R. Aaron Teitelbaum, one of the two Satmar rebbes, is quoted as having said back in 2018: “The truth is, we either had very little secular studies or none at all. We will not comply, and we will not follow the state education commissioner under any circumstances.”

 

Critics of Hasidic Schools Exposé Missed the Point: It Wasn’t Antisemitic or the Product of Secular Bias — It’s a Story of Corruption

 

 

by Shaul Magid

 

When I was in yeshiva in Boro Park in the early 80s, I was asked by my Rosh Yeshiva, a Satmar Hasid, to go to Downtown Brooklyn to sign a few documents for state funds for the yeshiva. When I got there, I was told the money was for a summer program run by the yeshiva to teach English to new Russian immigrants. I knew nothing about this program and didn’t sign the forms. 

When I returned and the Rosh Yeshiva asked why I’d refused to sign the forms I asked him about the program. He told me no such program existed. When I asked, “How can we take public money for a program that doesn’t exist?” he smiled and looked at me as though I’d landed from another planet.

I was reminded of this incident as I read the recent feature in the Sunday New York Times on public funding of hasidic schools in New York City which has raised an enormous backlash on social media and among many American Jews. Accusations of bias, unfairness, and even antisemitism, have floated across social media and Jewish journalism.

It seems to me that there are a variety of issues here that have become mashed into one large set of accusations based on various interrelated but not identical components. 

• First, that it was unfair to accuse the school systems in haredi communities of failing to prepare students to attain the basics of citizenship and educational skills. This is hardly new. 
• Second, that this became a featured story in the Sunday New York Times in the first place. Here, suspicion of antisemitism raises its head—as seems to be the case whenever Jews are written about these days. 
• Finally, that the very accusation is based on chauvinistic assumptions about what constitutes “knowledge” given that haredi education is certainly intense and rigorous, albeit in matters that arguably fail to provide its students with basic 21st century life skills. This is especially true if they choose to live outside their enclaves which, in some ways, is precisely the point.  

Regarding the educational curricula and policies of haredi schools, much of what appeared in the Times has been a source of controversy for decades. Naftuli Moster and his “Young Activists For Fair Education” (a.k.a. YAFFED) have been working tirelessly on this issue, while numerous essays in law journals have addressed these matters, including a recent 57-page scientific essay by Matty Lichtenstein published in the American Journal of Sociology. This is clearly not the creation of a bunch of editors at the New York Times.

What almost none of the article’s critics appears to mention is that this story is really about corruption; it’s about the city and state political figures and yeshiva deans who have duplicitously taken money from state coffers without abiding by state regulations, and the politicians who’ve looked the other way to insure a haredi voting bloc. As much as a Hasidic story, this is also a New York story of political malfeasance. 

The nature of haredi education is a matter that’s largely internal to the Jewish community, even as legal issues sometimes extend to the courts. Private schools in general have great latitude in curricula so long as they abide by certain very broad procedural mandates. One can think of the Amish schools and Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) where the Supreme Court ruled that the Amish are not bound to put their children in compulsory education past 8th grade. 

For the Amish, what we generally call “knowledge” is considered hubris and counter to the “plain life” to which they aspire. But the Amish refuse state funding for schools as a matter of religious principle while these haredi yeshivas take state funds yet fail to comply with educational regulations. And the state seems to look the other way. So this report isn’t merely an indictment of “Jews” (that is, the haredi schools in question) but equally of the state. It’s a case of collusion in which students are the victims.

The haredi schools are taking money from the state, and thus American taxpayers, without abiding by the dictates of state educational procedures. In fact, according to the article, R. Aaron Teitelbaum, one of the two Satmar rebbes, is quoted as having said back in 2018: 

“The truth is, we either had very little secular studies or none at all. We will not comply, and we will not follow the state education commissioner under any circumstances.” 

And yet his schools readily accept state funding. It is this corruption that merits a feature essay in the Times. Teitelbaum can certainly refuse to comply with state mandates and suffer whatever consequences may come his way. But if he takes money and doesn’t comply, that is corruption.

*

But let’s review some of the criticism and accusations against the Times. Two essays, one by Liel Leibovitz in Tablet and one by Avi Shafran in Religion News Service, are worth noting. Neither focuses on corruption, with Leibovitz ignoring it entirely and Shafran dismissing it as “a few dollars per child…for things like school safety and nutritious meals.”

Leibovitz asks us to consider the unwarranted hegemony about how we define “knowledge”—that is, secular knowledge—and how that definition doesn’t produce healthy adults overall, but a society riddled with drugs, abuse, and unhappiness. In other words, Leibovitz wants us to determine educational value by output and not input. While a legitimate concern for which I have some sympathy, his assessment of the “happiness” of the haredi world is purely speculative. He has never lived in it (I have) and his judgment is a purely romantic, or more likely opportunistic, view of one gazing in from the outside. 

Setting that aside, he falsely suggests—again with no knowledge whatsoever—that yeshiva students must know math because a medieval glossator on the Talmud in the 13th century (known as Tosafot) discusses a rudimentary notion of Pi and thus the student must know enough math to understand that. What he fails to mention is that those cherry-picked medieval comments on mathematical calculations from the Middle Ages are most often glossed over in yeshiva classrooms—in part because the teacher doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to figure them out in any detail either. But how would Leibovitz know, he never studied Tosafot in a haredi yeshiva? 

Leibovitz proceeds to note that yeshiva students know of the Sasanian Queen Shushandukht while public school kids would be scratching their heads. Really? First of all, not one in a thousand haredi yeshiva students would know what the word “Sasanian” even means (it’s the term for a pre-Islamic middle Persian empire). And secondly, I would wager that most yeshiva students who study the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) all day, couldn’t find Bavel on a map, let alone know anything about how the Babylonian sages lived their lives.

In the end, Leibovitz simply wants to use the Times essay to weaponize the “liberal” media’s latent antisemitism. The problem is that his understanding and experience of that world is so scant that it fails miserably, almost comically.

Shafran’s response is more standardly apologetic, minimizing the cases of abuse and malfeasance (“a few bad apples”); yet, unlike Leibovitz, he openly states that the Times piece is not antisemitic at all. Shafran focuses on the productive nature of haredi society, noting that people become storeowners, plumbers, therapists, “yes, even candlestick makers.” (His haredi readers will not get that reference.) This is true. The haredi world is a fully functioning subculture where Torah study is accompanied by professions that do not require a secular education (this is true of the Amish as well). 

