A New York Court Affirms That Parents, Not Schools, Are Responsible for Educating Their Children

In a recent ruling in the ongoing dispute between the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and several ḥasidic schools, a state court decided in favor of the latter. NYSED claims that the schools in question, because of their strong emphasis on religious over secular education, do not fulfill the state’s legal requirement that private educational institutions provide a curriculum “substantially equivalent” to that offered by public ones. On these grounds, it seeks to close the schools down. The schools’ lawyers argue that such a move would violate the religious freedom of both parents and children. Michael A. Helfand explains Judge Christina Ryba’s verdict and its implications:

According to Judge Ryba, the constitutional challenges were premature: the new regulations [issued by NYSED] did not add substantive educational requirements; they only outlined a process for reviewing schools’ compliance with preexisting educational requirements. As a result, any legal challenge arguing that the regulations imposed educational requirements that trespass on the rights of schools and parents must fail—at least for now—because the regulations did not, in fact, impose any new substantive requirements.

But while the court sidestepped the constitutional claims, it still interpreted existing New York law as vindicating a parallel principle of parental authority. Thus the court struck down perhaps the most significant elements of the regulations: the NYSED’s authority to close a school for failing to provide a substantially equivalent education. According to the court, New York’s education law makes clear why: “the statutory scheme places the burden for ensuring a child’s education squarely on the parent, not the school.” This implication, argued the court, is clear from various provisions of New York’s education laws—Education Law 3212, for example, which obligates those in a “parental relation” with a child to ensure that the child is receiving the required education. . . . Nowhere, however, does New York law authorize the imposition of penalties on a nonpublic school.

By locating the substantial-equivalence obligation with parents, the court interpreted New York law to require the state to consider alternative ways in which parents might meet this standard. Thus, if a nonpublic school is not providing a “substantially equivalent” education, “the parents should be given a reasonable opportunity to prove that the substantial equivalency requirements for their children’s education are satisfied by instruction provided through a combination of sources.”

Read more at City Journal

More about: Freedom of Religion, Hasidim, Jewish education, New York

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society