DA Zugibe – Rockland County Prosecutor and Mole…

 

 

THE JOURNAL NEWS REPORTED:

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2016/07/17/ultra-orthodox-liaison-surrenders-badge/87117158/

D.A.’s ultra-Orthodox liaison surrenders badge

Zugibe praises Beck

Zugibe initially defended Beck when asked whether his badge would be revoked.

“His efforts during the past eight years have enabled my prosecutors to build trust within these highly insular communities, resulting in greater reporting of criminal conduct by residents, including incidents of sexual abuse,” Zugibe said.
Rabbi Zalman Beck and state Sen. Malcolm Smith outside L’chaim Manor in Monsey on April 26, 2012. They would be joined by FBI cooperator Moses Stern.  Zugibe declined to provide Beck’s job description, any qualifications he possessed or any permissible uses of the badge.

“Rabbi Beck has also made great strides in educating the communities to ensure compliance with our laws. He has proven to be a respected and effective asset to law enforcement in Rockland County.”

Beck is said to work behind-the-scenes, helping political campaigns. For instance, he helped state Sen. David Carlucci gain support in the ultra-Orthodox community.

Beck and Moses Stern

It remains unclear why Beck helped Moses Stern, an FBI criminal cooperator, in the Smith sting.

Beck introduced Stern to Smith and Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin, who was convicted of selling her vote on a proposed community center and catering hall. Stern had defrauded Citigroup out of $126 million and was working with the government, hoping to shave time off a potential 455-year prison sentence.

Beck also vouched for Stern the night before Stern met with state Sen. David Carlucci in 2013, attempting to gain funding for a project during the sting. Carlucci, instead, referred Stern to the regional economic development committee, according to Politico, which covered Carlucci’s testimony in January 2015.

Federal court records show Stern provided Smith $27,000 in straw donor checks in 2012, including checks from Joseph and Esther Markowtiz of Monsey and one from an FBI account. Beck obtained at least some of the checks, prosecutors said at Smith’s sentencing.

“Rabbi Beck is the guy who got the straw donor checks,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Bloom at the sentencing. “He’s the guy who went out and got them. That’s on tape.”

Sen. Carlucci’s testimony

Carlucci testified during Smith’s trial that Beck called him the night before he met with Stern in February 2013 to vouch for Stern.

“I don’t remember the specifics, but in general, it was that he was a good person, a stand-up character, and if there was any way that I could be helpful to him, I should be,” Carlucci testified.

Beck assisted Carlucci’s 2010 campaign, helping him get out the vote in the Orthodox Jewish community and put up lawn signs, Carlucci testified.

The Journal News/lohud.com learned of the allegations against Beck while investigating the New York Jewish Communications Channel, an Orthodox Jewish radio show and communications network through which the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI targeted politicians seeking the ultra-Orthodox bloc vote.

Stern used the show and its literature to gain credibility with FBI targets, at least some of whom were given straw donations by Joseph Markowitz, who is listed as registering the corporation with the state, and his wife Esther.

The NYJCC claimed to be a major force in the 2010 elections, representing a bloc of over 100,000 Jewish voters and acting as a channel for elected officials to communicate with the Jewish community.

It’s unclear how the Markowitzes are involved in the Smith sting and whether they were knowingly assisting the government.

Along with Smith, they are listed as donating to ex-New York City Councilman Dan Halloran, Rockland Family Court Judge Sherri Eisenpress’ 2011 campaign and to Eric Schneiderman, both before and after Schneiderman, a former state senator, was elected state attorney general. All four were radio guests. Halloran was also convicted in the sting. Like Smith, he received a donation from an FBI account, court records show.

Earlier this month, The Journal News reported that Stern testified he helped elect Eisenpress by using her money to bankroll an illegal campaign finance scheme and by bribing a public official.

Her campaign has denied any wrongdoing and Zugibe has said an investigation found no evidence of criminality. Beck was a supporter of Eisenpress’ campaign.

A court order still bars the media and public from seeing much of the material prosecutors turned over to the defense regarding the Smith sting operation. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas issued the protective order at prosecutors’ request in 2013, prohibiting the release of records, including many conversations between Stern and Beck that weren’t entered into evidence. Stern has helped the FBI investigate more than 30 other targets.

Releasing the material could jeopardize “ongoing investigations into potentially serious criminal conduct,” he wrote.