But that does not mean that some secular education doesn’t contribute mightily to good citizenship (even if some, or many, citizens lead unhappy lives for all kinds of reasons). Unlike Leibovitz, Shafran actually lives in the haredi world, and thus while he apologizes for it, he doesn’t romanticize, or overly distort it. His reading is thus contestable, but not comical. 

He does overemphasize the old argument that Talmud study sharpens one’s critical thinking, which it does, but that’s no substitute for knowing how to write a cogent sentence in English if you live in America, or to decipher instructions on how to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture (ok, I agree, that’s exceedingly difficult regardless). As Matty Lichtenstein argues in her essay, the skills acquired through Talmud study only substitute for secular knowledge if they are transferred into a different register, which haredi yeshiva education intentionally and in principle does not do.

Maligning the many for the few is always an argument used to deflect social ills (most citizens are not, contra Leibovitz, abused, unhappy drug addicts). But how many students need to be traumatized, underserved, marginalized, or basically illiterate for something to constitute a serious social problem? That’s a serious question. Shafran defends his community’s behavior at great peril—certainly for the sake of the children ill-equipped to function if they choose to leave the enclave in which they were raised.

*

But again, neither Leibovitz nor Shafran addresses the reason this made it to the front page of the Sunday New York Times: malfeasance and corruption. I leave the reader with one more personal anecdote. 

In 2016 I was hired as an expert consultant for a case being brought by the ACLU against a large (non-Hasidic) yeshiva in New Jersey that had taken $10 million of state funds to build a new dormitory and library. In order to get the state funds, the yeshiva claimed it was a non-sectarian institution. I read through hundreds of pages of yeshiva documents arguing that its classes were “secular,” taught secular skills, and that it didn’t discriminate against race or creed in its admission policies. It was, of course, absurd. After months of consultation, two days before the trial the yeshiva relented and eventually returned the money. They knew they had no case in court.

Are my experiences exceptional? I will let the reader decide. Taking money from state coffers while openly claiming “We will not comply” is both illegal and egregious (and, unless you hold by the halakhic (Jewish legal) opinion that theft is only a transgression if it’s theft against a Jew, it’s also forbidden and transgressive). If there is any antisemitism being fostered here, it’s not by the New York Times but by the yeshiva deans who engage in such activity and those who defend them.

 

https://religiondispatches.org/critics-of-hasidic-schools-expose-missed-the-point-it-wasnt-a-case-of-antisemitism-or-of-who-defines-knowledge-but-there-is-a-word-for-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=critics-of-hasidic-schools-expose-missed-the-point-it-wasnt-a-case-of-antisemitism-or-of-who-defines-knowledge-but-there-is-a-word-for-it&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=critics-of-hasidic-schools-expose-missed-the-point-it-wasnt-a-case-of-antisemitism-or-of-who-defines-knowledge-but-there-is-a-word-for-it

Biden signs bill eliminating civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims --- No federal statute of limitations was in place for criminal claims regarding child sex abuse.

ונקה ינקה

 

President Biden on Friday signed a bill that will eliminate the statute of limitations for people who were sexually abused as minors to file civil claims.

The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act was passed by the House by voice vote on Tuesday after passing the Senate by unanimous consent in March.

The bill eliminates time constraints for survivors to file civil claims related to sex abuse crimes against minors, including forced labor, sex trafficking, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.

Previously, minors who survived such abuse were able to file federal claims until they reached the age of 28 or until a decade after the violation or injury was discovered.

No federal statute of limitations was in place for criminal claims regarding child sex abuse.

The bill was initially introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and co-sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

“The science of trauma is clear: it often takes years for victims to come forward,” Durbin said in a statement after the House passed the bill. “Our bipartisan bill honors the basic notions of justice for survivors, and I was proud to work with Senator Blackburn and our colleagues in the House to lead it across the finish line. By signing this legislation into law, we can finally help survivors have their day in court and a moment of healing—when they are ready.”

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3647958-biden-signs-bill-eliminating-civil-statute-of-limitations-for-child-sex-abuse-victims/

Under current law, minors who experience sexual abuse are able to file federal civil claims until they turn 28 years old, or until 10 years after the violation or injury is discovered. The bill Congress passed seeks to eliminate those time restraints. There is no statute of limitations in place for criminal offenses involving child sex abuse.

 

Bill eliminating statute of limitations for child sex abuse civil suits heads to Biden’s desk

The House on Tuesday passed a bill eliminating the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse who seek to file civil claims, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for final approval.

The chamber cleared the bill, titled the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, by voice vote, a strategy reserved for non-controversial, popular measures. The Senate passed the legislation by unanimous consent in March.

The measure calls for removing the statute of limitations for minors filing civil claims relating to a number of sex abuse crimes, including force labor, sex trafficking, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.

Under current law, minors who experience sexual abuse are able to file federal civil claims until they turn 28 years old, or until 10 years after the violation or injury is discovered. The bill Congress passed seeks to eliminate those time restraints.

There is no statute of limitations in place for criminal offenses involving child sex abuse.

During debate on the House floor Tuesday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said survivors of child sex abuse often delay reporting their situations, which could put them at risk of not seeking damages because of the statute of limitations.

“Also common is delayed disclosure, with the tendency of survivors of child sexual abuse to wait many years before disclosing abuse to others,” Nadler said. “This is because survivors of sexual abuse often take a long time to process their trauma and many survivors who were abused as a child may not even recognize the abuse they suffered until much later in life.”

“Unfortunately, because survivors of child sexual abuse often delay reporting, any statute of limitations may prevent survivors accessing justice and seeking damages in civil court,” he added.

The New York Democrat argued that statutes of limitations in place for civil claims of child sex abuse “can serve to protect abusers and enable them to continue to exploit their power by allowing victims’ claims to expire.”

“This bill will enable survivors who are victims of federal child sex abuse offenses, including aggravated sexual abuse, sex trafficking, human trafficking, forced labor, and sexual exploitation, to seek civil damages in federal court regardless of the amount of time that has passed since the abuse,” he added.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on the House floor Tuesday said the bill “would allow victims of human trafficking or sex offenses to seek civil remedies regardless of when the crime took place.”

https://www.cnyhomepage.com/hill-politics/bill-eliminating-statute-of-limitations-for-child-sex-abuse-civil-suits-heads-to-bidens-desk/

“It is dangerous. It is a risk. There is nothing that we or the Ukrainians can do to help protect you,” said Michael Brodsky, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine.

