YITZCHOK2: To be brutally honest with you, as a Monsey resident, I know that many are in two minds about the whole school board thing. There isn’t one clear-cut situation, and there’s definitely SOMETHING rotten in the county of Rockland. What it is, we really don’t know yet. When they do this audit thing hopefully they’ll figure out what’s going on.
To differentiate:
1) Lakewood. Are they directly injuring anybody? No. So far as I’m aware, they were awarded the money completely legally. If they committed fraud to obtain it, then it would be dishonest to keep it.
2) School boards. I know nothing about the Lakewood school board, and I stand by what I said above about the Monsey one. Dishonesty in any form, I don’t care how much it benefits yeshivos, is immoral and against the Torah.
3) Chassidim in Monroe. See Lakewood- if they meet the federal requirements and it’s entirely legal, then what can I say?
Remember- this is as far as apology goes- as far as chillul Hashem is concerned, the above may well be an issue. But you specifically mentioned apology here.
Here’s the bottom line: I CANNOT FORCE ANYONE TO APOLOGIZE. I can be a responsible, caring human being and apologize if someone is harmed either directly or indirectly through me (or even not at all through me- see the shiva example). I can wish that YOF had apologized. BUT I CAN’T FORCE THEM TO. Nor can I ask any newspaper that maligns a Jew or anyone else falsely to apologize.
I hope I am the LAST person you will see who will diss a Jewish person because he or she attends a co-ed high school. While I don’t attend one, and neither do most of my friends, I have close relatives who are teachers in several prominent schools and only hear wonderful things about them. I am not jumping into the fray solely in order to go against the school- I was merely taking a part in the debate already on. If the school had been Bais Yaakov of Boro Park or Satmar I would have the EXACT same opinion.
I am a kid and I can tell you that I don’t like being punished for something I do any more than your kids do- there is, however, a difference between apologizing and admitting guilt. I just recently had a situation where, as I illustrated earlier, someone bumped into me, causing me to bump into someone else and have her drop her looseleaf. I believe I said something along the lines of “I’m so sorry- I was pushed from behind and lost my balance. Do you need my help cleaning up?” Apology and disclaimer at the same time- they have NOTHING to do with each other.