In an aggressive move, the New York State Education Department has cut off funding to two chadorim in Williamsburg and is telling parents that they must find other schooling options for their children by next year since the yeshivos don’t meet secular education requirements.
By Anash.org reporter
In an aggressive move, the New York State Education Department has decided to cut off funding to two chadorim in Williamsburg and is telling parents that they must find other schooling options for their children by next year. The reason? The yeshivos aren’t meeting secular education requirements.
This marks the first time that the government has outright closed a yeshiva over such claims. For years, there’s been an ongoing battle between state education officials and yeshivas over requirements for subjects like English and math. While many yeshivos have been scrutinized, these two—Yeshiva Bnei Shimon Yisroel of Shopron and Talmud Torah of Kashoi—are the first to face this consequence.
The state sent out letters on February 11 warning that these schools would no longer be eligible for government funding for meals, transportation, textbooks, and other services after June 30, JTA reported. Parents were given three options for next year: transfer their children to another private school, homeschool them, or send them to public school. These letters, also provided in Yiddish, direct parents to report their decision to the authorities by July 1.
This controversy traces back nearly a decade, when a small group of former yeshiva students complained that their education focused on Torah learning and did not prepare them for the secular world. These claims led to state investigations into dozens of yeshivas, and in 2022, the New York Times ran a widely criticized series of articles portraying chassidishe schools in a negative light.
Following that report, education officials found 18 schools that they said were not offering a secular education “substantially equivalent” to public schools. Most of those yeshivas agreed to a remediation plan, but these two refused—leading to the current crackdown.
Secular education activist organization YAFFED praised the state’s decision, calling it “an unprecedented and long-overdue action” and accused yeshivos of “denying children a basic education.”
The fight over yeshiva education has become a major issue in New York politics. With an upcoming mayoral election later this year, the debate is expected to heat up even more. Chassidishe communities represent a significant voting bloc, and their support can influence elections.
Mayor Eric Adams has previously defended yeshivas, saying that they “provide a quality education” and that other schools should learn from them. However, one of his challengers, Comptroller Brad Lander, has taken the opposite stance, insisting that all schools receiving public support must follow state education standards.
Meanwhile, Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools (PEARLS) is fighting back in court, challenging the government’s authority to force parents to withdraw their children from these schools. In 2023, a lower court sided with PEARLS, ruling that the state had overstepped. But an appeals court later overturned that decision, and now the case is heading to New York’s highest court.
Adding another layer to the battle, PEARLS has also filed a federal discrimination complaint against city and state education agencies, accusing them of unfairly targeting yeshivas and interfering with their autonomy. They argue that the state’s actions threaten the very essence of Torah-based education.
As of now, the U.S. Department of Education has not announced any investigation into these claims. However, the Trump administration previously stated that it would prioritize protecting religious liberties and combating antisemitism in education policy.
Whatever happens next could have far-reaching effects, not just for these two yeshivos, but for yeshiva education across New York.
The majority of public schools turn out kids who can’t read and write. They are very proficient though at jumping turnstiles and attacking innocent people on the streets on NYC.
Baruch Hashem, our children leave yeshivas ready and able to be entrepreneurs and business men.
This is just antisemitism. Same like in the days of the haskallah movement.
sure like NYC public schools have great results..?..
let them all register to public at once, flood the public school system in charaidy communties, maybe then theyll realize how much more theyre saving
Urban public schools are happy to register more children/receive more tax payer dollars. They will not feel flooded when extras sign up in this school or that, spread across different neighborhoods.
In Monroe or Sqver that can work because it’s every child in one yeshiva school system arriving at a small suburban district’s public school that is not accustomed to accommodating extra hundreds of children.
Why must this reporter describe Lander as having “the opposite stance” from Adams when he has also said many positive things about yeshiva education? His job as Comptroller is to make sure Government money is being spent appropriately, which means that all schools getting funding must follow the law. According to the principal of “Dinah D’malchusa Dinah”, the yeshivas have a halachick obligation to follow the law as well. Such a small number of yeshivas are making a problem while most yeshivas are doing completely fine and instead of asking these few yeshivas to do the right thing people would rather blame everyone but these particular troublesome yeshivas.
You need a little more lomdus. Whether dina d’malchusa dina applies outside of taxation policies is debated.
And no, it’s not just these two yeshivos; if this isn’t nipped in the bud, it will spread to others, ch”v. You know, the Greeks and Romans didn’t start by outlawing all of Torah either.
Well, AH, this is a taxation policy, is it not? Public funding for schools is paid for by our taxes. So is public assistance, which I like to think we would both agree the goal would be to ensure that as few people as possible rely upon it.
Once again, I implore you and others to stop comparing this issue to the Greeks and Romans, yemach shemam. Nobody is trying to stop Torah education here, and the proof is that over 95% of yeshivas don’t have an issue with the legal requirement to provide instruction in English. I went to a litvish yeshivish yeshiva, and having the ability to pass math and english standardized testing did not make me any less frum, in fact it helped me later in life as I am now able to succeed in the professional world and provide for myself and my family, B.H.
Rhetoric such as yours is inflammatory: there is unfortunately more than enough antisemitism in the world that we should be focused on stopping it instead of trying to lump everything we don’t fully agree with as being antisemitic or anti-Torah.
No, a taxation policy is a policy that determines what the taxpayers have to pay, not what the government chooses to use it on. And what does public assistance have to do with anything? Do you realize the vast difference between poverty, which is an unfortunately necessarily evil, and chinuch of tinokos shel beis rabban, which is what keeps the world running?
And fine, let’s not compare with the Greeks and the Romans. How about the Russians, then? In the 1840s and ’50s they tried to reform Jewish education, and the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch and R. Itzele Volozhiner fought vigorously against that. Why should they have done so, when according to you it wouldn’t have made them any less frum, etc.?
I have heard the comparison to the Volozhon yeshiva made many times in this sort of discussion and I am sorry to say you are citing a revisionist historical perspective. Historians have shown that Volozhon offered a well-rounded curriculum, but the Netziv was right to push back against the decree of the Tsarists because it demanded they teach secular instruction from morning till afternoon and the yeshiva would have to close at nightfall, which practically meant no time for learning Torah. They mamish would have ceased being a yeshiva in that case. Here, nobody is trying to prevent yeshivas from teaching leimudei kodesh from 8 or 9am until 3 or 4 pm every day. It’s a little ridiculous to compare the current situation with Tsarist Russia for so many reasons. Yidden have had more freedom to practice our religion here in America than nearly any other era in the history of galus. If nothing else, we can express our Hakaras Hatov for that by teaching our children english.
You saw the word “Volozhin” and jumped to conclusions, rather than reading what I actually wrote. (What this says about the quality of the education you received is left as an exercise for the reader.) You’re talking about the closure of the Volozhin yeshivah in 1892, in the times of the Netziv; I’m talking about an attempt against the chadorim a full generation earlier, in the times of R. Itzele.
What’s the connection of your Litvish education to Chabad?
The Rebbe was strongly against secular education and established cheder Oholei Torah that should be al taharas hakodesh without any secular studies. The Rebbe spoke publicly about how secular studies in school was unnecessary and harmful to their neshama.
If you want to side with hedonism took a different position, you can do so. But it wouldn’t be right to quote that to Chabad…