The New York Times’s bias against Jews is showing
Melissa Langsam Braunstein
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A.G. Sulzberger, the New York Times’s publisher, knows his paper’s reporting on New York’s Hasidic yeshivas troubles members of the Jewish community. Still, Sulzberger has twice misrepresented those concerns. In an article for the Columbia Journalism Review and then an interview with the New Yorker, Sulzberger claimed critics accept the reporting as true but worry about its misuse. Sulzberger added, “We heard from countless members of the community saying, ‘We needed this.’”
Yet interviews with 34 people, including yeshiva graduates, yeshiva parents, and education scholars, illuminated deep flaws in the reporting, both because of what it includes and what it excludes. Several people called it “cartoonish” or “a caricature.” And it’s doubtful that “countless members” of the Hasidic community applauded the series.
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Consider that when the New York State Education Department solicited public input about proposed regulations for nonpublic schools in 2019, it received 140,000 comments, with “the overwhelming majority … opposed.” Another round of proposed regulations generated 350,000 comments last year, and “the vast majority” opposed new regulations.
Yochonon Donn, a columnist for Mishpacha news magazine and weekly newspaper Yated who teaches writing at two Brooklyn yeshivas, rightly observes New York’s fight over yeshivas echoes the one that animated Virginia’s last gubernatorial race. Yeshiva parents believe they know what’s best for their own children, but the New York Times disagrees.
The newspaper covered elected officials’ “grave concerns” and the New York State Board of Regents adopting proposed regulations after the first yeshiva article appeared last September. Yet, the yeshiva series never featured the story of New York Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba hobbling NYSED’s plans to regulate yeshivas in March.
The New York Times also weakens its case by leaning into tropes, including those about Jewish power. For example, the New York Times repeatedly charges Hasidic people with maintaining the status quo through “cohesive” bloc voting and “outsized political clout,” thereby intimidating politicians.
Yosef Hershkop, manager of Kamin Health Crown Heights, told me, “The Times punishes us. They want to say we’re uneducated, but they say how sneaky we are when it comes to politics.” Hershkop dismissed the notion that Hasidic voters feel bound by rabbinical endorsements and urged, “Make up your mind. We’re dumb, or we’re powerful.”
A recent Princeton graduate who had attended a yeshiva offered another perspective: “I’m not sure why it’s different if a rabbi or a celebrity endorses. In Eric Adams’s [mayoral] race, Maya Wiley had no chance. AOC endorsed her, and [Wiley] became a serious contender. It’s almost like AOC is the rabbi of progressives.”
The New York Times understands its allies’ endorsements as democracy in action, but it views Hasidic people differently. That also affects its coverage of the public school district in the Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel.
In passing, the New York Times mentions, “Federal regulators have given the Kiryas Joel school system high marks over the years for the services it offers its students.” However, it focuses on alleged corruption.
Among the examples offered, one of the school board president’s adult sons is identified as a highly paid “‘teacher aide/E.M.T.,’” but Kiryas Joel School District Superintendent Joel Petlin told me that’s a two-decade-old title. The New York Times reported this man “performs additional duties as a parent liaison,” but that’s the man’s current, time-intensive job, and he uses his EMT skills as needed.
The New York Times also references “a multimillion-dollar contract for bus service with a company managed by another of [the school board president’s] sons.” Petlin explained that this is one of the two bus companies with which the school district contracts, but that contract predated this second man’s employment.
Sulzberger should consider that the series’ critics have a point. And if it were more accurate, there wouldn’t be so many critics.
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Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is an independent writer in metropolitan Washington.