Sidestepping the Law – Are Children Being Sacrificed in Ramapo

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
– Quote by Albus Dumbledore

IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE TRAGEDY STRIKES

In a miraculous show of vigorous work, after years of complacence and procrastination, most of the Yeshivas on the list of schools requiring inspections by the County of Rockland have magically been completed. The Yeshivas, with the wave Harry Potter’s wand and one of his magic spells, have almost all passed inspections.

Attorney Dennis Lynch, who represents the recently formed School Religious Freedom Coalition , works for the Ramapo and Spring Valley governments and represents about three dozen of the Jewish private schools on the list said:

“all his clients in the coalition should have filed their inspection reports with the state by Wednesday morning, and that the inspections were done by certified fire chiefs as described under state educational law.”

We don’t quite understand. Dennis Lynch is an attorney, paid by the towns of Ramapo and Spring Valley. He represents a lobbying organization called the School Religious Freedom Coalition (which will probably be lobbying both of those towns and the State Education Department). He represents at least three dozen of the yeshivas that needed to be inspected.

That can’t be right. How many hats can one attorney wear?

If the town did not agree to accept the inspections who was Attorney Lynch going to be representing when arguing for his Yeshiva clients, or his town clients or his lobbying clients? Well, he could represent all three at the same time and everyone else could simply go home. That just does not sit well with us.

Who knows? Maybe the Coalition includes the building inspectors, the yeshivas, the lawyer, Rabbi Twersky, his driver, his cook, his baker and the candle-stick maker. The list could go on. It would not matter because Dennis Lynch could actually be representing them all.

We predict that until there is a major tragedy and many, many children are killed, burned or seriously injured, the Yeshivas will hire Attorney Lynch and the equally as conflicted building inspectors who will sidestep the Ramapo building inspection codes, and things will continue status quo. We hope that everyone involved in this fiasco of avoidance and Harry Potter-type wizardry enjoys whatever fees most likely lined their pockets because it is only a matter of time and you are putting children’s lives in danger.

Finally, Someone is looking out for the Children…

“State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has authorized Rockland to send fire inspectors into private schools to ensure conditions are safe for students, teachers and other personnel.”

 

With Senator Flanagan ignoring the plight of abused children (of any religious affiliation) and refusing to endorse the CVA in favor of protecting his voting base. With Flanagan’s decision to vote against installing a monitor with veto power into the East Ramapo School District, MaryEllen Elia should get something of a hero’s welcome for her creative and rational approach to solving problems within the East Ramapo Central School District. She is focusing on the code violations.

While it is not everything we would like to see happen, which would include inserting a monitor with veto power, demanding “substantially similar” education with enforceable parameters that are not overlooked or ignored and denying non-complying schools State funding, it is certainly a start. We remain cautiously optimistic.

 

Officials to announce game plan for inspections of private schools at news conference today at Fire Training Center

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2016/05/26/rockland-fire-inspectors-private-schools/84963542/

State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has authorized Rockland to send fire inspectors into private schools to ensure conditions are safe for students, teachers and other personnel.

Plans to inspect dozens of schools will be announced today during a noon news conference by Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, D-New City, and County Executive Ed Day. They will gather at the Rockland Fire Training Center.

 

Rockland officials have telegraphed their desire for a state order allowing massive inspections of schools. Zebrowski previously has said the state education commissioner has the authority to deputize inspectors in Rockland for the task.

Last month, Zebrowski and Day said during a news conference at the training center that the state was poised to take action to enforce fire and safety codes in Ramapo.

Both the Department of Education and the state Department of State’s Division of Building Standards and Codes have issued critical reports on fire and safety enforcement in Ramapo and Spring Valley. Both agencies have inspected buildings across the town as part of the reports.

To read further: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2016/05/26/rockland-fire-inspectors-private-schools/84963542/

 

 

Video:

http://bcdownload.gannett.edgesuite.net/westchester-mobile/201604/153/37861007001_4847591792001_4847521408001.mp4

 

 

 

 

 

Journalists Take Change.Org Step to End Supression

CHANGE.ORG PETITION – CLICK LINK…

https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-suppression-of-journalism-in-kiryas-joel

Journalists Want to shed light on the Enshrouded Secrets Within Kiryas Joel and Other Communities

Yesterday we reported on Blaise Gomez, the attempts to silence her and the threats she received. It should not be any secret why we value anonymity. In largely unprecedented action in the United States, given our notion of free speech and our disdain for censorship, a petition showed up on Change.Org. The petition is predicated on the desire to end the secrecy by demanding that Journalists be permitted their 1st Amendment rights to report on a community, something the suppression of the people within the community clearly does not foster. The Scientologists appear to prevent their community [cult] from similar reporting. Do we see a pattern here?

