give a lawsuit legs and allow it it get to the discovery phase where the Times would have to disclose its own internal communications.”

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“What’s next, a demand to purge Jewish prayer books of age-old prayers chanted daily for 2,000 years that emphasize the dream of a People yearning to return to Zion and Jerusalem?”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

South African politicians and Jewish groups have slammed a call by a local parliamentarian earlier this month to deregister a Jewish school because it is pro-Israel.

Wearing a keffiyah, Aishah Cassiem, a member of the the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a South African pan-Africanist and Marxist–Leninist political party, called for the local Herzlia High School’s removal from the education system on June 15 during a parliamentary debate in the Western Cape Provincial Legislature.

Her demand followed an interview given by Herzlia’s director of Jewish identity and community, Geoff Cohen, to an Israeli television station. Cohen discussed the Zionist education that his students were receiving and said that 22% of the school’s graduates visit Israel after graduating, adding that some also serve in the IDF.

This was unacceptable to Cassiem, who claimed during the debate that the school “is aligned to the apartheid state of Israel and encouraging learners to partake in apartheid” activities “and inhumane practices” by “encourag[ing]” students to join the IDF after completing 12th grade.

Herzlia was allowed to be Jewish, but not Zionist, she said.

Cassiem’s call did not go unchallenged in the plenum. During the debate, Ferlon Christians of the rival African Christian Democratic Party said, “It’s absolutely shameful that a question like this was posed in this house. This school, Herzlia, is doing exceptionally well, with 100% pass rate and more than 95% of its students obtaining university exemption. The (ruling African National Congress party) ANC will stoop so low to bring [the school] to this house. Why?”

“Don’t use schoolchildren for your political agenda,” he added. “You have no right. I had the privilege to visit the school not so long ago, and I’ll go back and learn from them how we improve our education system because they are an example.”

Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape SAJBD) Chairperson Adrienne Jacobson said her organization was “deeply concerned by the EFF’s latest public attack” and would not “stand by and allow this political grandstanding to continue…. This is just the latest unsuccessful attempt by anti-Israel lobbyists to intimidate the Cape Town Jewish community.”

She then called on government and religious community leaders “to condemn the continuing attacks” on the community.

Others labeled Cassiem’s attack as antisemitism, including the country’s Zionist Federation head.

“It’s a travesty that antisemites are again finding ways to target people of the Jewish faith in South Africa under the thin veil of anti-Zionism, and it’s shameful that they are singling out a Jewish school to promote their hatred,” said National Chairman Rowan Polovin.

“Instead of uniting and building bridges across all racial and religious groupings in South African society, these extremists wish to divide. Herzlia, as a Jewish school, promotes religious tolerance, non-racialism, understanding, and charity – the very antithesis to what these groupings are about,” he said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean, Abraham Cooper, called Cassiem “another bigot who tries to hide her antisemitism under the banner of anti-Zionism. What’s next, a demand to purge Jewish prayer books of age-old prayers chanted daily for 2,000 years that emphasize the dream of a People yearning to return to Zion and Jerusalem?”

David Maynier, Education Member of the Legislature’s Executive Council, had a different take on Cassiem’s demand. He charged that the call was “an attempt to use a school” in a “disgraceful attempt to deflect attention from [ANC’s] support of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.”

“We confirm that the school won’t be deregistered,” he told the South African Jewish Report.

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“Another week, another front-page attack on Orthodox Jews – this time targeting children with special needs and their families,” the statement reads.

By JNS

Agudath Israel of America in a statement on Thursday, criticized the New York Times for its latest story which accuses Hasidic Jews of taking advantage of a policy designed to make special education more available.

“Another week, another front-page attack on Orthodox Jews – this time targeting children with special needs and their families,” the statement reads.

In its latest story, the Times alleges that private companies serving Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish schools are now collecting over $350 million a year in government money in exchange for special education services that are not always needed or even provided. Yeshivas have reportedly urged parents to apply for medical prescriptions and submit requests for aid on behalf of their children.