 

Michael Brodsky the anti-Semite ---- NaNaNaNaNaNa

Defying Ukraine’s wartime warnings, thousands of Hasidic pilgrims have made it to Uman for Rosh Hashanah

 

UMAN, Ukraine (JTA) — As he jogged up a hill in this central Ukrainian town, a Hasidic man in a black knee-length coat flicked through a pocket prayer book. He was heading towards the one-story complex built atop a cemetery that houses the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. And he was late for a post-morning prayer celebration that involved music — including some klezmer-influenced saxophone — and rhythmic clapping.

It felt like a scene from just about any past Rosh Hashanah season in Uman, when the town’s Jewish quarter turns into a shtetl of sorts, hosting thousands of mainly Israeli pilgrims who belong to the Breslov branch of Hasidism. Rabbi Nachman encouraged his followers to visit his tomb for the Jewish New Year, and visit they have — in groups of varying size since his death in 1811, through various periods of 20th and 21st century upheaval. In 2018, over 40,000 Jews thronged the streets of Uman.  

So far this year, it is estimated that 2,000 Hasidic pilgrims — overwhelmingly men, although some families visit as units — are already believed to be here, crowding into shoddy local apartment and hotel buildings. Some 8,000 more could arrive by the holiday, which begins at sundown on Sunday.

But this year has presented the pilgrims with an array of obstacles — all stemming from the ongoing war that has made Uman a danger zone.

A man plays a saxophone at a gathering in Uman, Sept. 19, 2022.

Ukrainian officials have urged Jewish pilgrims to not come, warning that any mass gathering in Uman, which has been struck multiple times since the start of the war, could become a target for Russian attack. U.S. embassies in Israel and elsewhere put out a striking warning that urged people who decided to go anyway to “draft a will.” 

By now, some areas in the Jewish quarter seem to have more armed police than Jews. A JTA journalist who arrived on Monday was only able to move around under the observation of two heavily armed minders.

“It is clearly not the best time to come,” Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “A better time will come after our victory.”

Nevertheless, when interviewed by the JTA, some pilgrims preparing to leave for the trip from the heavily Orthodox town of Monsey, New York, and some of those already in Uman either nonchalantly laughed at the warnings or responded to them with righteous indignation. The potential of a missile attack seemed to be a relative afterthought for most. 

The town’s apartments and hotels are old, cramped and shoddily built

“My mother was afraid,” said Moe, an 18-year-old from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who like several others did not give his last name for privacy concerns. “There was no other option for me. I was not afraid to come, because everything — my health and my wealth — depends on me being here at Rosh Hashanah.” 

On a recent weekday, outside the grave complex — which also contains a synagogue and several other rooms — bearded Israelis in hoodies hung around smoking and sipping tea under a drizzling rain. When asked whether the potential dangers caused by the Russian invasion had made them consider skipping Uman this year, there was bewildered chatter. 

“This is my rabbi,” protested Avi Koller, a 49-year-old Jerusalemite. “It is like when they told Jimi Hendrix that he was going to die from drugs. Jimi Hendrix replied that while he could die from drugs, he could also be hit by a bus tomorrow. We can die from anything.” 

Koller, a former rocker who said he found religion late, took another drag on his cigarette. 

A pilgrim gets a nap in.

“Anyway, do you see any Russian missiles? Everything is fine here. In the evening, we have our curfew, from 11 to 5, and that is it,” he said.

But the journey has not been easy for most this year. The pilgrims, who usually come to Uman via Kyiv, have had to make other arrangements. Many decided to come days or weeks early to ensure that they were in Ukraine come what may. Since direct flights to Ukraine have been canceled, most are flying to Poland, Romania and Moldova, before hopping in taxis for expensive rides across the border. Some have stopped for a respite in a western city like Lviv; the journey from western Ukraine to Uman can then take up to 10 or more hours. 

In some Breslov Telegram channels, which have been abuzz with requests for advice, users continually comment on an endless stream of photos of Turkish Airlines and El Al tickets to Chisinau and Bucharest, all being resold at exorbitant rates. Travel agents offer “once in a lifetime” offers for $1,000 tickets for flights and transport. 

“When the war started, the only question I was asking myself was how I would get to Uman. All I knew was that for sure I would have to get here,” said Binyamin, 27, who said this year is his 20th time spending Rosh Hashanah in Uman. “I came through Romania. I landed in Bucharest and took an 18-hour taxi ride here.”

He spent $800 on his flights. “If you come earlier,” he said with a smile, “it is cheaper.”  

On Monday, Ukrainian officials said they would be increasing security checks around Uman and redoubling efforts to explain the wartime rules — such as a strict curfew and a restriction on taking photos of military personnel — to pilgrims arriving from Israel. There is much skepticism on the ground that the guidance is needed or will even be imparted. 

The town has upped its police presence as the pilgrims continue to make their way in

“I haven’t seen anyone come to explain anything yet,” says Bernard, 25, from Borough Park in Brooklyn. Men pushed past him in a hallway inside the grave complex to collect their coats and hats after morning prayers had finished. “I don’t think that they need to come and explain anything anyway.” 

“The war is eight hours away from here,” he added, referring to the fact that Ukrainians are currently in the middle of a successful operation to push the Russians back to the east. “In Israel, everyone lives much closer to the areas where the missiles fall from Syria or from Gaza than here.” 

There is also a perception that the past two pilgrimages, which took place during the start of and then a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, had prepared many for the logistical difficulties of getting to Ukraine in a crisis.

“We all came early last year because of COVID,” said Bernard. “They wanted to close the borders, so everyone came early. We came months before, two years ago, when corona started.”

Despite the enthusiasm of those who have made the trek, the overall number of pilgrims is way down. In 2018, when 40,000 Jews filled every available bed — from hotel suites to hostels in damp Khrushchev-era apartment buildings — Mikhail Pinto was charging $5,000 for four days in one of his rooms in the large hotel he owns on Pushkin Street, the main drag that runs through the Jewish quarter. This year, that rate is down to $1,000.

