You’ve probably heard about the Hasidic yeshivas here in New York that don’t teach the basics. They were on the front page of all the newspapers: the schools that do Torah and no times tables. But you probably haven’t heard directly from someone like me: someone who is from that community. Many of us suffer in silence, unable to ask for help because we cannot read or write in English.
So it’s a privilege not only to be published here, but just to be able to tell my story. And I can do that because I had the help I needed to pursue an education.
I was born in Monsey, N.Y. Unlike many of my neighbors, I had two siblings, one brother and one sister. I went to a Bobov girls’ school through middle school, and it wasn’t all bad. They offered Regents exams, and we received some secular instruction. However, it was clear to me that their goal was for us to become homemakers, not to pursue our dreams. That felt off to me — I wanted more.
At 14, my parents got a divorce, and my siblings and I moved down to Borough Park with my mom. My dad still had control of our schooling, so he sent my sister and me to a girls’ school through Bais Yaakov and my brother to a nearby boys’ yeshiva. Those schools were even worse on academics. Judaic and Hebrew classes were all that mattered, and English fell by the wayside.
My school didn’t want girls to pursue higher education. I didn’t accept that, and I told my principal I wanted to apply to Brooklyn College. When I did, she screamed at me right in front of my classmates.
I didn’t take no for an answer — I went around her and asked a clerk at the central office for my transcript. They didn’t think twice, gave me the transcript, and I shipped off my application. A few months later and, through a stroke of luck, I was in.
Once I got to college, I realized quickly that I was behind the curve. In my classes, I saw on the syllabus that I’d have to write long research papers and present them. My school never taught me any of that. I’d never given a presentation before. I didn’t know what a citation was. I’d never written anything longer than a page. I wasn’t prepared, and I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to handle it all.
I was able to get by, and that’s because I wasn’t alone: my mom was there to help. After the divorce, she decided to get her bachelor’s degree, and enrolled at Brooklyn College just before I started. It was a blessing having her there to support me, to teach me as we both learned. I would have been lost without her and my network of family and friends. Today, thanks to them, I am a college graduate and am applying to law school.
But there are still tens of thousands of students without that support who are stuck in this failing system. Take my brother. He’s 14, and he recently asked me for help writing talking points for a debate. He showed me his draft, and all through it he had put horizontal lines like this |.
I asked him where the periods were. His response, “What’s a period?”
Fourteen-years-old, and he doesn’t know what a period is! That has long-term consequences — I know kids who’ve been fired from entry-level jobs because they can’t write. They won’t be self-sufficient, and their families will be in poverty.
None of this is to say I’m opposed to religious education. Far from it: today, along with my day job, I teach an afterschool religious program at a local Hebrew school. I help students learn their prayers, connect with their faith, and know their roots.
I’m grateful that my education gave me a strong relationship with my Jewish identity, one that I can now give to the next generation. But that is not the only responsibility of these yeshivas. They must also give students the tools they need to provide for themselves and their families.
I had the support and the stubbornness to take the path I wanted, to tell my story on my own terms. But I’m the exception. If our leaders continue ignoring my community, my brother and his whole generation of students will miss out on an education. For their sake, I hope someone with the power to make a change reads this story, about one of the lucky ones.
Meity “May” Hoffman is a recent graduate of Brooklyn College. She grew up in the Hasidic communities of Brooklyn and Monsey, N.Y.
