It’s not saying “Jews” do this – it’s saying “Jews take over” that’s the problem. That phrase has a history. Many phrases have a history, even if it’s literally true. For example “blacks loot supermarket” might be literally true if two black people looted a supermarket. But that phrase – “blacks loot…” has a connotation beyond the literal interpretation, and further, suggests collective responsibility.
Imagine this headline for Bernie Madoff and other investor-criminals who happened to be Jewish: “Jews cheat hard-working investors”. While literally true – some people who happened to be Jews did cheat hard-working investors – the connotation is definitely anti-semitic, and plays on anti-semitic tropes and stereotypes.
Yours does too, Martin Hyde, even if it was unintentional.
I think people understand that. The answer is still tough shit on them. Let them move to Israel if they want public funded religious education for their children. I know people who have done so just for that purpose. This the United States of America and it is a secular democracy. The fucking Hasids needs to get over it. I am not funding your Jewish education or your Catholic education or your Muslim education or your Wicca education. Fuck anyone who thinks I should.
You would not be funding Jewish education. You’d be funding the special education for a kid in a Jewish school. There is already a requirement that if the school district cannot adequately educate a special needs child, it is obligated to pay for private school placement. Except, I guess (from what I gather in this thread) not for a religious private school placement. If that’s the law, it is an unfair and stupid law.
For a Hassid, this “I will help your special ed kid, but only in a public non-religious school” is basically blackmail. Equivalent to “I will help your special ed kid, but only if he eats pork.” Completely unacceptable.
The Klan is enough of a minor subset of whites that I do not think “whites” is descriptive enough. But there are contexts where I would use “whites” without issue, to me it’s about how specific you need to be to use language constructively.
For example “whites push blacks out of neighborhood” is something I would say if there was a large group of the white community in say, a small town, who was doing weird stuff to try and get black residents out (say using eminent domain to redevelop their properties, “force” gentrifying and etc.)
It should be noted the Jews in East Ramapo are broadly Orthodox Jews, while I know the most prominent one on the school board (mentioned on TAL repeatedly by name) is Hasidic, not all of them are Hasidim. Some are Hasidic and some are just “regular” Orthodox Jews (I’ll not here I’m not an expert on Judaism at all, but I know a few of the Orthodox Jews involved in the story that I’ve seen are not Hasidim and the TAL episode specifically says something like “many of the Orthodox that have moved into the area are part of the Hasidic sect” which suggests it isn’t just a Hasidic thing). Orthodox Jews are not some obscure sect like the Klan is to whites (there are like less than 5000 people in the Klan and like what, 240m whites in America.) Orthodox are a substantial portion of American Jews (like a fourth) and that is rapidly growing as they have practices that encourage high numbers of children.
Other examples where I would be perfectly fine using “whites” would be saying “Whites throughout the United States used to use restrictive covenants to block blacks and Hispanics from moving into their neighborhoods.” “Whites in the South used Jim Crow laws to segregate schools.” Was it ever “all whites” no, but I feel the titling there is appropriate and I suspect many of you who are being babies over this would have no problem with using the term “whites” in those contexts.
I don’t think I’d have a problem with state law being changed in this regard, but again that’s outside the power of the school board (as it should be.)
I disagree. Education is more important than the decision of whether to eat pork or not. Governments can and should enforce some kind of educational standards, but not which meats you eat. If the logic is (and I don’t know that it is) “We’re not going to say you cannot teach your kids stupid shit and handicap them, and our society, in the process, but we are going to draw the line at paying for it when we’re offering a perfectly good secular option”, then I think that’s reasonable, in principle. In practice, I don’t know if there are other laws or considerations that affect how reasonable that stance is; my point is simply that education and diet are not comparable in this way.
My own personal opinion is that the idea of religious schools should be fundamentally offensive to our principles, regardless of religious belief. Give kids an unbiased view of the world, and leave it to them to decide for themselves if they want to limit their perspective by smearing bullshit all over their lens.
I will repeat myself - the money from the state would not be going for the religious education. Speech therapy, occupational therapy etc. have nothing to do with religious education. It would be going for the special education for kids that need it. But in a religious school, not a public one.