A banner reads “We are praying for peace in Ukraine”

He has noticed a steep drop in people coming from New York specifically.

“Americans and Canadians … they can’t get the proper insurance,” he said. “For Israelis, this isn’t so much of a big deal, but for Americans, it has been a huge issue.” 

Overcoming obstacles to the pilgrimage has become ingrained in the collective myth of those who come to Uman. During the 1930s, when access to Uman was strictly forbidden to Jewish pilgrims, they secretly visited apartments near the cemetery where Rabbi Nachman was buried under the threat of arrest and deportation to Siberia. The Soviet Union then tried to stamp out the pilgrimage as part of its atheist agenda, but by the late 1940s officials relented to allow tiny numbers of closely watched Soviet Jews make the trip. 

 

It was not until the Soviet Union began to liberalize under Mikhail Gorbachev that it began to reopen access to Uman for the vast majority of Breslov followers who lived in Israel and the United States. In 1988, some 250 visas to visit Uman were granted. 

This year, both Ukrainian and Israeli officials are clearly frustrated at the steadfast insistence among many Israelis, who make up roughly 90% of those who make the pilgrimage to Ukraine. The Israeli government has opened discussions with some Breslov leaders to encourage them to take a clear stance against coming, but officials have clearly been disappointed with the response, as few have chosen to echo these messages with any urgency internally. 

Many pilgrims have also already run afoul of the wartime restrictions that are in place across Ukraine. In Ternopil, in western Ukraine, a group of pilgrims were arrested after hanging around and taking photos of a Ukrainian military checkpoint. Many others have been stopped for not taking the strict curfew restrictions seriously. 

“It is dangerous. It is a risk. There is nothing that we or the Ukrainians can do to help protect you,” said Michael Brodsky, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine. “The Ukrainians are using all of their efforts to fight the war and they don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the problems of tourists coming.”

 https://www.jta.org/2022/09/21/global/defying-ukraines-wartime-warnings-thousands-of-hasidic-pilgrims-have-made-it-to-uman-for-rosh-hashanah?utm_source=JTA_Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA_Around_the_World&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-48748-25499

Everyone Of The Member Rabbis of These 2 Groups Had A Minimum of a High School Education, Some are College Graduates! (Except Malkiel Kotler).

ALWAYS A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT ON EVERY IMPORTANT ISSUE!

 

Do religious Jews have a right to reject basic secular education?

 

Chassidic communities are entitled to isolate their children from the secular world. Does that mean scrutiny of their schools’ alleged failures by “The New York Times” is anti-Semitic?

 

 

 

After more than a century of biased reporting about Israel, contempt for Zionism, and a lack of interest in reporting about anti-Semitism, readers are right to regard any coverage of the Jewish community by The New York Times with skepticism, if not justified suspicion, of ill intentions. So, after the Times invested a year of the time of two reporters and who knows how many researchers in investigating conditions in schools run by the ultra-Orthodox community and Chassidic sects in the greater New York area, the assumption on the part of many Jews was that the product of this effort would reek of prejudice.

That explains why the reaction from many Jews to the massive front-page feature published on the subject by the Times this past Sunday was intense and angry. They wondered why, in an era when inner-city public schools are notoriously failing their students, the newspaper thought that schools run primarily by Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn and Rockland County were deserving of so much scrutiny. That much of the reporting seemed to be driven by criticisms of these communities by former members who complain that they emerged from these schools lacking basic skills in English or math, as well as with stories about suffering beatings by teachers, also left many Jewish readers thinking that an anti-Orthodox agenda rather than justified concerns were behind the decision to report and publish the piece.

That the Times also took the extraordinary step of publishing the story in Yiddish and included a form response for those with experiences in these schools to send in their thoughts also seemed to indicate that the goal of the project was to disparage the Jewish community. That it came after the last two years when politicians and news outlets unfairly scapegoated the ultra-Orthodox for spreading COVID-19 deepened the hurt. The fact that the Times continues to ignore an epidemic of anti-Semitic attacks on this community from African-American assailants has also created a situation in which nothing the paper is likely to publish on related subjects will be taken as anything other than an attack by many Jews.

But even if all that is true, and the Times’ reporting does betray a cultural bias and condescension on the part of its staff and the overwhelmingly liberal readership of the paper, does that mean any scrutiny of ultra-Orthodox schools is inherently anti-Semitic?

As much as it would be easy to dismiss the story, if test scores and reports from other sources, including from Jews who are deeply worried about the failure of this system to prepare its students for any sort of a productive life other than Torah scholarship—are to be trusted, then there is more here than cultural or religious bias.

The ultra-Orthodox community under scrutiny here has seemed to adopt the same model as their haredi counterparts in Israel, where educational standards in their schools on secular subjects are abysmal. While most of the discussion about the haredim in Israel has focused on their refusal to do their fair share in defending the Jewish state by refusing military service, the fact that their rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox schools are solely focused on religious education while producing people who lack the rudimentary skills to support themselves is an even greater challenge for Israel.

A situation where Torah study is the only respectable profession for haredi men is one that is a recipe for endemic poverty. Nevertheless, the political muscle of Israel’s religious parties has not only guaranteed funding for these schools but also ensured that the state is never going to require that their students are given even minimal adequate instruction in non-religious subjects.

While politics has created a daunting economic challenge that poses huge dilemmas for Israel’s future, it appears a similar situation has unfolded in New York. Observers of New York politics have long understood that the ultra-Orthodox communities vote as blocs with members apparently doing the bidding of their rabbinic leadership in much the same way as in Israel. In this manner, New York politicians like disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his successor, Kathy Hochul, have obtained the lockstep support of Chassidic enclaves in exchange for their influence in ensuring that no one looks too closely at what happens in their schools.

The result is that these institutions are turning out students who lack rudimentary skills in English and math. You don’t have to share the contempt for religious Jews that may be widespread in the Times newsroom to be alarmed by the fact that test scores in these subjects at ultra-Orthodox schools for boys (girls, who are expected to get jobs rather than merely study sacred texts, get slightly more instruction and do marginally better) appear to be the lowest in the state. That means that they are worse than those at public schools in New York where poor and minority students are being short-changed by a system that is resistant to change, as well as those at other religious institutions.

