This is the third article in a series of essays and exposés answering the recent attacks on the Yeshiva system by the New York Times and the New York State Senate. Read the first part here, the second part there, and the interlude everywhere.
A year from now, all yeshivot in New York State are expected to have either acquiesced to the demands of Albany and reformed their curriculum, or to face closure. The reason is that, according to New York State and the New York Times, yeshivot demonstrate "levels of educational deprivation not seen anywhere else in New York. Graduates come out unemployable and thus unable to escape."
Notice the overtly hostile language. The subtext, if we can even call it that, is that yeshiva students need a proper secular education, as it's the only way they'll be able to "escape" their condition and join the rest of the population. Clearly, no one could possibly choose this lifestyle willingly, much less thrive in it and decide that this is what they want for their children. They are trapped by default in a cruel system that exists only to perpetuate itself and perpetrate cruelty on its members, at least according to the moralists of the Gray Lady.
These charges beg the question: how do we precisely establish what acceptable levels of education are? What are the graduation criteria that constitute being "employable" enough to therefore be able to escape your surroundings? This charged and nebulous language is unclear purposefully; it's almost as if the entire point is to obfuscate the whole issue.
There’s something wonderfully clever to the accusation that "Haredim cannot function in the modern world" as, after all, how do you begin to define "the modern world"? And once you've done that, what about "functioning" in it? It is so vague an accusation, so malleable a concept, that it can be twisted to mean almost anything. Therein lies its genius, as it makes defending yourself against the charge nigh unfeasible. Not that nearly impossible odds have ever stopped us, so let's try!
The only cogent description of the "modern world" that is germane to our subject would be the combination of society, culture, technology, and Government that makes up modern America. It would then be fair to claim that if someone cannot interact with some or most of these elements, they cannot function in the modern world.
Having established the “modern world” in the context of our dispute, there's still a critical step before we can evaluate how Haredim fit in: To make any evaluation, you need to first establish a baseline. Let's set it according to the very norms of those who want to reform yeshivot: the average American public.
Since they claim that public education adequately prepares the American pupil to function in the modern world, then let's evaluate what exactly 'functioning in the modern world' translates to when it comes to a K-to-12 education. Only after we've established what the average American who graduated from 13 years (and sometimes more) of public education is like can we compare him with the average yeshiva graduate. If the goal is truly to create an equilibrium between the two, then the expectation is that the average public school and yeshiva student should be more or less on the same level. If the yeshiva student is significantly lower, then yes, it opens the door to discussing various reforms. On the other hand, expecting more from yeshiva students than their public school counterparts would be nothing less than unbridled bigotry on the part of busybodies and bureaucrats attacking a minority community instead of trying to fix their own problems.
“Follow the Money”
To be able to function in modern society requires, at the very least,
Knowledge of personal finances & how to deal with banks
The ability to secure employment & housing
Basic knowledge of health practices
Basic knowledge of Mathematics
Where do we draw the unacceptability line regarding personal finance competency and the ability to navigate the financial system? Americans, in general, are saddled with a massive amount of personal debt ($96,371 on average), growing yearly. So many Americans have taken on student loans that they will not be able to repay that one of the most common political grievances is to beg the Government to cancel them; 61% live on a pay-check-to-pay-check basis as well. 56% of Americans admit they cannot cover a $1,000 emergency with their savings. It should not come as a surprise, as 73% admit to not regularly following a budget.
Admittedly, getting accurate numbers regarding the Haredi community is difficult, as some sub-groups tend to be more insular and less forthright with personal details than others. In a 2021 report from Nishma Research entitled "The Finances of Orthodox Jewish Life," we get an incomplete portrait, but it is still the most accurate and recent analysis nonetheless.
Amongst the findings, we find that Haredi households' self-reported yearly median income is $136,000. The average annual median income country-wide as of 2022 is $70,784, which is significantly lower but can be partly explained by the majority of Haredim being concentrated in and around New York State. While the average Haredi family only has $23,000 in non-retirement savings, and the average American household is estimated to have $40,000 in liquid savings, this number also includes checking and retirement accounts. The actual figure is at least much closer, if not possibly lower, compared to Haredi families.
