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VAYECHI: THE EDUCATION PETITION
By: Suri Stern
When I was in Stern College many moons ago, I volunteered in the N.Y.U. Emergency Room. One evening a young woman, very young, came in with her bleeding baby. I tried to ask her questions regarding her baby, and she couldn’t understand me, because she spoke only Yiddish. She called her cousin who knew some English, and I was able to get the necessary information.
This week the very famous Chasidishe Judge, Ruchie Friar, came to town to discuss her life’s trajectory. From Bais Yaakov student to mother working as an assistant in a law firm, to college, law school and now judge.
I have a friend who went to Bais Yaakov as well. She married not having gone to college. She went to college, then went to a presitigous university to receive three masters degrees and a medical degree.
The New York Times, over a year ago, wrote about a man who was crusading for mandatory secular education in non-public schools, inasmuch as he was raised in a chasidishe family and went to a school where there was barely any secular education, and now that he left the fold, and wants to be out in the world at large, he doesn’t have the educational tools he needs to succeed.
We Americans have educational standards. Education is mandatory, and the age requirement is mandated by each state ranging from 16-18 generally. It is a foundation of our society. The reason this is so, is to give each child opportunities for advancement and a means to sustain himself/herself, an opportunity to make it above the poverty line, a fighting chance to thrive.
So it is, that New York State recently passed a law requiring non-public schools to educate their students in secular studies seven hours a day and with a mandatory curriculum. I didn’t sign the petition. I am opposed to the hour requirement of law, and I started pondering.
Many of our local yeshivas provide 4-5 hours of secular learning, and our students succeed in attending top colleges and making nice salaries. And then I thought of the chasidishe yeshivas, where they have some secular studies, and after 3rd grade even those secular studies stop. Hmmm, but yet look around us, the chasidim who want to work, are succeeding as well. 47th Street, BH Photo, come to the real estate auctions throughout the five boroughs and Nassau County, and the chasidim come en masse, purchasing foreclosure homes and flipping them. If they didn’t learn English in their cheder, the found a way to learn, or they bring someone who does.
Do they need to know about the War of 1812, or about Pi, or photosynthesis? Now more than ever, those who want to learn have access to internet and non-internet resources for growth. The fact that they have to seek it themselves and learn it at a later age, is an immediate barrier, but as stated above, so you learn it later rather than earlier. There is resentment at time lost…maybe so, but there are no opportunities lost, just delayed. It is true, that it is easier to learn languages, and anything, when you are younger, but the religious families feel that they want their children immersed in torah studies during this young/sponge stage, and for those who might want to pursue outside studies to pursue different careers or opportunities, where there is a will, there is a way.
Farmers and others who were craftsmen, who wanted their children to work the farm, or continue the family business, were opposed to losing their children as laborers in their farm/craft. But, we as a nation, did not want our children to be forced into labor, rather, provided with education which would permit them opportunities to chose their own destinies, something that not all Jews want for their children either. And so, I’ve been pondering my thoughts about the petition.
This week’s torah portion gives us a view of Jacob’s legacy as he is about to die. The twelve tribes. Reuven who moved his father’s bed from Rachel’s tent to his mother’s tent, Simon and Levi, who slew the residents of Schem, Judah who slept with a harlot, who was not a harlot at all and most recently, all ten tribes whose jealousy lead them to sell their brother into slavery and lie to their father about Joseph’s death. Legacy. Actualizing our potential.
The gemarah relates the story, I’ve written about before, of Rav Zusha on his death bed. He was crying and his students asked why. He told them that he was afraid that when he went to heaven, they wouldn’t ask him why were you not like Moses, but why were you not like Zusha, why didn’t you reach your potential.
For Jewish women, one of our early role models was Sara Schnirer, who lived in Poland and drove the movement for girls education and the Bais Yaakov schools. She was stoned as a heretic and opposition was strong. But she succeeded. When I showed a picture of her grave/headstone to Rabbi Dovid Spiegel of the Bais Medrash of Cedarhurst, he said that she was great because at the time of her movement, men were moving into the workplace and out of the beis medrash/torah study hall, and the girls of Bais Yaakov were taught to value men’s learning and encourage their husbands to go out after work and learn torah and strengthen their yiddishkeith/Jewish practice and their Jewish homes.
So I am torn. I value education for all, yet I don’t think my views should be forced on others. As a nation we value education as a means of staying out of poverty and sustaining ourselves, yet there are many who are not as educated as the state wants them to be, and they are thriving as well.
It is about actualizing our potential that G-d gave us on earth, on the Jewish path. Education is the key, but the question is, education under whose terms. I wont sign the petition, though with the petition being signed, it might give leverage to the OU to negotiate with the education department for terms that are more reasonable than those currently imposed.
Regardless, find your potential, and actualize it…at any age.
Good Shabbos.
Suri