As philanthropist Michael Steinhardt wrote last week in the New York Post, the failure of these schools is a Jewish tragedy. That is why he and others have been urging greater state scrutiny of these schools, and forcing them to change to improve their secular education. To that the communities and many of their defenders, such as the editors of the New York Sun, cry foul.

They believe that the issue here isn’t so much poor education as the refusal of the secular state—cheered on by secular Jews—to accept the desire of the ultra-Orthodox community to opt out of society. The point of the education they are giving their children is not, after all, to produce productive members of a secular society—let alone, as is the case with many schools, to prepare children for college — but for religious lives as separate as possible from their non-Jewish neighbors. Their fear of assimilation—and the toll it takes on Jewish and religious identity—is such that in some quarters, there is not only hostility to Internet use and secular subjects but also English as an everyday language. Under those circumstances, it’s little wonder that these schools must be understood as playing a role in the growth of Jewish poverty. But their defenders seem to be taking the position that any interference in their curricula is a denial of their right to religious freedom.

The secular left has been waging war on public religious observance and seeks to marginalize people of faith. The hostility on the part of newspapers like the Times and mainstream liberal Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, to recent Supreme Court decisions that defend the rights of religious believers is lamentable. But the attempt to shoehorn this controversy into the broader debate about religious freedom is unpersuasive. Those who want to ensure that ultra-Orthodox schools give students at least the basics of English and math—something that is required by the New York State Constitution—are not attempting to infringe on their right to worship or have schools dedicated to their faith. The haredim are fully entitled to live and worship as they please, and to isolate themselves from the secular world as much as they want. But it is both reasonable and necessary for the state to ensure that their schools do not turn out students that are functionally illiterate in English and unable to do basic math.

Even if we were to dismiss the Times’ focus on the use of corporal punishment at Chassidic schools, which is deeply problematic if true but tangential to the question of their academic failures, as a function of the paper’s bias, it is not anti-Semitic to worry about the role that schools are playing in fomenting poverty. The reality of a population that is not only growing at exponential rates due to large family sizes—something that those who care about the shrinking non-Orthodox population applaud—but also increasingly dependent on state welfare programs paid for by taxpayers, is something that must be addressed.

Nor does anyone need to be caught up, as is the Times, in the drama surrounding defectors from the ultra-Orthodox world. The literary genre of the memoirs of such rebels against religious life is, as scholar Ruth Wisse has discussed, not new. It’s been going on since the late 19th century. One can sympathize with such people or revile them as turncoats who are besmirching their origins, but that has nothing to do with whether Chassidic schools are fulfilling their obligations to provide a minimal decent secular education along with their focus on Judaism.

As some point out, institutions that produce students capable of understanding and studying the Talmud and other sacred texts are learning advanced reasoning skills that are often missing elsewhere. Yet as even a defender of these schools, like Mosaic columnist Eli Spitzer notes, it is something of a fairy tale to pretend that such instruction is a substitute for teaching Jewish children the basic English and math they need to survive outside of a yeshivah or kollel. These schools should neither be demonized nor idealized; however, the idea that any outside scrutiny is an attack on Judaism is not an argument that can be reasonably defended.

As much as it can be a mistake to generalize about conditions in these schools and as much as the Times’ motives are suspect, the willingness of many Jews to reflexively circle the wagons around them and to defend the resistance of the ultra-Orthodox leadership to even minimal scrutiny or accountability for their failures in secular subjects is not merely a mistake. It’s consigning a large and important part of the Jewish community to a future of poverty that would be indefensible if we were describing any other group.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/do-religious-jews-have-a-right-to-reject-basic-secular-education/?utm_source=The+Daily+Syndicate&utm_campaign=41d9853d55-Daily+Syndicate+09-11-22+%28copy+2%29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8583953730-41d9853d55-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+09-11-22+%28copy+2%29_COPY_01%29

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

“It is entirely possible for yeshivas to offer enriching English, math, and science education at the same time as a strong grounding in religious texts and Jewish tradition – indeed, many do. I know it personally, because many of my friends and colleagues are smart, well-educated yeshiva graduates".

 

Statement from Comptroller Lander on Board of Regents Vote on Academic Standards at Private Schools Receiving Public Funds

 

September 13, 2022

 

 

 

New York, NY – New York City Comptroller Brad Lander issued the following statement on today’s New York State Board of Regents vote to establish new regulations for holding private and parochial schools to substantially equivalent academic standards. The vote comes on the heels of The New York Times story outlining a lack of oversight of private Hasidic Jewish schools that fail to provide a basic secular education.

“Every single New York City child is owed a solid education that prepares them to thrive – yet as The New York Times report this week made starkly clear, too many yeshivas are failing that essential task. That so many young people have been denied the necessary skills they need to succeed in the higher educational opportunities, jobs, and diverse cultural and civic life of our city is a tragedy. That some of them may have been subjected to physical abuse is a shande.

“It is entirely possible for yeshivas to offer enriching English, math, and science education at the same time as a strong grounding in religious texts and Jewish tradition – indeed, many do. I know it personally, because many of my friends and colleagues are smart, well-educated yeshiva graduates.

“It’s also true that too many of our public schools fail to provide the enriching education that every one of our students deserve. The answer, of course, is to do all we can to demand accountability from all our schools – not to use the shortcomings of some to excuse those of others.

“Like all other private and public schools in New York State, yeshivas receive public funding to help meet the needs of and their obligations to their students. The government has an oversight responsibility to ensure those public dollars are spent as intended. Unfortunately, in recent years both the City and State have failed to hold yeshivas to appropriate educational standards. It is time for that to change. 

“Today, the Board of Regents adopted regulations clarifying the City’s oversight responsibilities to ensure that private and parochial schools offer a substantially equivalent basic education. As Comptroller, I’ll work to make sure we meet them.”

 

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/statement-from-comptroller-lander-on-board-of-regents-vote-on-academic-standards-at-private-schools-receiving-public-funds/

The purpose of the ḥasidic education system, beginning at age three and ending with marriage, is, quite simply, cultivating Ḥasidim. Lessons in the Pentateuch or Talmud are not primarily, often not at all, about developing academic skills—they are about molding a particular type of religious personality, one that will be comfortable in, satisfied by, and loyal to the ḥasidic community and way of life.

 

New York State vs. the (Hasidic) Yeshivas

 

 

Those who defend ḥasidic yeshivas against increasing state regulation have conjured up an unrecognizable fairy-tale world. 

