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| Rabbi Bender with Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education |
On Monday morning, the New York Times posted an article with the headline Do Children Get a Subpar Education in Yeshivas?
Among their most urgent criticisms, highlighted in the first paragraph, was that there are students yeshiva students who “have not been taught that dinosaurs once roamed Earth.”
The article was another grossly unfair New York Times attack on yeshivas and the frum way of life. (On Sunday, in honor of Chanukah the Times ran an op-ed with the title The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah!)
But in this instance the Times was even worse than usual, because it chose to illustrate its article on subpar yeshiva education with a photograph of Yeshiva Darchei Torah.
That prompted this strongly worded response from Rabbi Yaakov Bender, the Rosh Hayeshiva of Yeshiva Darchei Torah, who stood up not only for his yeshiva but for our yeshiva system.
Here is Rabbi Bender’s statement:
The New York Times has an article online suggesting that yeshiva students receive a subpar education. It is a horribly unfair attack on our entire yeshiva system. Incredibly, the Times article is illustrated with a photo of our yeshiva, Darchei Torah.
Subpar? Our students regularly outperform students in New York City’s public schools.
Students who want to avoid a subpar education should leave the public schools and enroll in a Yeshiva such as ours.
We take the most pride in fulfilling our primary mission of teaching Torah and imparting Torah values. But we also outperform the public schools academically at every level. Our performance on State tests far surpasses theirs, we offer numerous Advanced Placement courses, and our graduates achieve great success in their chosen professions. Six of our alumni have attended Harvard Law School over the past decade!
We also do far better than the public schools in other important ways: we are free of drugs, crime and the disrespect that plagues New York youth. Our Yeshivos certainly do not need the advice of our local school boards.
They surely should be interested in observing us, not to evaluate our performance but to learn how to emulate our success.
The New York Times has no business disparaging our yeshiva system. Their criticism of yeshivas was as off-base as their choice of a photo of Darchei Torah to accompany their article.
Rabbi Yaakov Bender
8 comments:
How many Yeshiva kids take calculus?
The Agudah feels fortunate that they have a propagandist like Yankel Bender.
Bender knows who butters his bread & will do anything to cater to the wealthy Lawrence crowd. He gives them better rebbeyim than the Far Rockaway crowd while talking out both sides of his mouth. He always touts Harvard Law School to Lawrence & the elite yeshivos to Far Rockaway. His own logic should then dictate that the better rebbeyim go to Far Rockaway but don't try to get between a man & the old adage of flattery can get you anywhere.
This is besides the point that he has been on the wrong side of every issue since day one. He supports Kolko, Hiller, Dovid Weinberger & Belsky, among other things.
https://frumfollies.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/5-town-rabbis-slam-belsky-for-defending-sex-offender-weinberger/
Aliyah Dwyer
Bender isnt hiding anything. He is disgusting and much worse than you can imagine.
Bender and (Aryeh Z) Ginzberg go way back & EXTREMELY loyal to each other
Genius Mechanech, my son was in special ed. He stole something from his teacher. Rabbi Bender the genius called the police and he asked them to cuff my son in front of the entire school. He said that will cure him. He told me he didnt know about it. My childs teacher with the greatest fear of losing his job begged me not to say anything but that was 100% Rabbi Bender & he heard Bender speak to the police who didnt want to do what was being asked. Good job genius, my special ed son was used as a sacrafice for other kids to be scared of stealing. My son knows this & is scared for life.
Bender is an expert, great at publicity, controlling his employees lives, gaining control & loyal to his own interests.
Rabbi Bender has his cronies searching the internet looking to see what they say about him. I have seen with my own eyes, Rabbi Bender has his ways of dealing with people who cross him. Its not pleasant. I highly reccomend your identity if posting here be completely annomous with out an internet trace.
Cover Up Encyclopedia
Let’s start at the beginning and Yerachmiel may need to create flow charts to follow all this.
Mike Tress was molesting boys inside the Agudah’s building in WIlliamsburg. We don’t just know this from MIT scientist Philip Fishman hinting it in his book. There are a lot of rabbis who admit it off the record. Whether or not Sruly Belsky and his good friend Yudi Kolko were molested by Tress as rumored, here is what transpired in the decades that followed:
Kolko is a talmid of Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg, grandfather of the sex offenders Dovid Weinberger & Weiner.
Scheinberg interfered with several beis dins & other rabbonishe gatherings investigating Kolko. Scheinberg was aided primarily by Lipa Margulies, Sruly Belsky & his close talmid Aryeh Zev Ginzberg.
Yankel Bender was at one of the meetings that ended with covering for Kolko. Yankel Bender’s father was rosh yeshiva in Torah Vodaas and hence close to Belsky.
A major financial supporter of both Margulies and Belsky is convicted felon Berish Fuchs who has since moved to Lawrence, a few doors away from Dovid Weinberger, and has become very close with Yankel Bender. Fuchs partner in crime is convicted felon Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum who along with Belsky covers up for their good friend convicted child rapist Lipa Brenner. Brenner is family with Belsky’s accused molester buddy Ephraim Bryks & shyster Paysach Krohn who is good friends with Weinberger. Fuchs is first cousin of Dov Hikind who suddenly became interested in the molester cause only after Yudi Kolko moved out of state.
Mike Tress put systems in place at the Agudah to protect molesters. These systems were fanatically protected by Rabbi Shmuel Bloom who lives at the Far Rockaway – Lawrence border. It was only after Bloom was pushed out of the Agudah that they would even allow the mention of the word molester and would consider censuring Belsky.