This story marks the latest in a series by the paper that began in September, which reported that yeshivas were providing little to no secular education as mandated by state law.

“The New York Times confirms, for the 13th time in just three and a half months, its obsession with spreading misinformation and demonizing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews,” the statement continues. At the same time, antisemitic attacks specifically targeting the visibly Jewish in New York City – the ones targeted by the New York Times – have risen exponentially.”

This statement marks the latest instance where Agudath Israel of America has blasted the New York Times’ coverage for “defaming and misrepresenting” the Orthodox Jewish community. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic instances in the U.S. have hit an all-time high.

“Why is the New York Times using its enormous megaphone to spread hate and misinformation?” the statement concludes.

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The president reportedly called Hasidic leaders in New York state, asking them to support the Democratic representative in the upcoming congressional election.

By World Israel News Staff

Just a day after President Joe Biden called the Skverer and Vizhnitzer hasidic leaders, urging them to support incumbent Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the upcoming congressional election, high-ranking members of the hasidic community attended a fundraiser for Assemblyman Mike Lawler, the Republican nominee, Yeshiva World News reported.

The fundraiser included New Square Mayor Izzy Spitzer, Mayor Eli Pinkasowitz, Airmont Deputy Mayor Shimon Moses, Chestnut Ridge Trustee Chaim Ross, Pomona Village Trustee Mendy Lasker and activist Yossi Gestetner, among other prominent community figures, the report said.

Maloney is reportedly facing a tough challenge in this election.

Education and assistance for students, particularly in ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, was a hot topic at the luncheon.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who is projected to become the House Majority Leader if the Republicans take over the House of Representatives, has said that a top GOP priority in Congress is to pass a Parental Bill of Rights that would block states from regulating what and how parents must teach their children, YWN noted.

On Tuesday, Lawler attended an event in New York City recognizing the #EndJewHatred movement to combat anti-Semitism.

“The event was put together to recognize the work that we did in passing a resolution on the floor of the Assembly earlier this year to highlight the movement,” Lawler stated on social media.

“In addition, I’m proud of the work I have done opposing the BDS movement, ensuring the holocaust is taught in our schools, and opposing efforts on college campuses to silence pro-Israel voices.

“As we move forward, we need to speak with one voice in opposition to anti-Semitism and the hate crimes that are often associated with it.”

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The Schools Bill would require independent schools to have classes on sex and LGBTQ, which impinge on their religious freedom, say the religious Jews.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The ultra-Orthodox (haredi) public in London has enlisted an unusual ally in its fight against a proposed bill that would require their schools to teach subjects it vociferously objects to, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

The community has released a short hip hop music video that features an unidentified black performer singing, “What you gonna do with them School Bills, we gonna scrap them, I know what’s best for me and mine… School bills gotta go.”

The “Scrap the Schools Bill” campaign also created a series of animated cartoons that are running on YouTube.

The ultra-Orthodox are not known for either listening to hip hop or being fans of social media, but their desire to reach a broader audience for their fight, and especially neophyte Secretary of Education Kit Malthouse in Prime Minister Liz Truss’ new government, is paramount.

The controversial legislation would force the yeshivas to teach some secular subjects, such as sex education that would include explanations about alternative lifestyles. These subjects are never brought up in haredi schools, which concentrate almost exclusively on religious study.

They have not been required to do so until now because they have not been defined by British law as “schools.” This law would change their status.

The community also brought a few thousand of its members to demonstrate over the summer in front of Parliament against what they deem a heavy-handed attempt to proscribe their religious freedom.

As one protestor told The JC in August, “The Bill would not allow Jews to practice our law in our schools. If this law is passed, Jews will not be able to live here. I am a British patriot, but we cannot accept this.”

The most prominent leaders of the community have been in contact with government officials ever since the threat to traditional yeshiva education emerged in 2019, without much success.

