Chasidic Hardliners Protest Yeshivas Summit, Denounce Cooperation With State Officials

A conference of yeshiva administrators this week was met with a hostile demonstration outside its gates — from an unexpected source.The protesters were not from anti-yeshiva activists who support more state regulations. They were chasidim — largely Satmar — who believe that the event’s host, the Agudath Israel of America, is too friendly to state regulators.More than 400 attendees representing more than 120 schools from across the spectrum of Orthodoxy, including some representing the Satmar chasidic community, joined the Agudah for the annual Yeshivas Summit. The event comes at a time of “tremendous sensitivity and turmoil” for New York’s yeshivas, as the Agudah’s executive vice president, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, put it. New state regulations from the Board of Regents would require public school districts to oversee the curricula and hiring practices of yeshivas that do not administer the Regents exams. The regulations coincide with a spate of New York Times articles maligning yeshivas as educational failures with high levels of fraudulent activity.The summit, however, did not focus on the Times or the Regents. “The summit is about making sure that those schools who want to operate properly and efficiently have access to all the things that their kids and their teachers should be able to access,” the national director of government affairs for the Agudah, Rabbi A.D. Motzen, said.The event focused largely on rote issues of legal compliance for school administrators — including securing federal funding, accounting documentation, grant applications, and vendor contracts. Legislators and government officials, including three state senators, Joseph Addabbo, John Liu, and Leroy Comrie, came to meet administrators and show their support for yeshivas. In a video appearance, the U.S. Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer, praised the yeshiva community for “providing education for the next generation.”The protesters, though, were unimpressed by, and even expressed opposition to, the presence of government officials. Dozens of demonstrators, all male — students and adults — gathered outside the conference venue in Queens. The demonstrators were reciting Psalms, pausing only to shout down cars exiting the lot. The protesters represent a more fundamentalist approach to Jewish education and administration than that of the yeshivas present at the Agudah’s summit. “We’re Jewish, we have to learn only the Jewish things,” one of the protesters, Rabbi Tzvi Klar of Williamsburg, said, adding that he believes they are “not allowed” to study secular topics.“We shouldn’t take any money from the government at a time when they come and they want to take our education. We shouldn’t take a penny from them,” Rabbi Klar said. The demonstrators, Rabbi Klar said, “want to be 100 percent like our fathers, our grandfathers, our foregrandfathers. They don’t want to change anything.” In Rabbi Klar’s view, accepting government money forces yeshivas to “bow to the king,” by acceding to regulations and guidelines from the government.Rabbi Klar also denounced the presence of an assistant commissioner for the New York State Education Department, Christina Coughlin. The Agudah is in the midst of a lawsuit against the state’s education department and Board of Regents, seeking to overturn the regulations both on constitutional and procedural grounds.“How could you sue somebody and another day you sit together with them at the table?” Rabbi Klar posed rhetorically, dismissing the Agudah’s lawsuit. Rabbi Motzen of the Agudah said the protests were based on “misinformation about how state funding actually works.”“We believe that they’re misguided and the biggest proof is that the yeshivas are in here,” he told the Sun.“Substantial equivalency regulations are not dependent on how much money you take from the state,” Rabbi Motzen said. “If you decide to opt out of funding, you would still be obligated to follow whatever regulations.”The Agudah has been advocating for funds to provide “equitable services” to private schools since the 1960s, while fighting to “protect” the religious autonomy of schools, he said.Rabbi Motzen defended Ms. Coughlin’s presence, given the “need to work to communicate, and work together” even in the midst of the lawsuit. He said the Agudah, which has an active lobbying wing, is “very proud of the fact that we have a good working relationship even when we are forceful in our disagreements.”The protest was called for by a union of chasidic rabbis with reputed ties to an anti-Zionist chasidic group, Neturei Karta. They aren’t strangers to the Yeshivas Summit, having protested in previous years as well. Protesters came in vans from Williamsburg, Monsey, and Kiryas Joel.Unlike the protesters, the school plaintiffs in the Agudah’s lawsuit are all Lithuanian-style yeshivas that offer the Regents exam and would hypothetically be exempt from the new regulations — if the pathways hold.This story has been updated to reflect Rabbi Motzen’s title as national director of government affairs at the Agudath Israel of America, as well as to more accurately reflect his language.

Chasidic Hardliners Protest Yeshivas Summit, Denounce Cooperation With State Officials

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