Councilman Wants Hasidic Yeshivas to Teach by the Books

A leading voice on education in New York City has vowed to make sure the city does a thorough investigation of Jewish schools that may be violating their obligation to offer a basic secular education, WNYC and The Jewish Week have learned.

City Council member Daniel Dromm, chairman of the education committee, said recently he plans to push city officials to conduct a deeper probe than their current plan of requesting documents from the schools.

He said he expects the investigation to include school visits and student interviews. If the education department refuses, Dromm said he'll do it himself.

"We can’t have students leaving schools in New York City that can’t speak English, that have no idea of science or history or social studies. That is not allowed by the state and we cannot continue to allow that to happen anywhere," he said. "I think it warrants further investigation and that’s what we intend to do."

His comments followed the announcement  in July that education officials would investigate claims of sub-standard secular instruction in 39 hasidic yeshivas, outlined in a letter from 52 former students, teachers and parents of children enrolled in the religious schools.

Signatories of the letter said the schools were in violation of New York State law requiring private and parochial schools to provide instruction that is "substantially equivalent" to what is offered in the public schools.

Dromm said he was concerned about people like Moshe, who graduated from a yeshiva unable to read English or do simple math. He tried to learn computer programming but, with working 60 hours a week and barely able to read English, Moshe couldn’t keep up.

“They told me to write essays and I had no way to know how to write an essay. All I knew was the basic alphabet of English. So I had no choice but to take a class that was called ESL, English as a second language," he said.

After a year he dropped out of the class. Moshe said his community failed him and now it’s failing his children.

Moshe’s experience is not unusual in hasidic Brooklyn, where most boys get just six hours of secular education a week, and only until the age of 13. After that, it's religious studies all the time. (Girls, who cannot study all the religious texts, get a better secular education.)

For years, there were rumblings about this. In 2011, Naftuli Moster -- who left his Borough Park hasidic community -- founded the advocacy group Yaffed, gathering other yeshiva graduates and parents behind his cause. Their first major victory was the city's promise this summer to investigate.  

Moster’s work is controversial. Some members of the community applaud it while others, like lobbyist and PR consultant Ezra Friedlander,  have railed against him, saying that he is “bent on vengeance” rather than improving the system from within.

This story is the first in a series produced with The Jewish Week. For their coverage of the topic, click here.