Darchei Torah Alum
Its well known fact with Darchei Torah or Mesivta Chaim Shlomo that Bender employed a teacher even after knowing that teacher locked a student in the closet on a regular basis. Anybody who knew the teacher can tell you he wasn’t dealing with a full deck anymore, but still Bender allowed him to teach many years after. Are you surprised Bender didn’t stand up against the Brooklyn Rabbi who molested children? One of Benders friends from his days in Brooklyn. Bender is a result of public relations & being an opportunist. He built the Yeshivah and named it Chaim Shlomo after a special ed student who was in the school, the students father is (billionaire) Ronald Lowinger. In the meantime of his image loving special children, he hid the classrooms in the back of the building so nobody can see them. He refused to allow special needs students attend school events, assembly’s & trips. He claimed to have special students included in regular classrooms when appropriate. It happened once and he milked it as if he were the most giving special ed Rosh Yeshiva, capturing the hearts of so many. He squeezed out his dedicated special ed staff, leaving them jobless. He proclaimed the school doesn’t have the budget anymore. He kept the students which he charged $ 11,000 tuition & refused anyone who couldn’t meet the price. Due to the overwhelming need for children with special needs, he chose those who were wealthy & can pay tuition & be contributors. To save money he hired CAHAL, a special ed program that costs nothing in overhead. He complained of students who caused damage, which was true, but common with students with behavior issues, which he took in with open arms as long as they had tuition & donations. The only special ed student Bender cared about was Chaim Shlomo. He was treated with the utmost care, because his father built the Mesivta. He proclaimed himself Rosh Yeshivah. The others whom already helped the day school, and donated millions of dollars their children received preferential treatment. Once they were of no use, they went from preferential to run of the mill. When one of Benders biggest donors lost all of his money in 2008, the dedication names were removed because part of the promise was to give a yearly donation and they weren’t able to do it anymore. He is a very bad person. It is an absolute shame he is in a position of community leader based on the false image he bestows. Further, there were 3 incidents of his fellow alumni from Torah Vedas that were charged with sexual abuse of minors. They were declared exiled from the community. Bender made it his job to ask his many staff from Brooklyn to make a minyan at these peoples houses because they were not allowed to daven in shuls because of their horrible offenses. There is also the truth about those that ran Ponzi scams& made victim their family & friends. Bender was coincidentally involved investing with these people & came out ahead. He also showed his immoral loyalty to these horrible human beings. If its in his good, and building his empire it doesn’t matter who you are & what you do. Bender will try to find out who is the author of this article and if known he would make life miserable for that person as the others who have been brave enough to be truthful.
I don't know how many but there are yeshivishe mesivtos with 11th grade Trig & 12th grade Calculus. Some very yeshivish places are even in favor of it because you must know it for some sugyos in maseches Eruvin & to learn the Gr"a's sefer on math. Seems hypocritical that Satmar machs it avek considering that Rabbeinee Yoel took a math book into the johnny with him to study.
I even know of an instance of Astrophysics being taught but that was a special situation for a single smart kid with his own dedicated teacher.
For many years one yeshiva's French teacher who was also fluent in German offered that course which some took to get a handle on Yiddish. It was a cop out however for boys who came from Germanic speaking countries overseas
On the lighter side, UOJ instituted a "Dunce Cap" award years ago & the first recipient was Avi Shafran.
"Mike Tress put systems in place at the Agudah to protect molesters. These systems were fanatically protected by Rabbi Shmuel Bloom who lives at the Far Rockaway – Lawrence border. It was only after Bloom was pushed out of the Agudah that they would even allow the mention of the word molester and would consider censuring Belsky."
I don't know Bender, but I do know Mike Tress, and you're one sick pup. The man saved my parents from the furnace of Auschwitz along with another 20,000 Jews while shmucks like you were writing letters to the editor about how great FDR was. He gave his entire fortune away to help Jews, while a shmuck like you probably can't hold down a job b/c no one will work with him. He gave his own life away to help Jews, while a shmuck like you hates Jews only slightly less than he hates his own miserable self.
You are a disgrace and a jerk for insulting the memory of one of the greatest men who lived in the last 100 years. If I knew you personally, I swear I'd slap you into next year. Filthy POS.
Saved from the furnace
Have you ever uttered "Ani Maamin"?
Yidden are rewarded for the good they do and punished for the bad they do. To dispute this is heresy as outlined by the Rambam.
While saving lives is indeed commendable it does not automatically cancel out something bad.
An important rabbi confided to me off the record that all this & more is true about Tress, including arrests that were quietly reversed due to intervention of Senators and other VIPs. If this rabbi is ever identified the Agudah will have a dreck fit and the public will be stunned that at least in chadrei chadorim he is not towing the party line.
You say admitting an uncomfortable truth is like shilling for FDR? If anything it's hard core Agudaniks who most closely act like Liberal Democrats with party loyalty uber alles.
Yes - I've uttered Ani Maamin and I know the concept of reward and punishment.
I also know that what Mike Tress did for good and to save lives is an undisputed fact, and the rumors that you're spreading based on some hearsay "from an important rabbi" who is too cowardly to go public with his name, is nothing but that - hearsay.
If you're comfortable spreading lashon harrah that is very far from verified about a person who is undisputed in his kindness, chessed and mesiras nefesh, you're even lower than I previously imagined.
Go on - keep on writing this garbage on anonymous blogs. At least Mike Tress was not afraid to use his own name when he did his endless chessed. You, the blogmeister, and the prominent rabbi - all engaged in such wonderous works like slandering people - all remain anonymous. That right there, says more than anything else.
Yasher koach to Rabbi Bender standing up to the yaffed haters!
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