Most recently, after centenarian Rabbi Elyakim Schlesinger appealed to then-British leader Boris Johnson, Under-Secretary of State for the School System Baroness Barran responded that the bill intended only to “protect” children and “is not intended to undermine any group, nor is it driven by a desire to dictate how anybody practices their religion.”

As an alternative, she suggested that the yeshivot operate as an after-school enrichment program instead, with the children attending a “registered school” or being home-schooled, neither of which is an acceptable alternative to the community.

The new Conservative government may be more amenable to the ultra-Orthodox concerns. The Times reported last month that sources close to the government thought that the bill would either be “diluted” or even dropped altogether, because it was not an issue of extreme importance to the prime minister.

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New York’s Mayor vows to resume investigation into secular education at Hasidic schools after a blockbuster report by the New York Times. 

By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has promised to deliver on a probe started by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, into the Hasidic Orthodox school system after the New York Times published a bombshell investigation on Sunday criticizing its secular education curriculum.

De Blasio launched an investigation in 2015, but it was discontinued through the pandemic, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

According to state law, all private schools are required to teach subjects “substantially equivalent” to those offered in public schools.

A spokesman for Adams told the Times that the investigation would resume and that “he believed schools should be culturally sensitive and meet high standards.”

Sunday’s investigative piece, which was over a year in the making, documented test scores, public records, and testimonies from hundreds of people with ties to Hasidic schools, including former students and staff.

The article, published in both English and Yiddish, concluded that the students are “suffering from levels of educational deprivation.”

Only nine schools of some 100 investigated were found to test at grade level, the report said. Many of them don’t provide instruction in math, science or English.

Adams enjoys broad support from the Hasidic community and his senior adviser, Joel Eisdorfer, is a Hasidic Jew.

According to his spokesman, however, “the mayor’s decisions are not influenced by political support.”

Adams told reporters on Monday that he was “not concerned about the findings of the article.”

“I want a thorough investigation. I want an independent review and that’s what the city has to do. And we’re going to look at that,” the mayor was quoted by Spectrum News NY1 saying.

Simcha Eichenstein, a Hasidic State Assembly member from Borough Park, Brooklyn, slammed the Times‘ investigation and its conclusions.

“The summary makes clear that the forthcoming article in the Times will defame an entire community based on sometimes anonymous critics, cherry-picked data, and outright lies,” he wrote in the New York Sun.

He also took to Twitter to blast “a pitiful rehash of cherry picked data and inaccuracies, peddled by the same group obsessed with Orthodox Jews. What’s clear is that the NYT is not interested in the positive value of our schools, just spreading lies for clicks.”

The New York’s Board of Regents will vote on Tuesday on a regulation that would enable private schools to comply with state law “while also maintaining their unique culture and beliefs in the delivery of instruction.”

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Rabbi Yehuda Kornfeld, founder of the Jewish Academy School in Miami and director of the Chinuch Yehudi ‘(Jewish Education’) organization in Florida, discusses the trends among Jewish and especially Israeli families in America.

The post WATCH: Why children of Israelis abroad are unlikely to attend Jewish school appeared first on World Israel News.

Soon, people will be able to upload any rabbinic text ever printed and see it in processed form in real time.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An Israeli organization has produced a high-tech tool using artificial intelligence that can help scholars and laymen alike study ancient Jewish texts with much greater ease.

The Dicta Maivin (dictation expert) was invented by Dicta, a non-profit organization that provides its Jewish study products at no charge. The AI-driven tool makes rabbinic literature accessible by automatically vocalizing and punctuating it, opening abbreviations and identifying source texts.

This includes Biblical and Talmudic commentaries, authors of works on Jewish law and philosophy, and many books of responsa that are included in Dicta’s library. Soon, the organization says, people will be able to upload any rabbinic text ever printed and see it in processed form in real time.

