NJ Education Report

Jeff Dosna at BlueJersey nails it today in his post, “Embarrassed to be an Observant Jew.” He begins by referencing a Star-Ledger story about how an all-boys, all Orthodox-Jewish private school in Lakewood, NJ was just awarded over $10 million in taxpayer funds:

Awoke this morning (Monday) to read about the latest in Chris Christie’s pandering to the Lakewood ultra-Orthodox community:  

When the final list was released last week, one of the biggest – and perhaps most surprising – winners was Beth Medrash Govoha, a 70-year-old, all-male, orthodox Jewish rabbinical school in Lakewood. It was awarded $10.6 million in taxpayer funds for a new library and academic center, among the highest designated for a private institution. 

This comes on the heels of the same Lakewood community showing up in droves to support the Governor’s ‘school choice’ agenda of siphoning public money to private schools. He received their endorsement back in March:
At Yeshiva Toras Aron, a religious school for boys, Christie said his proposal for private school vouchers would ensure it is “the education of the parents’ choice, regardless of their economic situation, that governs how their children are educated.”

The fact is, I am embarrassed to be an observant Jew living in New Jersey today.

I so get that. My grandmother, may her memory be a blessing, used to divide every issue on the planet into two categories: Good For The Jews and Bad For The Jews. Rainstorms, political exposes, wars, bad haircuts. Nothing was too trivial or too momentous to fall into one category or the other.

And so every time I read about board and administrative mischief at Lakewood Public Schools, where almost all the kids in attendance are Hispanic and Black and almost all the School Board  members are Orthodox Jews, or I read about Yeshiva Toras Aron’s $10 million gulp of taxpayer funds solely to benefit yeshiva boys, I think of my grandma. “Bad for the Jews,” she would say, because it makes us all look like gonifs.