We are supporting the petition and hope our readership will it and support the efforts, which we are told come from within the community. The drafters are looking for 500 signatures. We would like to see 10,000.

We make one final comment, a point raised by one of our readers. To those journalists who may or may not benefit from this petition, including Blaize Gomez, we ask that if you have a Facebook Page or a Twitter account or other form of social media, you moderate the comments. The sheer hatred and anti-Semitism, not to be mistaken for anything but hatred and loathsome bigotry diminishes the message you are trying to convey. Admittedly, Ms. Gomez’s FB page is loaded with vile comments aimed at Jews; and it is difficult to respect a journalist who allows that to happen. We suggest that while you are signing the petition, comment to her page leting Ms. Gomez know her message, like those of many others, gets lost in the hatred, anti-Semitism and bigotry that is permitted or perhaps not prevented on her pages.

Another Piece to the Kiryas Joel Video

FACEBOOK TAKES DOWN VIDEO AND ALLEGATIONS IN ONE DAY, POLICE PROBING VIDEO – WHOSE INTERESTS ARE WE PROTECTING

What follows this commentary is a report by Josh Nathan-Kazis posted in the Forward. What caught our attention about the Forward’s post was the last line:

“Boorey Deutsch, an Orthodox advocate who posted the video on Facebook on Sunday, wrote late Monday on Facebook that his post had been removed by the social networking site after users apparently reported it as inappropriate.”

The only way Facebook would have removed that post is if someone reported it as inappropriate according to Facebook’s “Community Guidelines.” The post was there to shed light on the video and what was happening at the school. It would stand to reason that the complainant to Facebook was someone who did not want to see the video brought to light. From our own experiences having things removed from Facebook is no easy task. For Facebook to have taken down Deutsch’s video in a day, would have required a concerted effort of significant magnitude.

The other thing that we have pondered since the circulation of that video is why the surveillance camera was there in the first place. We speculate that it was placed there by someone who knew of possible sexual abuse which would indicate that this child was not the first victim.

A commenter to LM quipped that the only person who is likely to get prosecuted is the person who placed the video. We hope not.

By way of an update provided by our readers, it has been brought to our attention that The Photo News, the local Monroe-Woodbury paper, did not report on the video (or the change in zoning). This does not bode well for protecting children.

 

Police Probe Video of Ultra-Orthodox Teacher Kissing Boy in Kiryas Joel School: Report

Josh Nathan-Kazis, May 3, 2016

Police are looking into a video circulating widely among Orthodox social media users that shows a teacher at an Orthodox school kissing a young male student, the Journal News reported .

The video, which emerged from Orthodox groups on the social networking service WhatsApp on Sunday before being posted by various advocates on Facebook, appears to be a surveillance video shot in an office at an Orthodox yeshiva.

According to the Journal News, the video shows an adult man holding and kissing a boy in what appears to be a school office over more than ten minutes. Neither the face of the man or the face of the boy were blurred in the version of the video distributed over social media.

The Journal News reported on May 3 that the commander of New York State Police Troop F confirmed that authorities had seen the video and were examining it.

“We have received the video. We have looked at it,” Major Joseph Tripodo told the paper.

A spokesperson for the Orange County District Attorney, chief assistant district attorney Christopher Borek, contacted May 2 by the Forward, declined to say whether or not his office was investigating the video.

“The Orange County District Attorney’s office treats all allegations of sexual abuse of children as extremely serious,” Borek told the Forward. “Ethical rules prohibit us from commenting on specific allegations until or unless charges are publicly filed in a court.”

Read more: http://forward.com/news/339891/police-probe-video-of-ultra-orthodox-teacher-kissing-boy-in-kiryas-joel-sch/#ixzz47cz5Acr8

 

 

RAMAPO’S CSL – Heckled at First Meeting Since Indictment and More

 

Bloc Supported Christopher St. Lawrence Heckled at First Public Meeting Since Indictment

See video:

http://www.lohud.com/videos/news/local/2016/04/27/83597944/

 

The Journal News:

RAMAPO – In his first Town Board meeting since he was indicted on federal charges, town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence quickly moved to a closed-door session and was berated by raucous residents.

The protesters voiced their disapproval anyway, by shouting and refusing to leave the chambers.