Organization founder Moshe Koppel, an Israeli-American computer scientist who is himself a Talmudic scholar, told the Jerusalem Post recently that his five-year project is set to be revealed at the four-day, 18th World Congress of Jewish Studies, which is currently taking place at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“What we’ve done is make it so that you can take your phone and take a picture of the page, and you’ll get the page back with the text that has already been digitized,” he said.

Then, for example, readers can put their cursors over abbreviations, which many rabbis used so liberally that it has discouraged people from trying to study their works, Koppel said. Having a list of all the ways the abbreviation has been used in the past, and considering the context of the sentence, the algorithm behind the tool will then present the shortened form’s correct meaning.

Another challenge is that texts quote or summarize ancient Sages but do not state the source, making do with saying “the Sages said,” Koppel explained. However, “Maivin creates footnotes for all of the texts it scans,” he said.

The Dicta Maivin can even fix textual errors made in centuries past, he explained, “because the printers back then were a bit choppy.”

One more aid that will enable people to study more texts than ever before is the tool’s ability to change what is known as Rashi script into Hebrew lettering. Rashi, one of the greatest commentators in Jewish history, lived in 11th-century France and wrote using letters that were similar but not identical to Hebrew, and many others followed his custom.

Koppel credited his daughter-in-law with coming up with a completely new typeface “for people who like the Rashi font but have difficulty understanding it. It’s an adjusted Rashi font that anybody can read.”

Although the group is launching the product now, it is not 100% complete, Koppel said. “Most of the functions are working in the best way possible,” but the punctuation and abbreviation features are not quite there yet.

“We know how to improve it and it just takes time,” he said.

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The rate of assimilation of Israelis in the diaspora is even greater that on Jews born in America and other countries, says analyst Mordechai Kedar.

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David Ostrove allegedly bought four luxury cars, five homes, and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle by siphoning funds from the Schechter School of Long Island.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A top administrator of a New York Jewish day school was charged Monday with grand larceny and money-laundering for embezzling $8.4 million over a period of some eight years.

David Ostrove, 51, was the chief financial officer and director of operations at the Schechter School of Long Island. He allegedly started his alleged criminal activity about three years into his tenure.

“As alleged in the indictment, this defendant was trusted to oversee and safeguard the funds of this institution, however, he violated that trust and instead stole money earmarked to educate children to fund his own lavish lifestyle,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney in a statement.

That lifestyle included buying four rare luxury cars and other collectibles, five homes on the glamorous Fire Island, clothing, jewelry and trips. He also allegedly used the school’s money to pay for his daughter’s college education and refurbish the houses, which he then rented out for a handsome income.

Ostrove allegedly stole the money via his computer, moving cash from the school’s Paypal and Stripe accounts into several different bank accounts.

“This individual is accused of a systematic, sophisticated, and carefully contrived fraud on a chilling scale,” the school told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). “If convicted, this individual would also be guilty of something beyond the theft of cash: the destruction of trust.”

In a Facebook statement Tuesday announcing his firing, the school thanked the detectives and staff of the District Attorney’s Office who had opened the probe and “treated the school with the utmost respect and professionalism” as they cooperated in the investigation of the financial irregularities.

The school’s board also reassured parents in a letter that the institution was still “financially sound” – and had already hired an outside accounting company to ensure that going forward, “our changes are effective, systematic, and reflect ‘best practices’ in a digital era,” JTA reported.

The Schechter School, which has some 260 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, is a private school affiliated with the Conservative Movement and provides both a Jewish and secular education. According to school-ranking website niche.com, it slots in at No. 77 of 249 College Prep private high schools in the state.

If convicted, Ostrove could face 25 years in prison.

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“I love the idea that I’m part of something that will be seen by children all around the world, whether or not they are Jewish,” said the Orthodox Jewish student.

By JNS.org

A 10-year-old Orthodox Jewish student who attends elementary school in North London is the voice of a cartoon character starring in three BBC videos that aims to teach children about Judaism, reported The Jewish Chronicle.

