In the haredi community, being a rosh yeshiva often means having complete control over the yeshiva, even though the yeshiva is officially a nonprofit and should have a board and normal governance. But haredi yeshivas are often run as family businesses, even though they really are not legally allowed to be run that way. This means that even top teachers can have no say over policy, over how students are treated – or if students are expelled from yeshiva. Back to the murder.
Bnei Brak Murder Highlights Problems With The Haredi Education System
Shmarya Rosenberg • Failedmessiah.com
Late last month a 17-year-old boy was found murdered in the haredi city of Bnei Brak.
The boy was a yeshiva student who had been expelled by his yeshiva’ rosh yeshiva (dean).
An 18-year-old Bnei Brak resident was arrested in connection with the murder.
In the haredi community, being a rosh yeshiva often means having complete control over the yeshiva, even though the yeshiva is officially a nonprofit and should have a board and normal governance. But haredi yeshivas are often run as family businesses, even though they really are not legally allowed to be run that way. This means that even top teachers can have no say over policy, over how students are treated – or if students are expelled from yeshiva.
Back to the murder.
The boy was expelled from his yeshiva and reportedly begged to get back in, but the rosh yeshiva refused.
Having no job skills and nowhere to go and nothing to do, the boy’s involvement with Bnei Brak’s street culture of drugs and crime with other ex-yeshiva students just like him allegedly deepened. And that, his aunt wrote in Yediot Achranot this weekend, led to the boy’s murder.
“When a person decides to establish a yeshiva or Talmud Torah, he should not be thinking only of the large sums of money he could earn from the business.…Don’t try to solve the problem by expelling the child from the institution. You know that thousands of former yeshiva students are going around [on the streets] with nothing to do,” the aunt reportedly said she told the rosh yeshiva after her nephew was expelled. She added that her nephew had “begged for a second chance, but the yeshiva principal did not agree.”
Unnamed haredi educators told Arutz Sheva said that if what the aunt wrote is true, it indicates a serious transgression on the part of the rosh yeshiva.
“Yeshiva heads need to understand that they are dealing with people’s lives. Human souls are in their hands – no less,” they reportedly said [quotation marks are in the original Arutz Sheva report].
They also pointed out that haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman “has been quoted so many times begging [yeshivas] not to throw young men out of yeshiva without doing all they can to keep them there, so that they don’t end up in an even worse situation.”
They also reportedly said that they have seen many cases in recent years indicating that many rosh yeshivas are “light on the trigger.”
“Think one step forward. This isn’t child’s play, you’re playing with souls,” the haredi teachers reportedly said.