For several years, there has been a steady drip of complaints from yeshiva graduates and parents alleging that the Hasidic yeshivas they or their children attended do not provide a basic education in English, math, science, and social studies.

At one point, New York City’s Department of Education opened an investigation. After delays due to political pressure from community leaders, the report finally emerged, finding that 26 of the 28 Hasidic yeshivas that were investigated did not meet minimum standards.

To be clear, when we talk about Hasidic yeshivas that don’t meet minimum standards, we are not talking about all schools, but only those schools that do not provide a basic secular curriculum. The New York State Education Department has taken an important step towards correcting this problem, by issuing new regulations that put in place a proper enforcement mechanism for a law that has existed since 1894, which requires non-public schools to offer the bare minimum education that is offered in public schools.

What has been most mind-boggling about this battle is witnessing the hypocrisy of Hasidic leaders who have benefited from a good secular education, and who would not settle for anything less for their own children.

Yet, strangely, they have gone to great lengths to deny these same opportunities to low-income Hasidic children. Among those who have taken this most peculiar public position are prominent rabbis, and even a successful attorney whose father was highly educated and ran a dual-curriculum school, serving as proof that one can provide both a full secular education alongside a Judaic education.

There used to be an ethic that Jews held dear, dina d’malchuta dina: the law of the land is to be observed. Only in recent generations has there been a hostile view of secular governance. Most disturbingly, this hostility is stoked by those very Jewish leaders who claim to abide by the law.

The notion that a solid secular education poses a threat to a Torah-true lifestyle is ludicrous and insulting. For example, the vibrant Jewish Day School movement that has taken root in America since the mid-20th century, spanning the denominational divide, is proof that this is a lie.

Recently, a group of rabbis and heads of yeshivas released a letter that inadvertently draws attention to this contradiction. They wrote in response to the latest draft of regulations issued by the New York State Education Department, which would allow non-public schools to choose from multiple pathways to demonstrate that they meet minimum standards. These pathways include registration, accreditation, and assessments, and if schools are somehow unable to satisfy any of those pathways, they can be reviewed by the local school district.

In their letter, these three rabbis write, “While we commend the idea of multiple pathways, these regulations are not equitable. We say this as Deans at three institutions whose high schools are registered and whose schools would therefore be deemed substantially equivalent.”

Here we have three heads of schools who admit that Judaism does not oppose basic secular instruction — in fact, their own schools have voluntarily undergone a review by the state to prove just that — while going on to complain how the regulations are an obstacle for Hasidic yeshivas.

Do they not believe that other Hasidic youngsters deserve the same as their students?

This alliance of these Jewish leaders with the worst-performing yeshivas has brought shame to those schools that have prided themselves on providing a full dual curriculum. By having leaders of compliant schools provide cover for those that are not providing a basic secular education, they have lumped the yeshivas into a single bucket and caused serious reputational harm to those that have compiled with the law, and with the Torah, all along.

It’s not too late to reverse course and do the right thing. It is time to urge community leaders to stop providing cover for failing yeshivas, and call on those schools to comply with the law. Above all, let us stop promoting the false binary that the introduction of secular studies dilutes limudei kodesh.

All learning is holy.

Naftuli Moster is the founder and executive director of Yaffed, an advocacy group dedicated to improving general education in ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic Yeshivas.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.