In one short video on the BBC’s educational website Bitesize, Ella Scott introduces viewers to an animated version of herself before she begins talking about “how Jewish people show care” through tzedakah (“charity”) and the concept of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”). In other clips, she discusses Shabbat, Torah and her synagogue.

An animated version of Golders Green Synagogue, where Scott attends services with her family, is shown in the BBC clips.

In the video “A Visit to a Synagogue,” Scotts gives viewers a virtual tour of the building and explains the Jewish temple by saying: “My synagogue is where my family goes to worship. But it’s also where we have lots of community events. There’s a nursery and a school, and different kinds of activities every week. We also try to help people in need because that’s really important in Judaism.”

Scott told The Jewish Chronicle that “videos like these matter because non-Jewish pupils learn about Judaism in school, and it’s important the content is accurate. It’s also important that pupils know about different religions so that they respect them—for example, if they don’t know about Judaism, they might say they don’t like it.”

She added: “I love the idea that I’m part of something that will be seen by children all around the world, whether or not they are Jewish. I hope it gives people a better understanding of Judaism.”

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The rabbis describes the legislation as “a threat to alter fundamental facets of Jewish practice.”

By World Israel News Staff

Hundreds of demonstrators from the hasidic community of Stamford Hill in north London gathered outside the British Parliament on Wednesday in protest over a proposed bill that would require religious Jewish schools (yeshivot) to teach secular subjects.

The rabbis leading the protest described Schools Bill 2022 as “a threat to alter fundamental facets of Jewish practice” and threatened that the entire haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community would leave the UK if the legislation wasn’t nixed.

Ahead of the protest, a local advocacy group called the Traditional Charedi Chinuch’s Rabbinical Committee (‘Chinuch’ is Hebrew for education) issued a statement saying that the bill “seeks to interfere” with religious life “by assimilating them into the lifestyle of the majority.”

The committee said the bill would require them “to teach secular teachings in a manner that is in direct contradiction to their religious beliefs, thereby violating the rights of parents and their children to practice their religion.”

The bill would require yeshivot to become regulated and teach secular subjects, including LGBT rights and sex education. They would also be subjected to routine inspections from the UK’s monitoring body, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

As of now, yeshivot remain unregulated because of a loophole in the education system that does not classify them as schools.

Some 1,500 boys aged 13 to 16 currently study in such yeshivot, according to estimates by the London borough of Hackney, where Stamford Hill is located.

Thousands concerned, attend meeting

Around 2,000 community members attended a meeting last month to protest the legislation.

Rabbi Asher Gratt, a community activist at the forefront of the protest, said the bill “amounts to a decree of expulsion from Great Britain for haredi Jews.”

During the protest, Gratt said it “threatens to dismantle the very fabric of our community. It is a threat to our way of life, our very survival as a distinct religious community.”

“Please do not take away our religious freedom. Parents have fundamental rights to educate their children in their own way,” Gratt implored British lawmakers, according to the London-based Jewish Chronicle.

Moshe Mayer Sterngold said the threat “reminds us of the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition.” The whole community “would leave,” the report cited him as saying.

Some of the organizers came under fire for evoking the Holocaust in an effort to get the bill cancelled. During the protest, which was advertised under the banner of “Holocaust Survivors Stand Up Against Discriminatory Schools Bill,” organizers emphasized that Holocaust survivors were present.

“I have just spent two hours with one survivor, who was actually in the crematorium,” Gratt told the London-based Jewish News.

“Over the last week I have spoken to other survivors, they all feel scared and intimidated by the language the is in the Schools Bill. We have to stand up for our rights,” he said.

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Student was the third at the London Jewish school to commit suicide within four years.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News Staff

Administrators at a UK Jewish school have come under scrutiny after a report indicated that staff instructed students to delete their social media accounts just days following the suicide of their classmate, who was reportedly severely bullied on the platforms.

Mariano Janin, whose 14-year-old daughter Mia was a student at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in North London, told British media that he believes cruel messages on social media may have “tipped her over the edge.”