The median 401(k) balance country-wide is $35,345, while the reported Haredi balance is $40,000. Regarding home ownership and home equity, Haredim slightly lag behind the rest of the public, both in terms of ownership (63% vs. 65.8%) and equity ($250,000 vs. $300,000). The median net worth of the Haredi family is 25% higher than the American median net worth of $121,700 at a comfortable $158,000.
As noted above, this is not a perfect snapshot of the Haredi community’s economic circumstances, as some of the poorest elements of Haredi society are not included in the study. Still, it presents to us an entirely different state of affairs than the New York Times and Haredi detractors proclaim.
While we would expect those numbers to shrink all under a more comprehensive report, some of them are significantly so with those other communities factored in, there’s yet another aspect that needs to be taken into account: the median age in America is 38.8 years, while Haredi Jews are much younger: 32% are adults between the ages of 18-29, another 46% between the ages of 30-49; only 6% are over the age of 65. In the village of Kyriat Yoel, the median age is 13.4 years old, the lowest by far in the entire country as almost 60% of its residents are under the age of 18. This has a massive impact on the dynamics of the town and artificially strengthens Haredi detractors due to how significantly it distorts the realities of poverty in KY.
There are two other factors to mull over as well: the location of Haredi communities, most of which are located in urban areas, and the larger size of families, with over 6 children on average. A frequent attack is that even though the average Haredi family seems to have a financial situation similar to most Americans, it is clear that their wealth is overstated when you bear in mind where they live. Add in a large family, and their circumstances are downright dire, say the reformers!
Yet many of the poorer Haredi communities are located outside New York City proper; those groups prefer to live in towns like Kyriat Yoel, New Square, or Monsey, where life is much cheaper. And as reported by Nishma, only 8% of Haredi households said that their financial situation was either 'poor' (7%) or 'very poor' (1%). Since the priorities of the Haredi community are different from the average American family, much less money is spent on entertainment, trips, electronics, and other big-budget items that are a staple of the American household. The gemach system and hand-me-downs also help save costs, and large families and communities create networks helping each other absorb certain costs together.
Finally, some Haredi families indeed depend on food stamps or welfare to get by. There are around 300,000 Haredi families in New York State. It is impossible to get an accurate number of just how many are on food stamps, but the whole issue is a red herring. Even if a full third of the Haredi community was on food stamps (and it's not the case, far from it), we would still only represent 3.4% of the State's 2.9 million SNAP beneficiaries. Also take in consideration that about 57% of Americans did not pay federal income tax in 2021 either, many of them using federal programs to stay afloat. Focusing on the Haredi community when this is a society-wide problem betrays the hypocritical nature of the attack.
And here comes the final nail in the New York Times’s coffin: In terms of employment, the Haredi community far outshines the rest of society: 68% are fully employed, versus 58.4% of the general public; with 20% of Haredim employed part-time, versus 17% of Americans. So much for the grotesque and oft-repeated NYT stereotype of lazy men sitting all day, collecting welfare as they pour over holy texts while shunning any work. Not that there is anything wrong with Kollel learning, G-d forbid, but it is certainly not portrayed by them as the noble pursuit that it is, nor is it accurate as most avreichim either work part-time or will use their studies to secure future employment. Yet you don't see the NYT negatively describe post-graduate students as leeches on society, concentrating their efforts on arcane subjects at the taxpayer’s cost.
Ultimately, one thing is clear: the accusation that yeshiva education traps children in a cycle of poverty due to unemployment is false on both counts. There's no such cycle of poverty, and Haredim are far from unemployable; they are indeed employed at much higher rates than the public at large.
Our job is done. We have debunked the New York Times. There is no need to reform education. Albany can now tear up its decree. Yet, why should we stop now?
“We Live in a Society!”
Just as the New York Times and other antisemitic defamers of Haredi society ignore the fact that by far and large, Hassidic men are part of the workforce and provide for their family just like the average citizen, their claim that lacking a public education doesn't prepare you for 'the real world' is laughable on its face.
