Advocates for Brooklyn Yeshiva Reform Threaten to Sue Mayor

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — A group of activists accused the city Wednesday of deliberately failing to investigate allegations of inadequate education at Jewish schools in Brooklyn and Queens, and threatened to name the mayor personally in a lawsuit if the situation doesn't change.

Last July, the city's Department of Education (DOE) said it would investigate whether nearly 40 Jewish schools, or yeshivas, were adhering to state education requirements.

State guidelines require private religious schools to provide "instruction which is substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools," but leave enforcement up to city's superintendents.

The DOE announced its investigation after Yaffed, an activist organization led by yeshiva graduate Naftuli Moster, sent a letter to city officials claiming the schools in question were not adequately teaching secular subjects, including English.

The letter was signed by 52 yeshiva alumni and parents of current students, Moster said.

When Patch recently questioned the DOE about the investigation's progress, department spokesman Harry Hartfield shared few details. He would say only that the investigation was "ongoing" and that the DOE would "soon" send requests to schools for information regarding their curricula.

Hartfield said the same thing to The Jewish Week, an NYC-based Jewish newspaper, last August. However, he told Patch it would be incorrect to conclude the DOE hasn't worked on the case since then.

Moster, head of Yaffed, said Wednesday that he doubts this claim.

"There's no sign of a serious investigation taking place," Moster said at a press conference held in front of NYC City Hall, backed by a group of Yaffed supporters. "What has the DOE done for the past eight months?"

Yaffed attorney Norman Siegel described the city's approach to the issue as "an outrage." He accused elected officials of avoiding it because they're afraid of losing Orthodox Jewish votes.

"It's about people putting politics over the rule of law," Siegel said. "They don't want to touch this issue at the expense of thousands of Jewish boys."

While many yeshivas aren't effectively educating either boys or girls, Moster said, girls will sometimes receive more secular instruction, due to a belief in the community that women should focus less on religious studies.

Although Yaffed's members would rather avoid court, Siegel said, they're willing to take legal action against the city if the DOE doesn't change its investigative approach within the "next few weeks."

Any suit the group will name Mayor Bill de Blasio as a defendant, the attorney said.

Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, chair of the Assembly's Committee on Higher Education and the only elected official at the event, noted that as mayor, de Blasio has direct authority over the DOE.

"The mayor has been great on education," Glick said, praising the city's universal pre-K program. "But with that comes this responsibility [to make] the DOE do their job."

Glick said she sent a letter to de Blasio earlier this year expressing concern about yeshiva education, but hasn't heard back.

“The mayor believes strongly that every child in our city deserves a first-rate education," de Blasio spokesman Austin Finan responded Wednesday. "The DOE’s investigation of these schools is active and ongoing. The assertion that DOE has not sent requests for information to schools is inaccurate. We will not comment further on an ongoing investigation.”

The DOE did not respond to Patch's request for comment.

Mordechai Levovitz, executive director of the non-profit LGBT support group Jewish Queer Youth (JQY) and a Yaffed backer who attended the Wednesday presser, said he personally received a quality education at a yeshiva in Far Rockaway, Queens.

However, Levovitz said he's noticed that many yeshiva students who come to JQY for help cannot communicate effectively in English.

"When you deny a child a basic education, you're denying them the ability to understand themselves," Levovitz said. "In any other community, that's called child abuse."

Also present Wednesday was Chaim Levin, a graduate of Oholei Torah in Crown Heights. He said the school provided him with no secular classes and no instruction in English between the ages of 6 and 16.

He showed Patch a series of report cards he was issued in third, fourth, and fifth grades —from 1998 through 2000. The cards only listed classes that had been taught in Yiddish or were directly related to Jewish studies.

Levin said his nephew currently attends the school, and that its curriculum hasn't changed.

"You have kids right now who are not learning a word of English, not math, not science, not history, not geography," he said. "It's a catastrophe."

Oholei Torah's website puts its student population as 1,850. A call Wednesday requesting comment from school officials was not immediately returned.

Levin said many members of Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community have "no job prospects."

They "can't go to college," he said, "because they [don't] know anything about math or know how to write a paragraph. And what is happening to these young guys? They're on drugs, they're homeless, because they have nothing. They have no foundation."

A woman at the press conference who declined to give her name, fearing retribution, said her 9-year-old son, who attends a yeshiva in Williamsburg, receives just a few days of science instruction per year.

"He's losing his love of learning," she said, adding that he's just one in a community of kids "growing up with a mentality that education is not important."

Moster and Siegel said the woman's fear of retribution is common among her peers. Yaffed's leadership believes this fear has silenced many more Orthodox community members who would otherwise side with the organization.

Despite his accusations against 38 yeshivas in Brooklyn and Queens, Moster has kept the names of the schools private. He said Wednesday that he would prefer to work with them, rather than against them, to promote reform.

Siegel agreed. "There are yeshivas doing what the law requires," the attorney said. "Why can't all yeshivas do it?"