Forward: Haredim Reject Curriculum

The Forward fails to tell us what in the curriculum the Haredim find dangerous or contrary to Torah. Must be that they think everyone knows that already. We don't.

Haredi Schools Resist Israel’s Efforts To Impose Core Curriculum

Tel Aviv — A tug-of-war is taking place over the government’s attempt to impose a core curriculum in ultra-Orthodox elementary and high schools, and it’s not just about education. It cuts to the heart of a bitter conflict within Israeli society on the issue of authority.

Israel’s Education Ministry has launched a zero-tolerance policy aimed at Haredi schools that refuse to teach the ministry’s prescribed secular studies curriculum.

But a fight over course content has quickly morphed into something broader. As Jerusalem rabbi Nachum Eisenstein told the Forward: “Rabbis are the ones who decide how to educate in accordance with the principles of the Torah as received on Mount Sinai…. No outside person has any right whatsoever to tell us how to run our education.”

Eisenstein, a confidant of Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the influential rabbi who has led the battle cry against changes to Haredi curricula, said of the Education Ministry and the high court petitioners, “They want to undermine our education system, which controls the values that are given to our children.”  Read more...

Is the term "morphed" helpful here? We think not. It seems like the Haredim decided to respond to all questions with rhetoric rather than substance. And the Forward is happy to grab onto the rhetorical outbursts and use them to make the Haredim look like uncooperative administrators, which is what they are.

But we want to know what specifics of the curriculum are contrary to what these rabbis believe are the principles that they received on Mount Sinai? We'd like it if the Forward would leave out the rhetoric that they are being fed, and ask some substantive questions. It's time to do that.