Leave New York’s Yeshivas Alone

By William McGurn April 17, 2023 6:20 pm ET An Orthodox Jewish boy walks by a Yeshiva school bus in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 9, 2019. Photo: shannon stapleton/Reuters Are Jewish moms and dads who send their children to religious schools lawbreakers? Or are they exercising their right to live by their beliefs—even if those beliefs are out of fashion with modern American sensibilities? The New York State Education Department is targeting Hasidic Jews for running yeshivas it says do not equip students with the skills necessary for 21st-century life. An 1895 New York law requires that children in nonpublic schools receive an education “substantially equivalent” to that of a public school. But a few weeks ago a court in Albany ruled that yeshivas themselves can’t be held

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William McGurn

April 17, 2023 6:20 pm ET

Are Jewish moms and dads who send their children to religious schools lawbreakers? Or are they exercising their right to live by their beliefs—even if those beliefs are out of fashion with modern American sensibilities?

The New York State Education Department is targeting Hasidic Jews for running yeshivas it says do not equip students with the skills necessary for 21st-century life. An 1895 New York law requires that children in nonpublic schools receive an education “substantially equivalent” to that of a public school. But a few weeks ago a court in Albany ruled that yeshivas themselves can’t be held to this law, so the government now has to decide whether to escalate by going after the parents.

Certainly the demand for such schools is there. New York’s 450 Orthodox yeshivas have about 160,000 students. That puts them on par with the 163,000 in the state’s Catholic schools. But they are diverse, and the main issue appears to be 50,000 boys in the Hasidic yeshivas—which raises unique religious-liberty questions.

Catholic schools generally advertise themselves as providing a better secular education than public schools. But proficiency rates on subjects like math and English among the Hasidic boys who take standardized tests can be as low as in some of New York’s worst public schools. The difference is that the public schools are failing to teach these subjects, while yeshivas are succeeding at something else: providing an advanced education in Jewish texts and law in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic.

It’s just not the education the state wants, because yeshivas aim for something different: a Jewish life in service of God and the community.

America has all manner of religious communities living out beliefs the majority regard as eccentric. Is dissent from modern secular pieties now a crime? The concern isn’t rhetorical in a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation deems Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass a potential domestic terror threat.

A New York Times investigative series into yeshivas upholds the dominant secular orthodoxy. The basic idea is that religious fanatics are condemning their children to lives of “joblessness and dependency.” The implication is that they are doing so with public money, too.

In response, Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish umbrella group, sent a letter to the board of the Pulitzer Prize committee. It argues that the Times series draws almost exclusively from activist ex-Hasidic Jews and not the vast majority who are content with their schools, and that yeshiva grads earn above-average incomes. Others dispute the Times’s suggestion that the yeshivas disproportionately receive public benefits. The letter urges the board not to award the Times a Pulitzer.

But a Pulitzer is a side issue. The yeshivas’ real offense is to have different values from the state of New York.

The practical dilemma this raises involves New York’s compulsory-education law, the basis for the state’s authority. In “Free to Choose,” Milton Friedman made the case that even when these laws were passed more than a century ago, they were responding to a need that didn’t exist. Most kids were already attending schools.

The New York Sun agrees, and rightly says that getting rid of compulsory education would be a good solution. And if some public funds for child care or other services are being misused, the answer is to stop it—not upend a whole school system.

While a yeshiva education is not the best route to Harvard or a career at Google, parents might rate more highly having their kids in schools where they are safe from violence and drug use and learn how to live a faithful Jewish life. Especially if they believe this is how God wants them to live.

And if the state is going to hold parents to standards, why should the traditional public schools be the model? Why not one of

Given tests suggesting that not even half the 1.1 million New York public-school kids in grades three through eight are proficient in math or English, does New York even have the credibility to impose standards on Hasidic parents? There’s another wrinkle. Even as performance declines, a new set of standards, from gender affirmation to critical race theory, is roiling public education. How long until these, too, are deemed essential for religious schools?