Op-Ed: A Chassidic Reporter’s Response to the NYTimes’ Hit Piece on Yeshivas: You Can’t See the Good

By Yehudit Garmaise

While reading the New York Times’ latest attack on Chassidic yeshivas, I first wondered, “Where are the quotes of all the graduates of yeshivas who are happy?”

Reporters who really want to write fair, comprehensive, and not manipulative, stories know they must interview people from every side of the spectrum to give accurate, thoughtful slices of life.

NYTimes, you know better.

Any article that only quotes bitter malcontents as sources obviously has an agenda to paint a certain picture, such as that all Chassidic Jews are: poor, depressed, angry, jobless, unemployable, and abused. 

Please. It is time to get real. Spend an entire day in Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights among Chassidim who work, pray, and live together b’simcha every day. Music is always playing. 

People are always laughing. Businesses are bustling. People are raising children, supporting their families, and creating a thriving, growing culture in which the social problems of the rest of the city pale in comparison.

I don’t see homeless people in Boro Park, but I do see a lot of families, children playing, volunteerism, and a sense of safety that I don’t feel as I enter other neighborhoods.

Chassidic neighborhoods are healthy ones with the city's lowest rates of drug use and crime, except for outsiders who come in to commit hate crimes.

Can we compare these rates with those created by the graduates of public schools?

In terms of professional success, why can’t the NYTimes consider interviewing former yeshiva students like NY Judge Ruchie Freier, who grew up in Boro Park and attended Touro and law school?

I wonder how yeshiva educations shaped Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who represents District 48 in the NY Assembly, Mayor Eric Adams’ senior adviser Joel Eisdorfer, NYPD Inspector Richie Taylor, Agudath Israel Avi Shick, who has won cases in the US Supreme Court, and hundreds of others who lead in their professions.

I would love to interview Chani Neuberger, an American cybersecurity official, who was born in Boro Park and attended Bais Yaakov before moving on to Touro and Columbia University. She now serves as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology for President Joe Biden.

Also, the many professors who went to yeshiva who now teach college and graduate school should serve as sources.

I know I would love these sources’ answers because I see that Jewish children learn to feel proud, happy, and grateful to be part of people who take seriously their missions to be lights to themselves and to others.

Although going to college and becoming a professional is the expected life goal for the secular elite, I also wonder why does the NYTimes think everyone must follow this path?

What about all the teachers and community activists, who are among the most admired in Orthodox communities, who find value in giving to their communities rather than chasing money and prestige?

What about the hundreds of successful Brooklyn business owners who maybe don’t have super-glamorous titles, maybe they do, but are happy, connected to their families and communities in many ways? 

Here is the big story you missed NYTimes: What I feel and see every day is that most Chassidim feel deep meaning, true joy, and worthwhile direction, and those are not small things, and I did not find them in the public schools I attended through college.

Perhaps social problems are minimal at Jewish schools compared with public schools because in yeshivas, Jews learn that their souls are pure, as we say in our morning prayers.

Whatever distorted negativity the Times chooses to highlight, it sadly neglects the beauty, light, and happiness of Chassidic schooling and life.

How many times a year do public school students dance together, sing together, discuss G-d, eat foods that are from recipes that go centuries back, volunteer for chesed projects, and have mandates to connect to infinity?

When I have visited my daughters’ schools to celebrate or prepare for any Yom Tov, from Shabbos, to Sukkos, to Simchas Torah, I am still wowed by how much fun and authentic joy I see happening around me as teachers and students dance, sing, and laugh.

I once heard upbeat music coming from the girls’ lunch room when I walked in to teach at a Jewish girls’ high school one day.

“Is today a party or something?” I once asked, my arms full of books.

“No, it’s just lunch,” the 10th grader responded with a laugh.

How many public-school students feel the profound sense of joy, meaning, direction, connection to communities, and pride in themselves that yeshiva graduates usually do?

After sending my four children through the yeshiva system, I see that Jewish children learn to respect and value themselves and others in deep ways that are found nowhere else. 

Only in yeshivas do we learn to believe in ourselves from the inside out. 

By staying true to a curriculum that goes back thousands of years and choosing different levels of English education, yeshivas guard their students against ever-changing values, ideas, and morals that otherwise appear on every screen and in every classroom.

I was also stopped in my tracks when the backdrop to one girls’ school event was a banner with the line of Tehillim, “The glory of a Jewish princess is within her,” not exactly the beautiful message that was relayed in public schools to girls.

Guess what NYTimes? We don’t have to mimic you: no matter how much you insult us, mock us, and present only disgruntled sources. By painting the picture you paint, you are revealing your biases as reporters and your limitations as people.

While the liberal world constantly talks about “diversity,” the NYTimes article reveals liberals’ deep discomfort with those who do not look, speak, learn, and talk like them.