It’s the back-to-school season and all parents’ consideration is simple: will young people go back to school?
In the Crown Heights community of Brooklyn, New York, where Jewish Hasidic families are no strangers to school adversity, there is another point of concern: will our schools suffer the monetary misery imposed by COVID-19’s economic record?
In the more than 20 years, enrollment in yeshiva schools in New York City has increased by 62.6%, according to a report by the director of school policy at the Manhattan Institute, Ray Domanico, in Crown Heights, headquarters of the Hasidic Habad Loubavitch movement, enrollment in Jewish schools is over 40%, with more than 6,000 young people enrolled in the neighborhood yeshivas.
But coronaviruses and the economic crisis have wreaked havoc on the Crown Heights community and the yeshivas that serve as their nervous system.With more than 50 network members lost to coronavirus and declining education incomes, those schools are at risk.At the event, Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of media relations at Chabad Lubavitch, explained that for these yeshivas, the confrontation with adversity is not new, but without a federal emergency investment for devout and personal schools, something like the School Choice Act Now that Senators Tim Scott and Lamar Alexander are advancing, this new test may be one of the most difficult the industry has ever faced.
It is valuable to revisit the history of yeshivas.The plasters of Crown Heights are direct descendants of Tomchei Temimim schools established in Russia in 1897.Schools have focused on rigorous textual research of rabbinical texts, examination of Hasidic mystical philosophy and emphasis on The Founder of the Ieshiva System, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (fifth leader of the Habad Lubavitch movement), predicted severe oppression for the Russian Jewish community.Tomchei Temimim would prepare his scholars to resist in the face of the advent of physical and non-secular danger.Schools survived over the next 20 years thanks to re-locations, forced closures through government, and monetary constraints.In 1921, the main ieshiva would be closed through the Soviets, their arrested teachers and their frame student expelled from the city of Rostov.
However, yeshiva schools would not die with the closure of yeshiva in 1921.The son and successor of the elder Schneersohn, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, developed an infrastructure of underground Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Faced with the wonderful threat to their lives, Schneersohn and his disciples, many of whom were Tomchei Temimim graduates, maintained a clandestine network of yeshivas and tactics to enable Jews to access their non-secular needs, like a mohel to carry out circumcision, a Passover matzah, prayers, and holy books. Schneersohn was arrested and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1927.
Arriving in the United States in 1940 from Nazi-occupied Poland, a schneersohn in a wheelchair said that “America is no different.”In the United States, surrounded by opportunities for economic development, freedom, and physical security, non-secular life would wither without an infrastructure for Jewish education.On the night of her arrival, she established a branch of the Chabad yeshiva formula in New York, and in 1941 established beth Rivkah Girls’ School in Crown Heights.
Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn’s successor, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, known as Loubavitcher Rebbe, oversaw the expansion of the Habad school formula and further shaped the school model, emphasizing that education was not only a matter of gaining knowledge, but also the progression of a child’s character.and progression, moral virtue. If schools are going to equip young people with the skills they want to earn a living with, the focus should be on devout problems and character progression.righteous members of society.
A school formula that seeks only to convey wisdom cannot deter crime. Without an emphasis on character development, the child’s only deterrent to crime would be concern for punishment, and this would not last long.abundance of gratitude for American blessings and opportunities, while anchoring them with eternal values that would counsel them through life.
Today, Crown Heights ieshiva academics are informed that they are privileged to attend their schools because of the self-sacrifice of the last generations of Hasidic Jews.Parents no longer threaten incarceration and exile in Soviet labor camps to teach their children in the ieshiva., however, they see themselves as a sacrifice for Jewish education, as they prioritize paying tuition fees over everything else.Yeshiva education is an essential link in the transmission of Judaism to the next generation.possibly sees personal education as an education for the rich, in crown heights census spaces, where 80% of school-age youth are enrolled in a personal school, the average source of household income is $64,776.Approximately 23% of these young people come from families of six members.or more people.
On March 13, Crown Heights administrators, in contact with local fitness professionals and rabbinical authorities, made the decision to close schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.In the weeks that follow, the pandemic devastated the community.Heights has been updated daily with reports of premature deaths of local business owners, rabbis, teachers, parents and grandparents.Funeral processions passed several times a day in the central synagogue of 770 Eastern Parkway.As the sirens sounded in the neighborhood, the yeshivas, intervened to provide more to their local students and families. In addition to moving to virtual learning, schools provided breakfast and lunch to families in need, and organized the donation and distribution of refurbished tablets so that families with multiple children were online at the same time.
In mid-June, local fitness professionals announced that there had been no new cases of coronavirus in the community since early May.However, unemployment and (more recently) emerging crime and a nightly bombardment of illegal fireworks continue to plague the community.Schools face monetary uncertainty. Tuition fees have dropped by 30% and local business owners, who generally attend schools, face financial hardship after months of closure.
While it is true that families attending these schools are resilient, the story I have described above can attest to this, those schools desperately need monetary help.
Another COVID-19 aid package is being discussed lately in Washington, and lawmakers would do well to help the thousands of young people who attend yeshiva schools.With an increase in crime and recent civil unrest ravaging the country’s urban centers, there may not be a more vital time to help school systems committed to shaping young men and women with gratitude for the wonderful blessings of this world.country, anchored in eternal goals and values.
Malka Groden is deputy director of development at the Manhattan Institute.