You Can’t Paint All Yeshivas With The Same Brush

The New York Times printed an editorial on August 23, 2018 entitled “New York’s Yeshiva Students Deserve Better” and noted that “Elected officials should require Orthodox Jewish schools to meet legal standards.”

Without debating the merits of the case involving the education in “Orthodox Jewish schools,” I take umbrage with the broad characterization being used to describe these institutions.

As someone who attended an Orthodox Jewish elementary school and a yeshiva high school in New York, I can attest to the superior secular education I received, which adequately prepared me for college and law school. As a parent whose children are enrolled in a yeshiva, I am constantly awed by the progressive pedagogy employed by the school and the first-rate education they receive through STEM, literature, art and music classes.

It is imperative that people recognize that there are hundreds of Orthodox Jewish schools and yeshivas in New York State that educate over 150,000 students, and to paint all of them with the same brush is unjust and injurious. The overgeneralization is an affront to the countless yeshivas that balance secular and Judaic studies and duly prepare their students to make meaningful contributions in the professional arena.