In a special meeting that lasted less than 10 minutes Wednesday morning, the board approved a handful of agenda items and then hastily went to into executive session, which the board can legally do to discuss personnel and other matters. The board asked a crowd of more than 35 protesters to leave the board chambers and denied them an opportunity to speak.

“Resign now! Resign now!” audience members yelled as police began escorting them from the room.

---

Ramapo Town Council Special Meeting devolves as residents voice anger at supervisor

The Sloatsburgvillage.com:

“The tension had been mounting for days, including street protests outside Town Hall and calls for Ramapo Supervisor Chris St. Lawrence to step aside. But the Ramapo Supervisor, who faces federal charges related to municipal bond activity (along with other members of his administration), had yet to stand before the public at an official Town Council meeting.”

 

The United States v. Christopher St. Lawrence and Ramapo, The Rockland County Times reports:

 

“April 28, 2016–When Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence was arrested two weeks ago, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it was the first municipal-bond related criminal securities fraud case brought against a public official.

St. Lawrence was charged with 22 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy for selling over $150 million in municipal bonds on fabricated financials. Those defrauded included the citizens of Ramapo and thousands of municipal bond investors around the country. The case will probably not get to court until next year, but hopefully, by that time, the New York State legislature and/or Governor Cuomo will have begun a long-overdue reform of New York’s Local Development Corp. law, which has enabled ethically challenged politicians like St. Lawrence across the state.

Painfully long timeline

Although the case is unique, the steps leading up to the indictment were pretty much standard operation for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney. In other words, slow steady progress that can be torture for those waiting for results, and then, finally, cases are bolted down with hardened evidence.

On May 15, 2013, about 40 agents from the FBI’s Evidence Response Team (ERT) arrived unannounced at Ramapo Town Hall. With the exception of a few key personnel, they cleared the building and spent the next seven hours searching several offices and removing computers, paper files, and hard drives. One resident was quoted, “The only thing they didn’t do [yet] is walk [Christopher St. Lawrence and other town leaders] out with cuffs on. I’ve been waiting for this for 10 years. Maybe there is a God.”

For the next two years, things seemed unchanged. In August, 2015, a story appeared in The Journal News claiming that the Feds were wrapping up and would be presenting their case soon. Fall and winter passed, and we entered the Spring of the third year after the raid and frustration was turning to “maybe this just isn’t going to happen.”

Then, at dawn, on April 14, FBI agents escorted St. Lawrence out of his home and took him to the federal courthouse in White Plains, where he would wait for the late afternoon arrival of his co-conspirator Aaron Troodler to arrive from his home in Pennsylvania.

The charges were outlined in two indictments. One was brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC v. Town of Ramapo, et al, case number 7:16-cv-02779), and the other was a criminal complaint brought by the United States of America v. St. Lawrence, et al., (case number7:16-cr-00259-CS). Two complete sets of charges combining 22 counts, each with serious federal sentencing guidelines attached. Added to the list of those to be prosecuted are Michael Klein and Nathan Oberman.

And what were the authorities doing all that time since the May 2013 raid? Well, one week after the arraignments, St. Lawrence and Troodler were called back in to make arrangements to have their attorneys get a look at the evidence against their clients. The evidence includes years’ worth of audio recordings, video and photos, and documents–205,000 documents. We estimate, using a Lexis-Nexis formula for average legal documents that they store, that these 205K documents likely contain up to 1.8 million pages. That’s what the investigators were doing for the three years. And probably, given their mode of operation, they were developing other lines of investigation as they worked the slow process of calling people in for interviews.

The attorneys for the defendants asked for 120 days to review the evidence, but Judge Kathy Seibel gave them 90 days to complete the pre-trial fact-finding process. She also set the next court date—July 21, at 4:30 p.m. in White Plains.

So after the long wait, we now have the full force of the US Department of Justice on one side backing the most successful New York corruption clean-up team in recent memory, and on the other, currently obscured from view by an Everest of evidence, is St. Lawrence, Klein, Troodler, and Oberman.”

For the article in its entirety click, here.

Knowledge is Power – A Child’s Quest for Literacy

Hasidic Children Fighting Their Way Towards Literacy, Education and a Future, Their Stories…

LostMessiah, April 20, 2016

We have reported many times about the illiteracy and subpar education in the ultra-Orthodox community. We make no bones about our views that limiting a child’s education limits that child’s future. We believe that there are children within the Hasidic communities throughout the world who have G-d given gifts and their limited and highly regulated education will never allow them to achieve their potential. 

