As masked demonstrators engaged in violence outside a Los Angeles synagogue, Mayor Karen Bass declared that the city should consider restricting mask-wearing or concealing one’s identity while protesting, joining New York and others calling for the same. Sensible mask bans are a commendable step toward curbing violence in the short term, but they address a symptom of hate, not the educational cause at its root.
Following the spring’s hate-filled protests, elite universities looked less like crown jewels and more like exemplars of moral failure. Perhaps a model that emphasizes respectful disagreement, critical thinking, and discerning right from wrong is worth considering.
On the night of October 7, after Hamas tortured and murdered civilians in their homes, killing 1,160 people and taking 251 hostages, more than 30 student groups at Harvard University justified these actions. A Cornell University professor exclaimed he was “exhilarated” by the terrorism. Widespread encampments and masked marauders led administrators to cancel graduation ceremonies nationwide.
Attacks against Jewish students have exploded into federal investigations against over 100 colleges.
It’s becoming hard to keep track.
Nor is the hate limited to colleges or to antisemitism. According to a recent FBI report, hate crimes have been rising in K-12 schools for years now, with Black and Jewish students facing the brunt of the attacks.
Reasonable people can debate the cause, but it’s clear that many students have not received a solid moral grounding or learned how to exchange ideas rather than invectives. Here, Orthodox Jewish K-12 schools can help.
While their exact curricula vary, yeshivas provide dual tracks: the typical subjects (math, science, social studies) and a Judaic studies curriculum. Yeshivas encourage spirited intellectual debate about religious and moral concepts and one’s obligations to others, rather than attacking others.
Parents send their children to yeshivas to benefit from this intellectually diverse and morally enriching environment.
Academically demanding, yeshivas typically require more hours, discipline and study time than their wholly secular counterparts.
Yet, The New York Times notoriously waged a war against yeshivas’ reputations. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the Times published no fewer than 17 separate articles portraying Jewish schools negatively, accusing them of “failing to provide an adequate education.”
The reporting reached such a fever pitch that organizations leading the fight against bias and defamation feared it could fuel more antisemitism. Jewish students, many of them yeshiva graduates, have stood tall in the face of violence and inexcusable vitriol, even as they were trapped in a Cooper Union library, spat at, attacked and subjected to hateful vulgarities. These Jews generally responded neither with retributive violence nor with slurs in kind, but with dignity, patriotism and sometimes even humor.
To be sure, not all yeshivas are perfect, nor are all secular universities breeding grounds for antisemitism. But as colleges undergo a reckoning borne of a trial by fire failed, they should crib some notes from an ancient, but suddenly avant-garde, yeshiva educational model.
Our country, and the minds of its future leaders, deserves an education that teaches nobility in addition to résumé utility. We need to unmask the hate by inculcating reason and respect over victimhood and violence. If there’s a school system that has been failing its students on what matters most, it isn’t yeshivas.
It’s not just happening on campuses. It’s not just happening on the streets. It’s everywhere.
Antisemitism is no longer hiding in the shadows — it’s seeping into every corner of our society. Our workplaces, our schools, our communities. And now, it’s even reaching into the very policies that govern us. Laws are being shaped, targeting our way of life. What we fought for last year is not guaranteed this year. We have to work even harder to protect what we’ve built, and even harder to shape the policies that will secure our future. Please support us so we can continue to do for klal Yisroel.
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Avrohom Weinstock is chief of staff of Agudath Israel of America.
