Looking At Data Ignored By NY Times In New York’s Kiryas Joel Hasidic Schools

Posted on February 20, 2023 by First.One.Through

The New York Times did a series on the Ultra-Orthodox schools and how they “fail and steal tax dollars on purpose.” The hit pieces were designed to show that the schools bilk taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars and then fail to teach basic subjects like English and math.

All of the work was done by Times researchers and the data is therefore their own, as are their conclusions.

On February 20, 2023, The Times extended the effort and came for the suburban town of Kiryas Joel with what it claimed were public records.

So it with interest to read a report from WalletHub that ranked “2023’s Most & Least Educated States in America.” While New York came in at #14, WBLK posted the New York districts with the worst college graduation rates. The bottom five were:

Mount Pleasant-Cottage Union Free (Westchester County) – 6% Graduation Rate In 2022
Kendall Central (Orleans County) – 3% Graduation Rate In 2022
Kiryas Joel Village Union Free (Orange County) – 0% Graduation Rate In 2022
Greenburgh-Graham Union Free (Westchester County) – 0% Graduation Rate In 2022
Mount Pleasant-Blythedale Union Free (Westchester County) – 0% Graduation Rate In 2022

Tied for the bottom was Kiryas Joel, seemingly confirming the conclusion of the New York Times, that Hasidic schools are failing with 0% of the students graduating college.

It is curious that the school wasn’t an outlier but had company of non-Hasidic school districts, which begs further inspection.

Mount Pleasant-Blythedale is a school set up inside a children’s hospital, enabling sick students to learn. According to U.S. News, the school has 126 students which are 70% minority. All of the teachers are certified and about 91% have at least three years of experience. The test scores show about 10% of the students proficient in math and 10% in Reading. The cost per student is roughly $55,000.

Greenburgh-Graham school district was established to help students who were failing in other schools due to academic or emotional challenges. The school is estimated to have around 300 students with a 1:1 student ratio. U.S. News does not have a breakdown of the students but shares that 75% of the students have Reading proficiency but no data on mathematics. The cost per student is roughly $210,000.

Before getting to the statistics on the Ultra-Orthodox school, a review of the other two non-religious schools is worthwhile for comparative purposes.

Kendall is a large school district with 712 students according to U.S. News, of which 10% are minority and almost 49% are economically disadvantaged. All of the teachers are certified and 97.5% have three or more years of experience. The student: teacher ratio is 10:1. The district has elementary, middle and high schools with mathematics and reading scores in each that are higher than state averages, and has a very different message than WalletHub, showing a 92.7% high school graduation rate. If only 3% are graduating college, it likely means many cannot afford to attend. The cost per student is about $26,000.

Mount Pleasant-Cottage school district was set up for students with emotional and cognitive disabilities. According to U.S. News, there are 116 students of which 92% are minority. Only 93% of the teachers are certified, 66% have more than three years of experience and the student-teacher ratio is 6-to-1. The students showed a 5% and 10% proficiency in math and English, respectively, way below the state averages. No data on costs.

As seen above, the state provides special schools for students with needs – whether emotional, physical or cognitive. Many of the students with these challenges perform below the general population in reading and math.

So, now consider Kiryas Joel.

The school district was established to help the emotional and cognitively challenged students of the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews in 1989. People in the town sued over its establishment in a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1994, in which the judges concluded that the creation of a distinctly Jewish school district ran afoul of the establishment clause regarding religion.

The court said nothing about the need for a school to service students with special needs. Eventually the school district prevailed and was established in 1999.

According to U.S. News, there are 121 students, all of whom are White. All of the teachers are certified and 87.5% have three or more years of experience. The student-teacher ratio is 5:1, below the state average of 14:1. The students show a 75% proficiency in math and 75% in English, far above the state averages and the other schools profiled above. The cost per student is about $253,000. Compared to the other schools, it gets much more federal and state funding.