We have received highly critical comments regarding the 14-16 hours that male children within these communities spend “studying.” We have been criticized for reporting that as subpar education. We do not debate the point that Hasidic children study. We question the scope of what they are studying. Hasidic children learn the Socratic method of understanding Jewish texts. They learn Yiddish. If they are lucky, they learn rudimentary math and perhaps some social sciences and few words of English. They do not learn Science, Heaven forbid. They do not learn the language of their land, not in the United States, not in England, not in Australia, not in Antwerp nor frankly in Israel (except through the religious texts). They learn Yiddish and scripture.

Then there are the courageous…

The Journal News, April 20, 2016.

Yeshiva students take BOCES path to college

“Mendel Taub perched his pocket radio on a warehouse shelf as he began his 12-hour workday packing handfuls of hard candies into cardboard boxes. The volume was set just loud enough to hear Rush Limbaugh’s latest rant.

“Knowledge…is…power,” Taub, 16, said slowly, repeating the WABC radio tag line.

Though born in New York, he was illiterate in English. Desperate to expand beyond his native Yiddish, Taub secretly turned Limbaugh into a surrogate English teacher. That was five years ago.

What he is doing was (and still is) risky because of where he is doing it.

Taub is from New Square, an all-Hasidic village of 7,500 in Rockland County. The Skverer sect there is one of the most insular religious communities in the country. Its powerful grand rabbi (or rebbe) dictates nearly every aspect of his followers’ lives. The secular world and its conduits — smart phones, televisions, Internet connections — are generally banned.

Taub dropped out of his yeshiva at age 15 without the ability to speak or read English fluently, subtract double digits or name the 50 states. Teachers and rabbis dismissed his questions about the fundamentals of his sect’s beliefs. When he persisted, he was disciplined.

“I realized I wasn’t getting an education, that nothing they taught me would ever come in handy in getting a career or bringing in money for my family,” he said. “I realized that Talmudic law wasn’t really going to help me get a job.”

So he convinced a peddler who mostly trafficked in watches and calculators in the village to sell him a radio.

“It went down like a drug deal, on a street corner, in the shadows,” he said.

If he were caught by religious authorities, he could ruin his chances of getting a desirable match in his sect’s customary arranged marriages or risk becoming ostracized from everyone he knew.

At 16, after months of low-wage manual labor, he gathered the courage to secretly call the public school administration: “I said, ‘Hello … public school … Ramapo…?’”

He believes he reached an East Ramapo school administrator. “I said, ‘I’m a kid from New Square. I want a high school education. Can I come to school? What do I have to do?’ They said, ‘You might be here the next 15 years because your English and math are like a first grader’s. Go to Rockland BOCES when you turn 17. You won’t need your parents’ permission. They’ll do the job,’” he said.

“At that point, all I wanted to do was learn English. I didn’t think I’d be able to master math, science or social studies. I was clueless. I didn’t know anything about anything,” Taub said, sitting in an ambulance where he works part-time for the Ramapo Valley Ambulance Corps.

he next day, he called Albert Moschetti, the BOCES’ adult education director at the time.

“The first time I met Mendel, I put my hand out,” Moschetti recalled. “He didn’t know what to do with it. Hand-shaking wasn’t natural for him.”

On his 17th birthday, Taub enrolled at the Board of Cooperative Educational Service. The pursuit of secular studies was so forbidden in New Square that, when Taub confessed to his older brother, Abraham, that he was about to begin at BOCES, he received a bigger shock than he delivered.

His brother had already earned his high school equivalency diploma there and was studying at Rockland Community College.

“I almost dropped dead,” Taub recalled. “I viewed my brother as a nice Hasidic man who didn’t even speak English. I looked down on him a little. I thought, ‘He doesn’t understand what I understand.’ And then there he goes. I was very proud.

“He swore me to secrecy,” said Taub, now an undergraduate student at Pace University in Pleasantville on full scholarship with his sights set on law school.

Path to success

Taub is among a growing group of ultra-Orthodox Jews whose thirst for secular knowledge has led them to an educational passageway from their deeply religious communities to the wider world: Rockland BOCES, a state-backed education program, and Rockland Community College, a State University of New York school.