JFS is the largest Jewish school in Europe, and Janin was the third student at the institution to commit suicide within a four year period.

An official publish inquiry into Janin’s death was launched earlier in 2022, but so far, the investigation has been slow-going.

In a hearing last week regarding the status of the inquest, investigators revealed that students at the school were made to delete their social media accounts just five days after Janin’s death in March 2021.

Requests to social media companies for records of those conversations and interactions have gone unanswered, so investigators have been unable to analyze or review the messages that likely would have identified which students had tormented Janin.

“This whole experience has been a nightmare that is too horrible to explain,” Janin told British daily The Times.

“Every day feels like I’m living in slow motion. Parents with information – please take it to the coroner. We need to know what happened for the sake of other children and also for Mia. Do not close ranks.”

Other relatives of Janin blasted the school on social media for looking the other way regarding bullying on campus, charging that the institution had failed to maintain a safe environment for students.

“Mia was pushed out of the edge of life by the hatred and cruelty of many of her peers, following her return to school after three months of lockdown,” wrote Lucio Neumann, her uncle, on Facebook last week.

“Bullying is a serious social disease, which always leaves scars in the victims. In extreme cases, when school authorities do not assume their duty of care, bullying kills.

“Mia’s Grandfather, Sandor Neumann, was the only Holocaust survivor of a family who had lived for more than 300 years in the city of Papa, in Hungary, prior to being exterminated by the Nazis. Mia’s unjust death, in addition to truncating a young and promising life, generates unbearable pain for all of us.”

Mia’s mother, Marissa, died just months after her daughter due to a form of aggressive, sudden onset cancer, according to the Jewish News. They are buried alongside each other on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Notably, British educational regulator Ofsted conducted an emergency investigation of JFS shortly after Janin’s suicide and downgraded its rating from “good” to “unsatisfactory,” finding that the school did not properly intervene or attempt to mitigate rampant bullying and sexual harassment between students.

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The state’s highest court ordered agencies to complete an investigation into an ultra-Orthodox school’s curriculum by September.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

New York’s Supreme Court ruled last week that state agencies must complete within four months an investigation into a Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox school’s curriculum.

All private and religious schools, including Jewish institutions such as Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem, must provide a secular education that is “at least substantially equivalent” to the public school system.

Beatrice Weber, the divorced mother of a young student in the Brooklyn school who left the Hasidic community but must continue sending her child to the ultra-Orthodox school, according to her ex-husband’s demand, had filed a petition in 2019 with the state’s education department against the Department of Education (DoE) and the yeshiva for its abrogation of responsibility to teach obligatory secular subjects.

Education Commissioner Betty Rosa had dismissed Weber’s petition on the grounds that the city first had to look into the allegations. Some two years on, her appeal was heard by Justice Adam Silverman, who demanded that the relevant bodies finish the job by September.

In an interview last year with American cable news television channel NY1, Weber said the yeshiva provides less than an hour and a half per day of lessons altogether in subjects such as history, science, English and math, in a long school day filled with religious studies.

“We kind of reached the tipping point, where he can read English better than his teacher,” she said.

In a separate opinion piece for The New York Times, Weber said that “the school is breaking the law, but the city and state officials aren’t doing anything about it.”

Proponents of the law have accused local politicians of dancing around the subject due to the voting power of the ultra-Orthodox public. They say that both former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and current Mayor Eric Adams have delayed inquiries into Jewish schools’ curricula.

Out of 28 yeshivas that were investigated the city’s Department of Education, only two met the state’s educational requirements, according to its 2019 report.

In March, the state’s DoE proposed a packet of regulations to ensure that non-public schools are providing the education to which students are entitled under the law. Over 150,000 objections poured in during the “commenting period,” many of them from the ultra-Orthodox community.

In an op-ed in the Albany Times Union last month, three prominent rabbis who head religious institutions outlined their reasons for rejecting state oversight of the curricula.

