Yeshiva’s refusal to enroll a 10-year-old pits a Hasidic father against a non-Hasidic mother
The fifth-grader has not attended school this semester
A yeshiva school bus drives through Borough Park in Brooklyn on September 12, 2022. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
By Beth Harpaz September 19, 2023
A 10-year-old named, barred from a Brooklyn yeshiva, will not be attending school for at least another two weeks as a dispute between his Hasidic father, and his mother, a well-known critic of Hasidic yeshivas, plays out in Family Court.
The child, named Aaron, was supposed to start fifth grade two weeks ago at Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem under a court-issued custody mandate. So far, the school has refused to accept him. His mother, Beatrice Weber, shared his first name with the Forward. His last name, the same as his father’s, is in court documents that are not public.
At a Family Court hearing on Monday Weber was denied permission to enroll him in a local Jewish day school that she feels would give him a sound education on both Jewish and secular studies. Weber, who left the Hasidic world and is divorced from her son’s father, runs Yaffed, a nonprofit seeking to improve secular education in Hasidic schools in New York City.
“Yeshivas present themselves as institutions that provide an important service to the community and they should be left alone, but the fact that they’re not letting my son come back just proves the fact that’s not what they’re doing,” she told 1010 WINS news radio.
Yeshivas out of compliance
A blockbuster investigation by The New York Times last year found that many Hasidic schools are out of compliance with state laws requiring parochial schools to provide basic instruction in secular subjects.
Weber in 2019 filed a petition at the state Education Department in which she charged that Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem, which her 10-year-old’s older siblings attended, did not meet the standards for secular studies mandated by the state. Yaffed, four years earlier, had asked for a state investigation into yeshivas it said were failing their students.
According to the Daily News, an attorney for the boy’s father in a court filing wrote that yeshivas have good reason to fear his former wife.
“Ms. Weber’s reputation as someone who will cause these yeshivas to have to spend tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in litigation is well known to the Orthodox education community at large,” wrote Attorney Steven Silpe.
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