 But the arguments of the state’s defenders are even worse.

In recent years, New York State has become the scene of an increasingly fierce battle over the provision of secular education in ḥasidic boys’ schools (yeshivas), a battle that brings to the surface many of the latent contradictions in liberal society. These contradictions, because of the ḥasidic community’s relentless growth, will soon enough have to be arbitrated one way or another both in New York and wherever else ḥasidic Jews can be found.

While there had been rumblings for decades about the quality of the secular education that ḥasidic yeshivas offer their students, the issue became one of state-wide political concern in New York after the founding of an advocacy group, Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED), in 2011. The leaders of this organization—young Jewish men and women who had grown up in the ḥasidic community and made the decision to leave—alleged that they had been personally failed by an education that left them ill-equipped to pursue careers of their choice, and that many yeshivas were in flagrant breach of New York State laws requiring education provided by private schools to be “substantially equivalent” to that offered in the public-education system.

YAFFED successfully lobbied the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to change its laissez-faire policy and enforce rules that would require yeshivas to teach the full secular curriculum—which includes social studies and computer skills as well as English, math, and science—or face legal sanctions. The ḥasidic community has responded in two ways: by challenging the sanctions in the state senate, and by filing legal challenges alleging that the state’s behavior infringes on its First- and Fourteenth- Amendment rights. In so doing it has successfully leveraged a coalition of Jewish and non-Jewish religious schools for whom the proposed regulations pose no direct threat but who are concerned about potential long-term ramifications for the independence of religious schools. Most legal experts concur that these constitutional challenges to state regulation of ḥasidic education will ultimately prove unsuccessful, but the wheels of justice grind slowly and the community is counting on a mayoral or gubernatorial candidate looking for the support of the ḥasidic bloc to save the day before that happens.

Legal arguments that turn on the precise significance of a comma in the Bill of Rights will, of course, not be of much relevance when the same issues rear their head in other countries where the ḥasidic community is growing—especially since few countries define religious liberty so broadly as does the U.S. More importantly, both parties have framed their cases in legal language that obscures and distorts the genuine ethical and philosophical issues involved. Much of what has been said on both sides to date is spurious, and even where it isn’t, it fails to cut to the heart of the issue. Since that issue turns out to be a crucial matter of religion and state, it behooves us to try to see clearly what’s going on.

Let us start with arguments made by those who defend the yeshivas—advocates who have conjured up a fairy-tale world that I, as a graduate of the ḥasidic school system, barely recognize. These defenders argue that ḥasidic schools are so dedicated to talmudic and biblical learning that they simply have no time available to teach secular subjects. The reality at elementary and middle school is much different: many hours are spent singing songs, listening to stories, and repeating material that has already been learned. In high school, meanwhile, most of the day is devoted to unstructured learning. This, for many students, consists primarily of socializing while absorbing a tiny amount of material. The system, which eschews academic selection and testing, is the polar opposite of one designed to churn out elite talmudic scholars, and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t. (Precisely what it is for will become clear in due course.) Indeed, it is well known, within the ḥaredi world at least, that graduates of non-ḥasidic ḥaredi yeshivas—those in New York make up something like a third of the total and have a strong secular-studies program—typically emerge with greater proficiency in Talmud than their ḥasidic counterparts.

Even more strained than the fantasies of impossibly busy students are claims that the yeshivas’ religious curriculum is so sophisticated that it achieves the goal of “substantial equivalency” by accomplishing everything the public system is designed to deliver. Plainly, yeshiva education does something that public-school education doesn’t: namely, providing students with the vocabulary, concepts, and background knowledge they need to study a page of Talmud. Claiming that on top of this it also fulfills the learning goals of the New York State curriculum really amounts to a claim that yeshiva education is superior to the mainstream version and has discovered an almost magical ability to level up the human brain. It’s an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, none of which is forthcoming. Yeshiva advocates point to the many ḥasidic Jews who are successful in business, or those who received a ḥasidic education and subsequently went on to distinguished academic achievements. The first only demonstrates that which is already widely known, namely that formal education is not necessary in many spheres of business. The second is not evidence of the power of ḥasidic education, but, rather, that overcoming educational deficits is easier and more common than often assumed. A Jew who grows up secular and chooses to become Orthodox will, if he is sufficiently intelligent and diligent, learn to read Hebrew and understand Talmud in one to two years. However, no one would take that as evidence that the public-school system is “substantially equivalent” to an Orthodox Jewish education.

Finally, yeshiva advocates argue that secular education in ḥasidic schools is not really that bad. Making this argument invariably involves blurring the boundaries of the discussion by including a wide range of non-ḥasidic ḥaredi schools that offer relatively good secular education, thus taking advantage of the fact that most outside observers find it hard to distinguish between one variety of black hat and another. The reality is that, with a few exceptions, most ḥasidic schools offer something like 90 minutes a day of secular studies to students ages six to twelve, the quality of which varies widely, but is mostly well below average; and these pupils then go on to high schools that provide no secular studies at all. I can tell you, as someone who attended mainstream ḥasidic schools, that by the age of fifteen I had forgotten almost entirely the smatterings of English and mathematics I had learned in elementary school and had to start again from scratch.

All this makes yeshiva advocates look pretty bad, but it turns out that the leading advocates for improved secular education offer up even poorer arguments. I have dedicated my career to ensuring that ḥasidic boys get better secular educations than I did, and was initially sympathetic to YAFFED’s arguments. In time, however, I realized that, as a result of relying on a shallow understanding of ḥasidic education and culture, the would-be reformers have maneuvered themselves into a foolhardy insistence on untenable claims.

First, YAFFED consistently tries to link the high rates of welfare dependency among Ḥasidim to poor education. But the relationship between educational deficits and reliance on the welfare system is much less direct than YAFFED asserts. Welfare dependency within the community is primarily the product of an expensive lifestyle caused by large family sizes, high property prices, private-school fees, wedding after wedding, and the cost of more than 60 Shabbat and Yom Tov meals a year (the equivalent of having Thanksgiving at least once a week)—all of which make welfare a rational economic choice for many people. I am personally concerned about the reliance of the ḥasidic community on welfare, and the kind of attitudes it fosters. But comparisons with non-ḥasidic ḥaredi communities, where welfare dependency is also common despite standards of secular education being better, do not indicate that education is the chief source of the problem or its solution.