The regulations, wrote Rabbis Brudy, Bender and Reisman, “require instruction in nine subjects in addition to English, Math, Science and Social Studies. And they ascribe zero value – educational or otherwise — to the Jewish Studies curriculum that is the core of Jewish education.”

They argued that the Jewish studies “require rigorous analysis and critical thinking,” and “include ethical and philosophical works, which provide students with foundational lessons in character development and a moral framework for life.”

They also quoted Dr. Martin Luther King as saying, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

“That,” they wrote, “is an apt description of the objectives and outcomes of yeshiva education.”

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The Jewish community needs to take a long, hard look at the role that many Jewish academics play in influencing Jewish college students to side with the Palestinians over Israel.

By Moshe Phillips

We hear a lot about Jewish college students who have become pro-Palestinian. We know about polls showing that younger American Jews are much less connected to Israel than their parents.

How can this trend be explained? Why do so many Jewish 18-year-olds begin their university studies with the pro-Israel sentiments they learned at home, then emerge four years later more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than to Israel?

At least part of the answer to this question can be found in a recent essay by a retiring professor of Israeli and Middle Eastern history at the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than 30 years, Ian Lustick taught about Israel to many members of the large Jewish student body at Penn. The total number of Jewish students who took his courses was at least in the many hundreds, perhaps in the thousands.

He lectured to them every day. He assigned their readings. He answered their questions. He organized discussion groups and symposia and summer trips to Israel. When it came to Israel and the Arabs, Ian Lustick was their authority figure.

Reflecting on his recent retirement (in the latest issue of the Penn Jewish Studies newsletter), Ian Lustick explained what he set out to do in his academic career, and how he did it.

When Lustick was a student at Brandeis University in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he writes, he spent an “impactful” semester at the Brandeis program in Israel, known as the Jacob Hiatt Institute.

We have a glimpse of that “impact” from an article he wrote at the time (in 1972) for a student newspaper, “The Jewish Radical.” There Lustick urged American Jews to give less money to Israel and instead “channel” some of it to a Hiatt Institute fund to help Palestinian Arabs.

He wrote that the “degeneracy” of unnamed “Zionists” had “prevented the Palestinians from disturbing their consciences.” He declared that world Jewry bears “moral responsibility, if not culpability, for the suffering of millions of Palestinian Arabs.”

‘Unsettling discoveries’

Returning from Israel to the Brandeis campus, Lustick found that the demands being made by “the movement for Black Studies” on campus “resonated with me.” He was referring to the eleven-day takeover of a Brandeis building in 1969 by student militants demanding the creation of an Afro-American Studies department.

At the time, not many American universities had Jewish Studies departments. Apparently, the militants’ takeover inspired Lustick to realize that through Jewish studies programs, he could influence large numbers of young Jews regarding what he called “real problems” such as “discrimination by Israel against Palestinian Arabs.”

He recalled proudly that at Brandeis, he and his friends undertook “more sophisticated forms of engagement with Israel than those prevailing at the time.” He says those activities helped create the environment which led to “the founding of Jewish Studies programs around the country, including at Penn,” where he ended up teaching for more than three decades.

In his classes at Penn, Lustick writes, he promoted “an intellectually rigorous approach to the study of Israel and Zionism.” He says his “best teaching” was when he helped students who were “struggling” with the “unsettling discoveries” they made about “Israel-Palestinian relations.”

Let’s take a closer look at what he has written and said about Israel over the years, to understand what he was undoubtedly saying to his students in class to inspire those “unsettling discoveries” about Israel.

Comparing Israel to the Nzais

In 1988, Lustick wrote a book called “For the Land and the Lord.” It was so hostile to Israel that even the left-wing magazine The Reconstructionist complained that “Lustick’s sermonizing reeks of them can’t and dual-standard so frequently applied and misapplied by the West to the Middle East.”