Words have connotations beyond their literal interpretation sometimes. “Jews take over…” has a connotation and implication beyond “some Jewish people some where took over…” – it implies collective action and collective responsibility.
There is more to human language than accurately describing a situation.
It’s possible there exist implications and connotations beyond those in which you are familiar with. Generally, it’s wise to try to learn about these rather then just dismissing them out of hand.
There is more context to this story. All the white affluent neighborhoods in the county have been able to slice off their own school districts, leaving the poor minorities and immigrants of East Ramapo at the mercy of the Hasidic community.
So there are more villains in this story than just the Hasidim. There’s the whole issue of white flight, a structural defect in the state public education system, which essentially negates the whole rationale for a public system.
What do you mean by “slice off their own school districts” ? There are something like 700 school districts in New York, a state with only 62 counties. There aren’t any county-wide school districts (except that NYC, having to be different as always, has a city school district that covers all five counties). Without additional information (which you may have), there’s no particular reason to think those other communities were ever part of the East Ramapo school district.
Those hundreds of school districts didn’t burst into existence ab initio with the existence of the State of New York. They were formed gradually like they were in every other state, with large school districts being sliced up a little at a time as populations increased in different areas of a county.
If you simply look at a map of the school districts in the county it’s obvious that this is what happened. The East Ramapo Central School District is the rump territory remaining after all the smaller, affluent communities in the county split off.
That’s why I call it an institutional and structural problem. The whole system that allows wealthier communities to form small school districts adjacent to large less affluent ones fundamentally disadvantages those in the rump region.
Let’s see. Most American Jews are reform or conservative, not Orthodox. Most Orthodox Jews are not Hassidic Jews. There are multiple Hassidic sects. So the title of the OP is working with a broad brush, right? We’re discussing at least an order of magnitude.
Martin Hyde: Were you aware of all that when you created this thread? Are you familiar with the NY area? Do you agree that articles about the Westboro Baptist Church should not be given titles like, “Christians Use Hate Speech – Again”? Or that the Satanic Temple does not speak for all or even most atheists?
I would say “White Supremacists take over local school board,” and everyone would know that I was referring to a group of white supremacists, not *all *white supremacists, and that stating it as such is the easiest and clearest way of getting the message across.
But to say that in the same context the word “Jews” is a thinly-veiled reference to the goose-steppers? Give me a break.
As almost always, religious fundamentalism is a problem. Be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or any other religion. I give the Amish a pass. They don’t ask other communities to fund their private schools.
OK. But to what extent is that integrated into the religious education? Is the money all used for relatively brief therapy sessions, separate from lessons, or is a large amount of it also used to adapt the religious education to make it more accessible for those that need it?
It’s not as obvious as you think- that isn’t how East Ramapo was formed. It wasn’t the leftover after other communities split off from a larger district, it was formed by the merger of seven even smaller districts. (and I suspect the demographics in the area were very different when it happened) and I couldn’t find any reference to other communities splitting off later.
Those other Jews may be jerks, but that’s democracy for you. Personally, I’d like everyone to pay school taxes to the public system and if they want a private education (and especially a private religious-themed education) for their kids, let it come strictly out of their pockets.
In NY, if a non-public school student needs speech therapy, occupational therapy , physical therapy etc those services are typically provided on site at the non-public school by either school district personnel or contracted providers. No money flows from the school district to the non-public school. The issue is either that they want money to flow to the yeshiva which will then choose its own providers (or not, as they don’t seem to want anyone investigating whether the education meets state standards) , or the special education needs are more involved, the kind where the child really cannot have his or her needs met in a mainstream environment and the school board is paying yeshiva tuition for those students claiming that the yeshiva will provide services (which again, who knows if it really will) or perhaps they are paying yeshiva tuition for all students with any special education need , even those that can be provided at the yeshiva by personnel employed by or under a contract to the school district. But it is definitely not about students receiving specific services that are completely separate from religious education - the board is perfectly free to send their personnel over to the yeshiva to provide those.