And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to...
A letter sent to the New York State Board of Regents (who run the New York State Education Department) in support of the proposed regulations for education standards in New York non-public schools, which includes all chadorim and yeshivos, to ensure “all New York’s children leave school with the knowledge they need to succeed in life”.
Not surprisingly, the usual suspects ranging from the Williamsburg antediluvians to the well-educated Agudah lay leaders and others have whipped up a storm to try and ensure that Chasidic kids remain pig-ignorant until the coming of the Messiah and long thereafter. Amen.
For the truth in the ‘equivalence’ of Torah study and the other spin and outright lies commonly propounded over there and over here, keep on reading.
Dear Regent,
I'm a 36 years old Chasidic man, who grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When I attended yeshiva, secular education was a little better than it is today. We had 1 hour and 45 minutes of English studies 4 days a week, for 7 years. The studies weren't really taken seriously, and there was no professional curriculum to build on the progress year after year.
By the time we were 13 years old, during our last year of secular studies, most of my class was able to read on a third or fourth grade level [Years 4-5 in UK]. In math, we reached up to long division. In the last year, there was an attempt to teach some fractions, but the class wasn't ready and wasn't motivated.
We had some books on history, science and social studies. These books were rarely used. Personally, I loved to read, so I read many of those books during recess and lunch time.
After I got married, I decided to work on a degree. I went to an Orthodox college, and I was from the lucky ones. The education I got in yeshiva – as dismal as it was – was better than what many other Chasidic students got in their yeshivas. Many of them had to drop out, because it was impossible for them to follow along. Since I was able to read English (albeit on a fourth grade level), I was able to build upon it. It was extremely hard, but I made it through. To me this demonstrated the difference between zero education, and some resemblance of one. No doubt had I had a decent basic education, as the law demands, my path would have been much easier, and I'd have way more opportunities to explore.
G-d granted me precious children – including 3 boys. They are in a Chasidic yeshiva, and while the Hebrew studies are now better than they were when I was a child, the secular education is way worse.
The kids don't get the basics of secular education. The time allotted for English studies is about an hour a day, 4 days a week, for 5 years. The teachers are in most cases completely incompetent, who can barely speak English and don't know the basics, like the multiplication table. There are almost no books, and there's no curriculum.
Our 13 year old, a bright and inquisitive child who's thank G-d doing very well in his Hebrew studies, has already "graduated" the English studies, and he can't write a coherent sentence in English. My wife and I spent many hours to help him get some education, but there's only so much parents can do after a full day at school. Our son reads English well, thanks to the work we did together. He's the only one in his class of 36 that understands and reads English beyond a second grade level [Year 2]. Since he's already 13 years old, there's now zero secular education in yeshivah.
Our younger sons are currently in cheder (elementary school), and are going through the same educational neglect. There's no interest in providing a robust basic education. To the yeshiva administration, taking basic secular studies seriously is a laughable and ridiculous idea.
The lack of education is even deeper than simple English. There is no educational mindset; there's no real reading or writing curriculum even in Yiddish or Hebrew. (At the start of each school-year kids get a Yiddish writing book, but bring it back home mostly empty at the end of the year.) The average Chasidic teen can't write a simple essay in ANY language.
And we don't have a choice here. We are Chasidic Jews, and we want to bring up our children in this heritage. We need them to attend a Chasidic school, as did we, and the generations before us. We should not be forced to drop our heritage, just so our children should be able to get a basic decent education – as is their right.
The educational neglect is not a question about Judaism or Chasidic belief. All Chasidic yeshivas – including the big yeshivas like Satmar and Bobov – were originally built with a decent secular studies component. Yeshiva leaders simply neglected their moral, educational, and financial responsibility to ensure their students are properly prepared for their future.
Yeshiva leaders are fighting against attempts to fix this horrible neglect, to cover for their gross incompetence. They simply don't want to take upon themselves the responsibility of teaching secular studies – a duty that they so successfully managed to get away with for the last few decades.
Yeshiva activists tout graduates of the few ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that do provide some education and the scores of Orthodox non-Chasidic schools that provide an excellent education, and use them to cover up for the educational neglect in most other Chasidic yeshivas. Instead of spending money to correct this horrible problem, yeshiva leaders spend it on PR and propaganda. But if one wants to believe no one, and just wants to find out the hard cold facts: get a group of unbiased educators to visit the Satmar yeshiva on a random day, and ask basic educational questions from random students. These yeshiva leaders are experts in putting up a show. Talk to random students on a random, unannounced day, and the sad facts will fully emerge.
Many parents are afraid of government intervention. But they, too, readily admit that the current situation has to change. It is a tragedy of titanic proportion.
Personally, I'm more afraid of the educational neglect than the government intervention. I believe that if the yeshiva leaders would think in terms of actually fixing the issue, and not in terms of how to fool the government, they would have been able to negotiate a solid education for our children that is close to what yeshivas originally provided before the era of neglect, and close enough to satisfy the State.
