As YWN readers are aware, late last week the yeshivas challenging the State Education Department’s New Guidelines submitted their last set of papers to the court in support of their request for a preliminary injunction blocking the implementation and enforcement of the new rules.

The case – along with the parallel lawsuits filed by the Independent schools and the Catholic schools — was assigned to a judge on Monday, and the all the schools immediately asked the court to set a date for a hearing on the preliminary injunction.

Not surprisingly, the State sought to delay the hearing. Even worse, the State asked the Court to ignore the numerous affidavits that the yeshivas and other parties submitted in support of their claims.

YWN can now exclusively report that the court rejected the State’s delay tactics, and set a preliminary injunction hearing for Monday, April 15.

YWN has already reported on the incredible affidavit from Nobel Prize winner and yeshiva graduate Robert Aumann. But there were many other important affidavits submitted, and YWN can now share with you several more of the affidavits that the State fought to prevent the court from considering.

Professor Aaron Twerski wrote about the unique role the yeshiva system plays in sustaining and growing the frum community, the value of a yeshiva education and his own decision to provide a chassidishe education for his children. He wrote:

“In any event, yeshiva education is remarkably effective in providing the tools necessary for success in the secular world. Indeed, I would challenge any large-scale secular educational system to match the results accomplished by our schools.”

He concluded:

“I am a life-long educator whose contributions and commitment to excellence have been recognized by the secular world, and I am convinced that yeshivas offer a superior education. Others might look to our Yeshiva system for its excellence in teaching the most important of all skills: how to reason, analyze problems and construct a moral and ethical framework for life. The sentiments that I express here were not formulated recently, nor do they find their main expression in this Declaration. Of far greater significance, my wife and I enrolled our own children in Chasidic schools. We moved from Pittsburgh to New York in 1972 for the sole reason that we wanted our nine children to benefit from an intense Chassidic education. Each and every one of them are highly productive members of society. They are Talmud scholars and are engaged in a broad range of endeavors. Some are teachers, others are involved in commerce – all are highly successful. But most important, they are deeply religious and possess highly ethical standards that they imbued from the finest Chassidic schools. We are gratified that all of our grandchildren and great-grand-children are students in Chasidic schools as well. With more than one hundred descendants, that record speaks for itself. “

Rav Yisroel Meir Kirzner, a close talmid of Rav Hutner, ZT”L, a Rov in Boro Park and a distinguished professor of economics at NYU, wrote about the conflict between the New Guidelines and the goals of a yeshiva education, and the damage that would be wrought if yeshivas are “constricted by the New Guidelines crafted in Albany by those entirely unfamiliar with (and not necessarily sympathetic towards) the standards of Jewish education. “ He concluded by saying that Chaim Berlin “and the broader Yeshiva community have amply demonstrated that their educational vision can and does produce graduates fully capable of achieving success in all fields of endeavor. Their institutions must not be transformed by those who are utterly detached from the broader goals of Jewish religious education.”

Avi Weinstock, who is e Chief of Staff and Associate Director of Education Affairs at Agudath Israel of America, wrote to explain how invasive the New Guidelines are, and how they ignore educational output:

“The irony is that the yeshivas that provided me with an excellent education could not satisfy the requirements of the New Guidelines. For starters, the schools I attended (and hundreds like it) did not offer dance or the visual arts; courses on the New York Constitution; or instruction in “family science” (again, all listed as absolute educational requirements in the New Guidelines). Nor did we receive the requisite – according to the New Guidelines – hours of instruction. In other words, our inputs didn’t measure up, even though our actual education and outputs may have been exemplary.

“Any review of the New Guidelines would be incomplete without a review of the consequences of non-compliance. Per the New Guidelines, “If the board of education makes a determination that the school does not meet the standard of substantial equivalency, then: The LSA shall provide written notification to the administration of the nonpublic school and the parents or persons in a parental

relationship of students attending the school of such determination and that the students will be considered truant if they continue to attend that school. The board will provide a reasonable timeframe (e.g., 30-45 days) for parents or persons in a parental relationship to identify and enroll their children in a different appropriate educational setting. The 30-45 day timeline described in the New Guidelines, after which point parents can be charged with criminal truancy, including jail time, is draconian.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)