Dear Editor, While I don’t dispute the reports of physical abuse at Hassidic boys schools, as a parent whose children have attended similar institutions, I have a different story to tell. True, there were some oddballs, including the strange man whom my son called “the Admor of the Cats” who kept a bottle of cherry…
Last week I wrote an essay arguing that secular education in Hassidic schools is not as bad as it is frequently portrayed. I argued that critics are actually unhappy with Hassidic culture, rather than education. The response from anti-Yeshiva voices and activists — including a letter from a Yeshiva-graduate — has been as ferocious as…
In his speeches, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the grand rebbe of one of the largest Hasidic factions in New York State, has openly and repeatedly acknowledged the lack of secular education in Hasidic Yeshivas. In a 2018 speech he said, “We all know the truth, that in our primary Torah schools for boys, they studied at…
The question of whether ultra-Orthodox children are getting enough secular education is wracking New York. The New York State Education Department will decide later this month about whether to start enforcing regulations in ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) schools, regulations proposed in a prolonged public campaign by activist groups such as the Young Advocates for Fair Education….
Editor’s note: The original version of this article, published Sept. 13, as well as a prior one published Sept. 11, contained several significant errors, which the Forward regrets. This Sept. 18 update includes new information and removes the erroneous material; details about the errors are appended. The Sept. 11 article has been removed from our…
Editor’s note, 9/18/19, 5:15 p.m.: The Forward has removed this article, published Sept. 11, after learning that it was based on an erroneous reading of public documents related to a loan agreement between American Hebrew Academy, a Jewish boarding school in North Carolina that announced its closure in June, and Puxin Limited, a Chinese educational…
This past week, the government of Israel announced that the history of North African Jews during World War II would be incorporated into the Holocaust curriculum. “For years, the story of Jews living in Muslim countries under the Nazi occupation has been absent from our discourse,” Minister of Education Rafi Peretz said. “The painful stories…
(JTA) — Senior education officials in California have expressed disapproval of a proposed ethnic studies curriculum for the state’s schools. The Jewish community is among several minority groups that have protested the draft. As written, the curriculum failed to meet the standard of being “accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse…
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