Second, YAFFED has argued that the meager secular studies on offer in ḥasidic schools prevent young adults from pursuing college degrees, as if this were an unintended consequence of educational neglect in childhood. In reality, preventing college is the point. Ḥasidic parents are absolutely opposed to their eighteen-year-old sons or daughters attending college for the entirely rational reason that college consists of a complete immersion in a culture antithetical to Ḥasidism at the most formative stage of a person’s life. Other conservative subcultures within the United States have been doomed, more than anything else, by sending off their best and brightest to institutions that teach them to reject their upbringing as a condition of attaining the piece of paper that provides access to the socioeconomic elite. It is certainly true that having shaky English and math makes it an easier decision for young Shloime to continue with his talmudic education rather than majoring in gender studies at Yale. However, even if standards of secular studies in ḥasidic schools soared, ḥasidic parents would remain implacably opposed to their children pursuing degrees, at least until they are firmly anchored in the community through marriage and having children.

The most fundamental flaw, however, in YAFFED’s argument, is its failure—or inability—to acknowledge what ḥasidic education is and what it is for. Ultimately, the organization denies the existence of any kind of education at all outside the normative liberal form it advocates. Amid the frequent references in its reports to “educational neglect” and “denial of a basic education,” YAFFED ignores the matter of what ḥasidic children are doing for the nine or more hours a day they spend in school. Its flagship 2017 report limply claims that “boys . . . are expected to aspire to become rabbis” as an explanation of the curriculum. To understand the issue properly, we must move beyond such trite and specious answers and turn to a more essential question: what education—ḥasidic education and any education—actually is.

The purpose of the ḥasidic education system, beginning at age three and ending with marriage, is, quite simply, cultivating Ḥasidim. Lessons in the Pentateuch or Talmud are not primarily, often not at all, about developing academic skills—they are about molding a particular type of religious personality, one that will be comfortable in, satisfied by, and loyal to the ḥasidic community and way of life. The American sociologist Samuel Heilman, no friend to Ḥasidim but one of their most acute observers, describes lessons in ḥasidic schools as “far more than a literary foray into a text; . . . they were pretexts for passing along values, tools for deflecting heresies, and . . . means for helping give substance to what it means to be a Jew in the world they inhabited.”

This is the kind of definition that is calculated to offend liberal sensibilities: how can education, which is all about expanding boundaries, be about directing children towards a particular way of life? But this is what education has always been. The first known advocate of compulsory schooling, Plato, certainly did not think it was about imparting career skills. To him it was about developing the raw material of the human mind so that it became fit for citizenship in the perfected Greek polis. The spread of education in the Western world following the collapse of the Roman empire was everywhere connected with spreading and promoting Christianity. It took off following the Reformation, when reading the Bible, and hence literacy, was elevated to a basic religious duty of the ordinary believer. In the age of nationalism, education systems were designed to inculcate national identity and culture in what had previously been loosely bound, linguistically and culturally diverse areas.

Superficially, it looks like the liberal ideal of education as a way of promoting choice and individual autonomy is an exception to this principle. But this is only because choice and individual autonomy are the core cultural features of modern liberal society. No less than any other, the American public-school system has as its purpose the absorption of young human beings into a particular, historically contingent cultural and socioeconomic system. The endless controversies about American education are really controversies about what it means to be a good American. And so, the generic purpose of the tens of thousands of hours spent learning things that not one person in a hundred will ever use in pursuit of gainful employment is the same: cultivating the right type of American.

The extent to which academic education in the 21st-century liberal state can deliver on its own objective of social mobility is dubious. As the political philosopher Rita Koganzon powerfully puts it, liberalism “has valorized a kind of education that only a small elite can well afford—not simply financially but more important, psychically—because it is designed to weaken, in the name of autonomy, the sorts of commitments—to family, religion, and place—that anchor life for the vast majority of citizens.” Every single American can and should, under the liberal theory of education, grow up to be a highly skilled professional, untethered from parochial commitments and loyalties, while imported helots do all the grunt work. But it doesn’t quite work out that way in practice. The ḥasidic education system, by contrast, is markedly successful in achieving its goal of cultivating and retaining Ḥasidim. Ḥasidic Judaism today is a postmodern movement that has selected and adapted elements of East European Judaism to create a model that can withstand the forces that have—generally without direct coercion—ravaged every pre-modern form of social organization, the Amish excluded. And the lynchpin of that ḥasidic success is its school system.

What the dispute about ḥasidic yeshivas is really about, then, is something much more critical than instruction in secular studies. It’s about whether the liberal state is willing to let a countercultural social movement that bends the rules of the liberal order grow up in its midst. From the perspective of the state, and those loyal to it, there are reasonable grounds to prevent that. What is not reasonable, however, is the sort of liberal triumphalism that imagines that, under the pretext of implementing minor or neutral reforms, Ḥasidim will simply be intimidated into dismantling their own social order. Those among YAFFED’s supporters who understand what is at stake and want to disable the ḥasidic community’s ability to ensure generational continuity should do them the credit of not imagining it will be so easy.

In the meantime, those who have the more modest goal of promoting better secular studies in the ḥasidic education system would be well advised to return to first principles and remember the distinction between education—the molding of an individual—and instruction—the imparting of specific skills. If they wish to get the majority of ḥasidic parents on board, then their most urgent priority is to demonstrate how specific forms of instruction can be introduced into ḥasidic schools without imperiling its overall educational purpose. In my own experience as a headmaster trying to do exactly this, I have found the task both easier and harder than you might think. Many seemingly impossible obstacles can be overcome when your goals are clear and defined, and many seemingly innocuous reforms actually have a destabilizing effect that ripples throughout the whole system.

Many features of a ḥasidic school seem pointless or bizarre to those who have not thought deeply about how they fit together, but it is precisely for that reason that reformers—assuming they want to succeed—must tread carefully. As G.K. Chesterton warned in his famous fence parable, you cannot fix what you do not first understand. 

The instinctive attitude of ordinary ḥasidic parents who would like better, more engaging, and successful secular studies for their sons, but who fear any tampering with the existing system, is wholly reasonable. Improving standards of secular education can be done only by those who have demonstrated their ability to tinker with the edifice of hasidic education without bringing the walls tumbling down. As for those who want those walls to fall so that poor, oppressed ḥasidic children can taste the pleasure of liberal autonomy—well, as we say in Yiddish, zol zayn mit mazel.

