More Shortsightedness From Orthodox Groups on Betsy DeVos

Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos Image by Getty Images

By Jay Michaelson December 1, 2016

Rabbi Nathan Diament’s response to my column about Betsy DeVos perfectly reflects the short-sightedness of the Orthodox Union’s approach to this issue.

The column in question was roughly 1,200 words long. Only 64 of those words addressed Orthodox organizations. Yet from Rabbi Diament’s response, you’d think the whole piece was an attack on them.

In exactly the same way, Orthodox schools are clamoring for their sliver of taxpayer dollars, while ignoring the ten (or hundred!) times as much money supporting Christian schools, especially conservative evangelical academies which, like Haredi schools, short-change girls, fail to teach the skills needed for our country to advance, and fail to teach the truth about basic scientific facts.

This issue is not about the 0.4% of the U.S. population that is Orthodox Jewish. It is about the other 99.4%, and the devastating effect that funding fundamentalism will have on our society.

Jay Michaelson
Contributing Editor
The Forward

Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and for Rolling Stone. He is the author of 10 books, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing.

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