A simple look at the phenomenon of 'Adulting' classes to realize how deeply the education system and society are failing public school pupils. When it comes to the average graduate, forget about them not knowing how to budget or change a tire by themselves, many or most of them struggle or are unable to accomplish even more basic tasks like washing their clothes or cooking plain pasta!
In fact, forget about high school: nearly 75% of University students feel that their University education has not prepared them to face the real world outside of the hallowed (or is it hollow?) halls of academia! Remind us again why we should try and emulate your model or, even worse, adopt it?
The Haredi community lives a much more traditional lifestyle, and you would be hard-pressed to find a single yeshiva bachur or seminary girl who cannot do laundry or cook dinner for their siblings. Everyone is expected to throw in a helping hand, so household chores are in no way foreign to us. There’s no concept of not feeling ready to face ‘the real world’. We don’t teach adulting classes because we don’t need to. We actually parent our children, after all.
The issue of crime, substance abuse, and homelessness is one where the contrast couldn’t be more pronounced. As the Satmar Headquarters declared after the NYT’s slanders were published:
It’s not to say that no member of the Haredi community has ever been arrested for a crime, but we are severely underrepresented in the penal system, are definitely one of the lowest at-risk populations for drug use and abuse, and there is virtually no such thing as homelessness inside of our community. More often than not, drug abuse or homelessness results from leaving the community, not while living in it.
Kyriat Yoel ranks as one of the poorest cities in America. It also ranks as one of its safest. Cities with similar poverty rates are considered highly unsafe, yet you could hardly be safer than in the streets of KY. There are no street gangs, no violent crimes, no widespread abuse of drugs and alcohol, and no homelessness. Some people live with meager means but none of the trappings associated with poverty in the rest of society.
Health-wise, the same NYT slandered the Haredi community during covid as reticent to get vaccinated, super-spreaders, breakers of rules, and so on, with a hyperfocus on any incident they could dig up. No wedding too small, no classroom too socially distanced; all was fair game. Somehow Jewish funerals attended by a few hundred were a super-spreader event that would endanger society at large, but BLM riots with hundreds of thousands were perfectly fine. As always, the reality is quite different than what is being portrayed in the former paper of record. Haredi vaccine hesitancy was no higher than many other segments of population, it simply made for more sensational headlines. Many other communities had (much) lower rates of vaccination, yet instead of chastising, say, the African-American community, they were running ads and articles to convince them to get vaccinated. I guess the lack of Hassidic rappers made it hard to create catchy Yiddish jingles.
In fact, as far as health practices go, not only have we established our own hospitals, but we have our own private ambulances and services dedicated to serving our community, financed by us. Which other community can claim the same?
And finally, regarding mathematics and numeracy, only 9% of Americans are classified as proficient. In fact, a third of the population shows a complete lack of numeracy altogether. One of the most interesting findings of the later study is that today, the smartphone is the great equalizer since "In digital problem solving, the average score for adults with a high school education was not measurably different from those with less than a high school education." Today, Siri and your favorite calculator app have replaced pen and paper, and most Americans are fine with it. So why shouldn't Haredim be ok with it too?
Looking at the facts, we can conclude that no more needs to be said. No dwelling into the Haredi relationship to culture, technology, or Government is necessary. After all, the New York Times itself complains that despite our small numbers, we are a very powerful voting bloc with 'outsized' influence.
Apparently, it's only good when certain minorities group organize and participate in society, but this doesn't quite apply to us…
Economically, it is now self-evident: Haredi education does not, in any way, trap Haredi children in a cycle of poverty and joblessness, with an inability to escape their faith. We participate in the job market more than the American average, and finance-wise, we are stronger in certain areas and lower in others, but in no way can we be described as a population that suffers in poverty, especially since only 8% of our households report that this is how they feel.
And yet, seeing how the NYT continues to spread vicious lies in order to destroy our education system and that the NYS's Board of Regents swallowed their tabulations blindly and used them as an excuse to attack our way of life, it is not enough. Every point will be debunked until there's nothing left in the NYT's exposé except for the naked hatred it exposes.
The subsequent articles in this series will debunk the (lack of) Haredi relationship to culture, technology, and Government, as well as the educational claims made by the NYT and a thorough debunking of the original exposé itself.