 

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/politics-current-affairs/2021/10/new-york-state-vs-the-yeshivas/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&_kx=ayiklDSRLg4Hn-hHeSePGvfrcdXwGgISugwuAr3enVacORpjmVuv3tYH_4O1edfO.L87CGh

Rav Shraga Feivel believed this type of yeshiva was necessary in order to save Yiddishkeit in America and produce true bnei Torah. But was it permissible, was it Torahdig, to create a mesivta with a full range of secular studies according to this model?

 

Rav Shraga Feivel ztvk"l at his beloved Bais Medrash Elyon

 The idea of post-elementary Torah education might have been
new in America, but the idea of a mesivta that would offer
also a full range of secular studies was unheard of in the hallowed yeshivos of Eastern Europe.

 Rav Shraga Feivel believed this type of
yeshiva was necessary in order to save Yiddishkeit in America
and produce true bnei Torah. But was it permissible, was it
Torahdig, to create a mesivta according to this model?

Rav Shraga Feivel would not rely on his own thinking for such
a monumental decision. Instead, he wrote to four of the leading
gedolim of that time: Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky of Vilna,
Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz of Kamenitz, Rabbi
Yosef Rosen, the Rogatchover Gaon of Dvinsk,
and Rav Elchonon Wasserman of Baranovitch.

Three out of the four responded that it was
difficult to issue a definitive ruling without being
in America to fully grasp the situation there. 

However, citing the urgent need for post-elementary Torah education as well as American laws that made secular education compulsory,they felt Mesivta Torah Vodaath should include secular studies in its curriculum.

Rav Shraga Feivel then presented his idea for a mesivta to the
yeshiva’s board of directors. He was met with stiff opposition.
It was difficult enough to finance an elementary school, most
of them argued. To take on the additional burden of a mesivta
that would be staffed with both rebbeim and secular studies
teachers was unimaginable.

https://d1a8dioxuajlzs.cloudfront.net/accounts/7222/original/RavShragaFeivel.pdf?1628623851

The investigation found that in a state-level test of math and reading within a Satmar Hasidic school, 100% of students failed the tests. A Cessspool of Ignorance From Top to Bottom!

 

New York Times publishes Hasidic school investigation in Yiddish, too

 

Likely the 1st time newspaper has published in Yiddish; article addresses major deficiencies in Hasidic education system that leave students unprepared for life in the US

 

In what is likely a first, The New York on Sunday published its investigation into the Hasidic school system in Yiddish as well as English.

The article, which features a probe into education standards within New York’s Hasidic Jewish community, was published in both Yiddish and English, most likely to allow the targeted community to access the findings of the investigation.

The population of Hasidim in New York is about 200,000, representing 10% of the state’s total Jewish population, the New York Times said.

Much of the community operates in Yiddish, the dominant language among pre-Holocaust European Jewry.

The newspaper has published stories in the past in languages other than English, but Sunday’s story appeared to be the first time it has published in Yiddish.

The investigation found that in a state-level test of math and reading within a Satmar Hasidic school, 100% of students failed the tests.

 

The newspaper’s investigation found that “generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency” in the Hasidic communities.

“The schools turn out thousands of students each year who are unprepared to navigate the outside world, helping to push poverty rates in Hasidic neighborhoods to some of the highest in New York,” the report said.

Despite failing to live up to New York state education standards, The New York Times found that Hasidic schools in the city have received more than $1 billion in state funding over the past four years.

Hasidic community leaders say that their community receives far less public funding for education than their state school counterparts.

The article is available online without a paywall. However, many in Hasidic communities do not have any access to the internet or secular content.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-new-york.html?fbclid=IwAR3yr2_Vm35haB5WV-iVpDol48yNil0DpTqK-f3BUBlhXsRUoX2DbW1fKvk

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-york-times-publishes-hasidic-school-investigation-in-yiddish-too/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2022-09-11&utm_medium=email

"We don't know exactly how it happened, but the baby is suffering from an almost complete amputation of his genitals," Asadi told N12. "This is a shocking case and the injury is very serious."

 

יענקל המוהל עיניים צולבות

Israeli baby requires complex surgery after circumcision gone wrong

 

The baby required long and complex surgery performed by three surgeons to treat the circumcision damage, but it is unclear if it was successful.

 

A ‘MOHEL’ holds a scalpel as he performs a circumcision

A baby was rushed to the hospital in northern Israel on Monday after his circumcision went wrong, with his genitals being almost completely amputated during a brit mila - a Jewish ritual circumcision, Israeli media reported. The mohel was late found to be uncertified and did not undergo required training.

 The treatment required three surgeons to perform a long and incredibly complicated operation. 

According to Dr. Akram Asadi, he had never seen such a severe injury due to circumcision in his 20 years as a surgeon.

"We don't know exactly how it happened, but the baby is suffering from an almost complete amputation of his genitals. This is a shocking case and the injury is very serious."

Dr. Akam Asadi, Rambam Health Care Campus

"We don't know exactly how it happened, but the baby is suffering from an almost complete amputation of his genitals," Asadi told N12. "This is a shocking case and the injury is very serious."

Despite this, the injury wasn't life-threatening and the baby is in stable condition.

This has long been a traditional practice that differentiated Jews from other peoples throughout history. 

According to Ynet, the mohel in this case was uncertified, and is being investigated by a Chief Rabbinate and Health Ministry inter-office committee, which is responsible for supervising and certifying mohels.

Israeli media reported that the baby's family knew this mohel, who also circumcised their eldest son. But these accidents can still occur, especially if the mohel wasn't well-trained.

"Circumcision is a surgical operation that requires skill and training," Asadi told N12. "Unfortunately, we come across cases where it is clear that there was negligence in the mohel's training. Anyone who performs circumcision must undergo full training and fully understand anatomy."

The committee reminded parents to only use certified mohels for circumcisions.

 

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-716445?_ga=2.120995848.1444973890.1662550695-1163418029.1645806768&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=WATCH%3A+Ancient+Hebrew+letter+from+First+Temple+period+returned+to+Israel&utm_campaign=September+7%2C+2022&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D