Educating For Failure—An Analysis (22 July 2023) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I—UItra-Orthodox Jews: The Hasidim/Haredi
Most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects originated as part of an 18th century spiritual revival movement—which was in turn a reaction to the secular influence of the Enlightenment. The name used in Europe for this multifaceted movement was Hasidism (piety), or in modern Israel, Haredi (one who trembles at the word of God). Geographically, the movement’s origin was in Eastern Europe, and particularly Poland. Yiddish was a common tongue for the Hasidim, as well as for many of the secular Jews of this region. While fragmenting into many sub-groups over time, the Hasidim/Haredi sought community preservation through isolation from the secular world. They developed a dress code and personal habits that would enhance this separation and a system of education that excluded secular knowledge while emphasizing the study of religious texts.
Just before World War II, the numbers of Hasidim in Europe ran into the hundreds of thousands. The Holocaust that followed brought them to the brink of extinction. Here, self-isolation worked against them. For most people, worldviews are locally constructed and in the case of the Hasidim this meant that they knew nothing of the world outside their own communities. In times of crisis they had no internal human resources to fall back on. In addition, their idiosyncratic lifestyle meant they could not readily hide amidst the general population. They easily fell victim to the Nazis.
After the war the little that was left of these communities were, ironically, able to regroup largely thanks to outside intervention—the willingness of Zionist leaders in Palestine to take them in and provide the necessary financial support for rebuilding. And what did rebuilding mean to the Hasidic/Haredi leaders in the wake of the Holocaust? It meant replicating the prewar past as exactly as possible. As it turned out, one key to doing so was to resurrect a benighted faux-educational process that once more turned its back on the secular world.
Part I—Israel
According to Anshel Pfeffer, one of the permanent opinion writers at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “The whole point of Haredi education … has been to rebuild the communities devastated in Europe through isolating their children from the world and preventing any “foreign” influence in their schooling.” Pursuing this goal “in democratic countries with modern welfare systems was supposed to both allow them to teach without state interference while receiving public funding.” At first this might seem a naive set of goals but, as we will see, it has proved doable simply by turning the recovering Hasidic communities into disciplined voting blocs. Thus, in the case of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently “promised the ultra-Orthodox parties that … he would act to give their schools full public funding without requiring them to add general studies to their curriculum” in exchange for their electoral support. It was a maneuver that helped him achieve his present position of power.
Haredi education is gender segregated and boys in particular get little or no exposure to science, social science or the humanities. They spend almost all their study time analyzing Talmudic text and related commentaries of past religious scholars. Most of the boys never go into the labor force. Since, in this supportive environment, the Haredi population has been growing, and thus becoming a larger percentage of the Israeli population, this wholly non-secular education will, as Pfeffer notes, have “major implications for the future of the Israeli economy.” Indeed, the fulfillment of Haredi ambitions in this regard has already seriously split the Israeli Jewish population and unleashed deeply negative emotions among secular elements who must pay the taxes to fulfill Netanyahu’s promise.
Part II—New York
After Israel, the United States has one of the world’s largest ultra-Orthodox communities—much of it located in the New York City and state area. “There are about 200,000 Hasidic Jews in New York.” They have revived the dress code of their pre-World War II enclaves and pursued their policy of isolation. In the name of preserving ancient traditions, the American Hasidic community, like its Israeli counterpart, has created “one of New York’s largest private school systems (more than 100 schools for boys) which it runs on its own terms.”
In 2019, one of these schools, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to the administering of state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 of its students. Using New York State grading standards, “every one of their students failed.” The failures were not a function of underfunding or administrative incompetence. As a recently published New York Times (NYT) expose puts it, the Hasidic schools “fail by design.”
Students, particularly the boys, are taught “Jewish law, prayer and tradition” and almost nothing else. All classes are conducted in Yiddish. This certainly succeeds in “walling them off from the secular world.” It also produces high school graduates who are functionally illiterate relative to the world beyond their communities. Most students graduate school “without learning to speak English fluently, let alone read or write at grade level.” The conclusion of the NYT is that, in violation of state law, “generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.”
As in Israel, state officials in New York know that this is going on. However, meaningful action to address the problem has never been taken. Why is that the case?
Part III—An Element of Corruption
There appears to be an exception to the otherwise passive ignorance practiced by the ultra-Orthodox. The Hasidic/Haredi leaders have developed the ability to secure outside resources (state aid) within a pliable, corrupt environment. In both the U.S. and Israel this now translates into an election-based democracy with a peculiar bureaucratic arrangement wherein bribable politicians control the greater society’s educational regulations. These politicians then trade turning a blind eye to Hasidic/Haredi violation of the rules in exchange for the community’s bloc votes.
This corruptive environment has been working for the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and the U.S. Yet, whether they understand it or not, it puts them in an exceedingly precarious position. For how readily are they able to recognize and adapt to any change that introduces a less accommodating environment? They have little ability to do so and are apparently not interested in acquiring this skill. They have arranged things to protect their ignorance of secular society by relying on sympathetic, more worldly Jews (mostly lawyers), to handle their problems and challenges. Sometimes this works, but not always. In countries such as England, Australia, and Canada smaller Hasidic communities have faced inescapable pressure to reform their educational curriculum from state bureaucracies not susceptible to electoral manipulation. Most of these communities have been unable to adequately respond and so their long-term survival is in doubt.
Part IV—Conclusion
What the Hasidic/Haredi communities are doing is educating their children so narrowly as to risk eventual extinction. They are doing so despite having come very close to this end during World War II when their community isolation fatally reduced their ability to respond to devastating threats. They seem to have learned nothing from that traumatic experience. Interestingly, they are not alone.
In present day America, the Hasidim are extremists on a continuum—a long list of other movements with approximately the same determination to not adapt in the face of change. In the U.S., every school board that tries to restrict teaching about race relations or the realities of gender, every paranoid group that goes after books in a library, every Christian “patriot” who seeks to replace documentable history in favor of fantasy, and every climate change denier is on the spectrum, so to speak, at one end of which are the Hasidim. And in each case, short term success risks long term demise. There is just nothing in their worldviews that allows for timely adaptation to changing circumstances. In this sense such fantasy-based outlooks, even if temporarily sustainable, ultimately get in the way of the evolutionary principles of survivability.
As to the Hasidim, Talmudic scripture by itself certainly cannot guarantee survival. Ignorance, lack of caring about the world around them, finding “reality” solely in ancient texts will eventually threaten their community, perhaps fatally. That is a bit of tested scripture that human history as a whole has written.
