Rabbi Bender, Rabbi Brudny, and Rabbi Reisman Argue for Yeshivas to Continue to Teach as they Do

By Yehudit Garmaise

Among the 160,000 letters that members of the public have written to the New York State’s Education Department (NYSED) to oppose its third proposal in four years to regulate what is taught at private schools, was an especially passionate one.

Rabbis Elya Brudny, Yaakov Bender and Yisroel Reisman, who serve as the rabbis and deans of Yeshivas Mir, Darchei Torah, and Torah Vodaas, respectively, wrote in their letter, which was published today as an Op-Ed in Albany’s Times Union, “For 2,000 years, Orthodox Jews have prayed daily that ‘we and our children, and our children’s children, and all Jewish children be sincere students of the Torah.’”

“If these regulations, are adopted, it will be that much more difficult for our prayers to be realized,” the rabbis wrote in advance of the Tuesday’s midnight deadline to submit input. 

The rabbis lament that the NYSED seeks to require instruction in nine secular subjects, while “ascribing zero value – educational or otherwise — to the Jewish Studies curriculum that is the core of Jewish education.” 

“These regulations would require yeshivas to shift hours and resources away from those classes and towards courses that parents do not want and that educators do not suggest are core requirements.”

While the NYSED’s regulations offer "multiple pathways" for yeshivas to offer secular studies that are “substantially equivalent” to those offered in public schools, many Orthodox Jewish leaders say the guidelines are an assault on education at yeshivas at which the bulk of instruction is devoted to learning Jewish texts.

“Yeshiva students already have a heavy workload and a longer school day than their public school peers,” the rabbis said.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea that students should learn to think intensively and critically, and that, “Intelligence plus character is the goal of true education,” was according to the rabbis, “an apt description of the objectives and outcomes of yeshiva education.”