In a 1993 article, Lustick wrote that support for “united Jerusalem” is “a carefully cultivated fetish.” In 1997, he denounced Jewish construction in Jerusalem as “confiscatory, discriminatory and aggressive settlement activities in the Jerusalem area.” At the height of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel, in 2002, Lustick wrote that Palestinian Arab violence was “probably a necessity” in order to convince Israel to make more concessions.

Lustick has also compared Israel to the Nazis. He has written that Israeli soldiers who serve in the territories, “in the aftermath of the Holocaust,” are comparable to soldiers in the past who were infamously “following orders” (2002). He has demanded that Israel apologize to the Palestinian Arabs for committing “injustices” against them, just as Germany apologized to the Jewish people after the Holocaust (2006).

In a 2013 op-ed in the New York Times, Lustick compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, demanded that Israel surrender its nuclear weapons, and called on Israelis to give up “statist Zionism” and agree to live in “one state” with the Palestinian Arabs.

In his most recent book, published in 2019, Lustick claimed that Israel carries out “the continuous mass shooting of Palestinian civilians [in Gaza]…murder[ing] and maim[ing] so many men, women and children trying to escape from the ghetto within which they have been concentrated.”

Influenced by Jewish authority figures

This, then, is what Ian Lustick has been teaching Jewish students at Penn for more than 30 years: that degenerate, racist, Nazi-like Israelis are slaughtering Arabs and preventing peace, and therefore the Jewish State should be replaced.

So I ask, which is more likely: that Jewish college students are being seduced by Muslim campus groups, or that they are being gradually influenced by Jewish authority figures such as Ian Lustick, who are in a position to shape their views every day in class?

I’m not accusing Lustick or like-minded Jewish professors of being bad Jews or self-haters or traitors. They are entitled to their opinions. And freedom of speech on our college campuses ensures their right to teach whatever they want. But parents also have a right to know who is teaching their kids about Israel, and to decide if they are comfortable with a particular professor’s perspective.

This is not just a matter of concern to individual parents; it also has important implications for our community as a whole.

The Jewish community needs to take a long, hard look at the role that many Jewish academics have played, and are continuing to play, in influencing Jewish college students to side with the Palestinian Arabs over Israel.

Moshe Phillips is a commentator on Jewish affairs. He was a U.S. delegate to the 38th World Zionist Congress in 2020.

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Many ultra-Orthodox schools refuse to teach core curriculum and refuse state funds rather than accept what they regard as secular interference in religious studies.

By David Hellerman, World Israel News

The leader of one of Israel’s largest hasidic sects approved the teaching of core curriculum in the movement’s elementary schools, according to Hebrew media reports.

Israel’s Kan News reported that Belz, Israel’s second largest hasidic group, will including math, science, Hebrew and English curriculum for children in the Belz Talmud Torah system in the next school year, covering grades 1-8.

Belz, which is led by Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, has around 7,000 children enrolled in its Talmud Torah schools.

Many haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools refuse to teach core curriculum and refuse state funds rather than accept what they regard as secular interference in religious studies. The move may reflect the haredi community’s growing demographics and a desire to enter the Israeli work force.

According to Kan, Belz’s education committee met with Education Ministry director Dalit Stauber and other top education officials on Monday to devise a model in which the schools teaching core curriculum would receive state funding based on the success of the students in those studies.

An educational official quoted by Kan said he expects the agreement will be expanded to Belz’s high school-age yeshivas. There is no agreement yet on whether Belz students will be able to take high school matriculation exams.

Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, who was involved in the Education Ministry’s talks with Belz explained to Kan that the agreement was a year in the making. Last year, while serving as the Jerusalem municipality’s Education Department, he was first approached by Belz.

“They said they came to their decision over the need to earn a living and the need to finance their institutions, with the understanding that without core curriculum they would not be able to progress and their students would remain barred from the job market,” Tur-Paz said.

Tur-Paz added that he hopes the success of the initiative will encourage other haredi schools to follow in Belz’s footsteps.

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