Note: the data from the National Center for Education Statistics is quite different. For example, Greenburgh-Graham UFSD shows a cost per student of $394,000, not $210,000. This was above that of Kiryas Joel at $340,000 per student.

While the students in Kiryas Joel do not go on to secular college (and therefore score a 0% in the WalletHub ranking), the school is performing relatively well by every measure compared to its peers.

Despite the data, The New York Times performed an extensive analysis in which the secular paper concluded that Ultra-Orthodox Jews were sucking money out of the public school system and refusing to educate their students. The paper pushed for a thorough governmental review of the Jewish schools, but not any of the non-Jewish ones at the bottom of the WalletHub list. The Times did not devote any resources to examine why the Greenburgh-Graham UFSD spends much more per student than Kiryas Joel.

*The New York Times is trying its best to inflame anti-Jewish emotions with a series of articles that make ultra-Orthodox Jews appear to steal money from public schools*

New York State established many school districts for students with emotional, cognitive and physical needs, and makes a special effort for those with economic hardship. In the Ultra-Orthodox town of Kiryas Joel, where 40% of the population is below the poverty level (poverty level is correlated with size of family and the Haredi community has very large families), the 120 students in the special public school district are showing that they can excel, despite what the mainstream media is reporting.

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‘Her Unorthodox Brand’

Posted on July 28, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities are extremely upset about their depiction in the Netflix show “My Unorthodox Life.” People have accused the show’s star, Julia Haart, of maliciously slandering the lifestyle of thousands of women as outrageously “fundamentalist” in nature. One woman said in a local newspaper that “Monsey is home to thousands of women who are thriving religiously, professionally and personally. We are wise, we are proud and opportunities abound. We come in all different flavors. While some of us have chosen to be stay-at-home wives and mothers, many of us have pursued careers as CEOs, doctors, lawyers, nurses, authors, artists, business owners, computer techs, professors, therapists, accountants — and pretty much anything else out there.“

While undoubtedly true, Haart’s story has its own message and it has so much less to do with Judaism than it does about the brand she is building and the money she hopes to make.

*Julia Haart in Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life”*

Haart is the CEO of a modeling agency called Elite World Group and a clothing line named “e1972.” In the competitive world of modeling and apparel, brand message is everything and critical to success.

Haart elected to build her brands around the central theme of “giving women a voice,” and the entire “Unorthodox” show was developed to burnish that image.

The thrust of the “voice of women” message is found throughout. Haart specifically states that she is focused on helping models build their own personal brands as influencers on social media and elsewhere to extend their careers. In one episode, Julia spends time with a model helping her to launch her own line of sauces with flavors from her hometown and an image of herself on the label. One of Haart’s daughters builds her own social media presence, which she then tries to use on behalf of other models.

The underwriter of Julia’s modeling empire is her husband who built and sold a communications company years earlier. He is virtually invisible throughout the show, as his presence would undermine the message that this is a woman’s company showcasing women’s voices. The husband represents the “creepy old men from the fashion industry,” which Julia has promised to purge.

While marketed as a reality TV show, it is heavily crafted. That the women wake up in bed with an hour’s work of makeup on their faces and two-inch eyelashes in place, is but one tell-tale sign.

The storylines are all orchestrated with “the voice of women” message. Women – and Julia in particular – come off as assertive and powerful, while the men are feckless and timid. The women have successful or budding careers, while the men are faltering (there is deliberately no discussion of what Julia’s successful husband does). The women have active dating lives while the men cannot even talk to women without assistance of a female family member. There are repeated scenes of women keeping men waiting at restaurants or not showing up for appointments because the women are too busy, in a poor attempt to show the women as more important than those kept waiting, when it just made the women look rude and exposed the scriptwriters’ choreography too blatantly.

Of course, everyone comes to Julia for advice and she’s always the one with the right answers to solve each problem. She is the mascot of the brand and her voice and message must be the strongest.

It is through that lens that one has to consider the depiction of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in the show.