I therefore beseech you to approve Rule # EDU-27-19-00010-P, and to force the yeshivas to comply with the State regulations to provide a decent education. Approximately 3 hours of secular studies a day is fully consistent with the Jewish religion and Chasidic values. We need it, you need it, and most importantly, our children need it.
Thank you very much,
I can see entirely why a survivor of child sexual exploitation frames the experience of a lack of sex education in terms of rape, and it would be indecent not to acknowledge that. But we cannot engage in discourse on what public policy should be on the basis of individual lived experience. There has to be objectivity, and while everybody is entitled to their own opinions, nobody is entitled to their own facts, and not our own laws.
ReplyDeleteThe accusation of marital rape is a complete misstatement of the law as it stands in 2019. There's no precedent at all in law to support the contention that familial religious beliefs vitiate consent. No public prosecutor in the UK would bring charges against a husband who had sex with his sober, mentally competent wife, who understood what sexual intercourse was and gave consent to the act because she believed that it was religiously meritorious ('a mitzva') to do so.
The implication - that the anticipation of sexual pleasure is the only reason in law that a person can consent to intercourse - is chillingly materialistic. It denies the existence of feelings of mutuality, spirituality, family, bonding, and love.
That's not to say that there is no trauma from such encounters. There may well be a significant proportion of newlyweds who are harmed. The law can not and does not claim to protect from all harms. We cannot as a society incarcerate men with no mens rea who have formed a reasonable belief that the woman consented.
It is beyond crass to publicly accuse an entire group of men of being suspected rapists because of their ethnic or religious background. Every case is individual - that is how the rule of law works.
The gaslighting, in which it was claimed although a barrister, silk, and junior counsel were quoted initially, the word rape was not being used in a legal sense, does not bring credit.
The priority must be the children. This row doesn't help promote the cause of proper sexual education - a cause I fully endorse as sensible and likely (*citation needed) protective against rape, trauma, and CSE. To the contrary, if this outrageous rape accusation didn't exist, propagandists would have had to invent it like Dayan Weiss invented the death penalty for failing an Ofsted.
This was wrong. A proper, public retraction and apology is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.
I still stand by this. If young chassidim really and truly don't understand the basic mechanics of sexual intercourse then how exactly would the groom work out ex nihilo how to commit a rape on the wedding night?
DeleteWe should stop wasting time debating a preposterous premise that 19 year old Chassidish kids don't know how to make babies.
Reading between the lines, I think what is causing a lot of physical and emotional hurt is a lack of sexual technique. I think that could be a real problem, that it could be a problem that could be addressed sensitively without violating the norms of many chassidim (Gur takkonos notwithstanding) and that we would have a better conversation about it if we describe precisely what the problem is.
My feeling is that chassan teachers will be sensitive to evidence that women are being traumatised with long term effects from perfunctory encounters, and some would be prepared to encourage a more relaxed and less outcome driven approach to sex.
We need more data, more evidence of the scale of the problem, less inflammatory criminalisation of a very sensitive and difficult subject, less use of the word 'rape' for bad consensual sexual experiences, more internal buy in, and less wealthy white saviour complex from outside the Chassidish community.
Since incorporation in 2011, SOFT used the "shortern accounting date by 1 day" shtick to gain 3 extra months to file its accounts in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. If the company were to have repeated the shtick in 2019, it would have had to change its actual balance sheet date (which can be no more than 6 days out of sync with the accounting reference date), so instead it lengthened the period by 6 days instead, still gaining 3 months. None of this practice is illegal under companies law, although the company was late in reporting to the charity commission (9 months) as a consequence. It is however a sign of disorganisation.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the recent 2017 accounts, in the trustees report reserves policy, the trustees state that "It is the charity's policy that only funds that have cleared the bank be allowed to be drawn by donor's via the voucher system" Overlooking the minor crimes committed to the apostrophe, the policy is a sound one. But was it carried out?
What business (note 11) did SOFT have investing £1,120,038 into a leasehold property? If we strip out that illiquid asset, we clearly see in note 14 that the unrestricted funds available to pay the staff and fund operations were some £405,000 less than the liabilities that needed to be paid.
Is there a breakdown of the £80,000 management costs which didn't relate to salaries and wages (note 6 less note 9)? Who were the lucky *individuals* who were recipients of £1,325,878 grants *above £20,000* in a single year - each? Why was £7,982 of interest apparently incurred? Who were the other debtors of £70,318? Why didn't the trustees register as PSCs?
Most glaringly of all: the accounts declaring £465,578 debtors recoverable in a **Suspense account** (emphasis not mine) in note 12. Note 13 has an equal and opposite **Suspense account** creditor. Had someone borrowed money? What was going on? Had they lost track of which client income or expenditure related to, and dumped it into suspense?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rabbi-bezalel-rakow-8np2nm350wg
ReplyDeleteFor latest news blogs visit: https://myraana.com/blogs
ReplyDelete