In recent years, roughly 40 ultra-Orthodox students (mostly young men) attended BOCES each year, an increase from 10 years ago when there were only a handful, Moschetti said. They come from Hasidic enclaves in Monsey and Spring Valley, in addition to the most insular New Square. Many were educated in East Ramapo’s private religious schools.

What was once utter taboo has become more familiar in some Hasidic communities, if not entirely accepted.

It varies, depending on the community,” said Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a Hasidic Monsey resident and lifelong educator. “The ultra-Orthodox also have a center, a left and a right. Even in the hard-core right, if it’s done out of the limelight with no ill effect on the religion, it may be accepted.”

Pinches Dirnfeld, 30, a doctoral student in mathematics at the University of Utah, was among the first teenagers to sneak out of New Square 10 years ago to begin courses at BOCES. Shulem Deen, 42, who chronicled his own journey in his best-selling memoir “All Who Go Do Not Return,” pursued secular studies shortly after.

“Before I went, nobody did,” said Dirnfeld, who attended RCC and later earned a masters’ degree at Columbia. He has encouraged others to follow his path, including his brother, now an RCC student. “Overall, there are a lot more kids who go nowadays than 10 years ago.”

an Newhem taught English composition and journalism to many former BOCES students at RCC for 17 years. He said that, for vulnerable students seeking to step beyond their tightly knit communities, BOCES and RCC provide “a place and people who can safely and appropriately and with dignity and respect help those people out of situation they feel trapped in.”

As Taub put it, “It was kind of a tunnel to success.”

A spectrum of stringency 

Though he is not observant, Taub has remained in his parents’ home. Former friends stopped talking to him. Most people treat him as an outcast. However, he was ultimately left in peace to pursue his own life

“Mendel is remarkable. He has no bitterness toward anyone,” said Thomas Della Torre, RCC’s associate vice president for academic and community partnerships. “His attitude is: This is what’s best for me and I want others to know it’s available to them.’”

Abraham Taub, who is studying to become an emergency-room doctor, is still very much part of the New Square community, with a wife, three children, his own home and a business selling booths for security guards and parking attendants. His children attend New Square’s yeshiva. He was already married when he began sneaking to classes at BOCES, and later RCC. After winning a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for academic excellence, he became slightly more open about his doings. Mendel Taub said the community begrudgingly tolerated his brother’s pursuits.

“He wasn’t considered an instigator. He didn’t change his appearance or try to ‘corrupt’ anyone,” Taub explained.

Now commuting to NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine on Long Island, Abraham Taub has been a role model for his younger brother.

“He has helped me a lot. At first, I didn’t know what a GPA was, anything about the Greek system or what classes to take. He’s been a great brother,” Taub said.

“It’s becoming more and more acceptable to pursue a college education,” said Naftuli Moster, founder of Yaffed, an advocacy group dedicated to improving secular education in Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox schools. “Several grand rabbis have already told their constituents (just married men) to pursue such training, especially vocational training.”

Monsey resident Chaya Wagschal, an RCC student who grew up loosely affiliated with the Satmar sect of Hasidism still embraces her community’s values and practices. Her pursuit of a college degree is rare among her peers: she has enjoyed support from her parents and community.

“Being Hasidic is very much about being accepting of every fellow Jew, regardless of his or her ideals, level of religious observance, or place in society,” Wagschal said, sitting in an RCC library meeting room. “It is those ideals that I find so charming about the Hasidic culture. Being a part of a Hasidic community is like being part of a big family that looks out for you, and is there to catch you when you fall.”

Educational deficiencies

Yeshivas are non-profit religious institutions dedicated to the study of Jewish texts, particularly the Torah and Talmud. Educational standards vary tremendously among the 100 East Ramapo yeshivas that serve 24,000 students. Some offer advanced secular studies, others none at all.

In some cases, boys don’t learn the alphabet until they are 8 years old. At that point, English and math coursework is squeezed into 90 minutes, a few times a week at the end of the day. Generally, around age 13, boys begin to focus exclusively on religious studies.

“Most men graduating from Hasidic yeshivas are severely disadvantaged due to their illiteracy in basic subjects that are taught in most public and non-public schools,” Yaffed’s Moster said. “This includes being able to speak and write in English, understanding what college is or how it works, being able to prepare for a job interview and to actually qualify for most average-paying jobs outside of the community itself.”

Girls, who do not study the Talmud, receive more well-rounded studies.

Such was the case for Wagshal, who had sufficient English and other studies to skip BOCES and go straight to RCC.”

For the remainder of the article from Lohud click, here.