Religion is just a tool in the script. To be a true inspiration to others, Julia must have broken away from a terrible past that had suppressed her. The darker and more fundamentalist her background, the greater her star shines in her new brand. In the past she was just a baby machine and unable to wear what she wanted; now she stops her children from having kids and walks around showing as much cleavage as she can while keeping the show PG. She had been limited to kosher and now enjoys shrimp and non-kosher restaurants. She had lived in her husband’s shadow in a male-dominated cloistered society, while now she is the star and bread-winner in the world, supporting the entire family.

The Orthodox community watches the Haart show from their particular vantage point, rightly insulted by the commentary on their lifestyle but cannot fathom that despite the show’s title, it has nothing to do with Judaism. “Unorthodox” is just a multi-hour long EWG “voice of women” infomercial, and the various over-the-top portrayals are simply gimmicks to keep everyone talking to burnish the brand.

Hasidim “Chin Masks”

Posted on March 2, 2021 by First.One.Through

On March 1, 2021, Frontier Airlines forced a Hasidic Jewish couple to deplane a flight from New York to Miami because they allegedly refused to wear a mask. The airline stated that “a large group of passengers repeatedly refused to comply with the U.S. government’s federal mask mandate,” which led to the ultimate cancellation of the flight.

Martin Joseph, A Hasidic man on the flight disputed the airlines claim saying “[w]e understand that the mask has to be worn, and everybody has to wear a mask, and that’s the law. We comply one million percent.“

I took a flight from New York to Miami with many Hasidic families during the pandemic. In my experience, both the airlines and the passengers were correct. Hasidim do wear masks, but it only covers their necks and chins.

Shtisel, The Poem Without an End, Continues

Posted on December 22, 2020 by First.One.Through

“Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum…”

“Poem Without an End”
Yehuda Amichai (1924 – 2000)

So ends Shtisel‘s season 2 in 2015. An Ultra Orthodox Jewish artist is seemingly caught between two worlds: a world which dominates his family and community, and the passions which drive him beyond the realms of that world.

It is a classic formula used by authors and poets for generations, the story of forbidden love. While typically written about two secular people pulled together against a repelling backdrop, Shtisel is written about a religious Jew pursuing a banned profession.

The protagonist, Akiva Shtisel, lives in a secluded world in which tradition calls for men to learn Jewish texts and to be married with children. But Akiva cannot fit neatly in that prescribed paradigm. He not only has difficulties in his relationships but is pulled by his talents to pursue his love of art. He gets encouraged by the secular world to pursue his artistic gifts, making his already awkward pursuit of a spouse yet more complicated.

In the season finale, we find Akiva walking in a modern museum past his own exhibition to find the comfort of an exhibit of a reconstructed old synagogue. He sits in the more familiar environment where he is surprised to be joined by a love interest. Akiva’s loves are now all contained within one another like nested Russian dolls but the viewer recognizes that the perfect setting does not obviate the conflict.

Unlike a family member who allowed tradition and established roots with a wife to pull him back into the Ultra Orthodox world and forgo his love for singing, Akiva is unmarried and involved with a woman who might entertain Akiva’s life in two worlds. That situation is not one of nested dolls but a life of dynamic movement with a troubling feedback loop like an M.C. Escher drawing.

The show was enormously popular, well beyond Israel where it was filmed. Jews and non-Jews in various countries admired the universal message of dueling loves in which passion and commitment are set against each other. The cast was featured in various events around the world over the past few years in which the actors considered why the show had such broad appeal. They negated the notion that viewers wanted a peak into the life of Hassidim and described the universally understood personal/family/community tensions that exist in all cultures.

Shtisel program held at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, June 11, 2019

Shtisel, the short-lived popular show with the perfect poetic ending was called back by its fans for a third season. The competing forces of attraction of the show’s actors demanded as much from its viewers.

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Tag Archives: Ultra Orthodox

Looking At Data Ignored By NY Times In New York’s Kiryas Joel Hasidic Schools

‘Her Unorthodox Brand’

Hasidim “Chin Masks”

Shtisel, The Poem Without an End, Continues

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