opinion
Haredim ‘R’ Us
BY DOUGLAS ALTABEF
ou could have set your watch to it: The New
York Times came out with a shocking, truly
shocking, revelation about the complete waste of
resources expended by the New York Board of
Regents on retrograde haredi schools.

The students in these schools did really poorly
on standardized English and math tests, with
scores that would likely lead to the conclusion that
the funds were completely wasted and raise the
question of what is going on in these places.

This inquiry would be a bit funny if it didn’t cut
so close to the bone. Why funny? Because these
students are learning at a pace and going through
a quantity of material that would put most secular
counterparts to shame.

Why close to the bone? Because when one con-
siders the issue, there is an eerie parallel to how
most of the world sees Jews in general and Israel
as a country.

There is a profound degree of just not getting
what the haredi schools’ mission is, not to mention
what the haredim themselves are about. For centu-
ries, there has been a similar lack of understanding
about what Jews do, what Jews are about and why
Jews even continue to exist.

And now, in the latest permutation of non-com-
prehension, there is broad-based confusion as to
why Israel would hold it so important to cleave to
Jewish tradition and to insist on a state predicated
on Jewish law, norms and values.

In other words, we don’t compute. We are the
perennial odd man out — the exception that can-
not be measured by the norms and standards that
seem to fit so much of the rest of the world.

In the case of the haredim in New York, what
would make for a good investment or a bad one?
Surely, it cannot be relegated to the realm of test
scores. The investment must be seen as a long-
term one designed to produce law-abiding, pro-
ductive citizens who contribute to the welfare and
well-being of New York.

Of course, eyebrows will arch at the idea that the
haredim are somehow contributing to the common
good of New York. After all, they are famously insu-
lar, with values that often do not overlap with those
of the larger society.

But if we are talking about an investment, we
have to look at the ancillary costs and benefits that
particular communities provide to the larger society.

Haredim are not mugging their fellow citizens,
nor are they breaking into their homes. Haredim
take care of their own with a breathtaking array
of social-welfare organizations. When was the
16 SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
last time anyone stepped over a homeless haredi
person? If the idea of an investment is to turn out peo-
ple who can perform trigonometric functions or
remember quadratic equations into adulthood,
then haredi schools have indeed failed.

However, if the goal of education is to empower
someone to love learning — to be a lifelong student
possessed of the tools to learn even subjects previ-
ously not encountered — then I would suggest that
the investment in haredi schools is a bargain.

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of inter-
acting with an extraordinary school on the Golan
Heights that was training both Ethiopian Israelis
and haredi Israelis to become electronic tech-
nicians for the air force. The program has been
remarkably successful, and I remember asking how
the haredim were able to manage it, given their
lack of relevant preparatory work in the yeshivahs.

The answer was basically: When you have been
learning Gemara for years and years, you can pick
up other subjects pretty quickly.

Would the New York Regents regard invest-
ments in schools that were concentrating on the
sociology of the Maori people in the South Pacific,
requiring their students to speak that language and
to immerse themselves in that culture, as a bad
investment? I suspect that they would appropriately say, no,
of course not. This is diversity of experience and
learning, and it is valuable in and of itself.

So why is there not the same empathy for the
haredim? Back to my basic premise: The profound
non-comprehension of the haredim is of a piece
with the historic and widespread non-comprehen-
sion of Jews.

Why do we have to adhere to such anachronis-
tic ideas as not eating a whole array of perfectly
healthy foods? Why do we insist on practices that
take us out of the realm of larger civic life, and are
designed to make us stand out and look different?
Israel is the outlier of countries, cleaving to
Jewish traditions, cleaving to the historic Land of
Israel, cleaving to the importance of a nation-state
that is a Jewish state, respectful of its non-Jewish
residents, but a Jewish state nevertheless. Again,
the odd man out, the case that doesn’t fit neatly
into the existing categories.

The difference that demarcates Jewishness and
Judaism has always been an irritation to many,
and at times has been perceived as a threat and
a menace. A candid assessment would conclude
that New York State’s assessment of haredim is not
so removed from this perspective.

Rather than feeling the need to defend the
haredim, I would congratulate the Regents on their
far-sighted investment in the continuity of a com-
munity that has added stability, viability and vitality
to New York.

New York Regents, keep up the good work! JE
Douglas Altabef is the chairman of the board
of Im Tirtzu — Israel’s largest grassroots Zionist
organization — as well as a director of B’yadenu
and of the Israel Independence Fund.

Keith Lance / E+ / gettyimages
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