In the most intensely covered mayoral election in generations, the wellbeing of Jewish New Yorkers became a major flashpoint. And yet, no candidate took a decisive stance on a crisis affecting tens of thousands of Jewish children: the educational conditions at Hasidic and haredi yeshivas. 

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has not said much, and the few comments he has made have raised concern for those of us who believe the schools are characterized by grave educational neglect. At a New York Jewish Agenda forum during the primary, he questioned whether the enforcement of basic education standards in yeshivas was possible. This is troubling, given that New York State recently gutted regulations to provide a sound, basic education. 

In the absence of state oversight, new research has revealed just how deep this educational neglect runs. The sociologist Matty Lichtenstein captured the most granular data to date of course material in New York City’s Jewish schools, leveraging community researchers to survey dozens of people with on-the-ground knowledge of curriculum. Ultimately, the researchers gained a comprehensive understanding of what is taught in 171 grades at 85 schools — including haredi yeshivas.

The results were astounding.

In Hasidic all-boys schools, students spent an average of less than two hours per week on all secular subjects combined. At the height of their intellectual development, children’s growth is being stunted.

And STEM education was almost nonexistent for Hasidic high school boys – only 13% of male high school cohorts received any science instruction, and fewer than a quarter received math. The denial of a STEM education essentially slams the door shut on many career paths in today’s tech-forward workforce. 

And though English received greater priority for Hasidic high school boys, many Hasidic boys have a limited ability to communicate with the outside world. A separate report that we released earlier this year about economic outcomes in the Hasidic community found that fully 13% of Hasidic male youth speak no English whatsoever, with much larger percentages languishing at subpar proficiency levels.

As an advocate for Hasidic and haredi education equity, I have seen that the impact of this deprivation extends far beyond the classroom. Too often, I hear stories like that of a man who had a bright mind and was a great Torah student — but when he enrolled in college to help build a career, he could not keep up. Without the English fluency to do his coursework, he dropped out within a year. 

His story is tragically common, and it is borne out in the data. Approximately 63% of Hasidic individuals live below or near the poverty line, and Hasidic men earn about 30% less than their non-Hasidic counterparts. 

Still, we have reasons for cautious optimism. The curriculum report found that some Hasidic boys’ schools — a small but important minority — include six to eight hours of secular studies per week. And Hasidic all-girls schools generally offered at least eight hours per week of secular coursework as well as robust religious coursework. This proves that traditional Torah study and secular instruction are not mutually exclusive within these communities.

I have met many haredi women who received a balanced education, and they credit it for their success. They’ve seen firsthand how access to both religious and secular learning opens doors — and how its absence closes them. Some have even stepped in to fill the gaps themselves, teaching their sons to read and write in English at home. 

These women want schools that honor their faith while preparing their children for the world beyond it. And supporting yeshivas in moving toward this balance would fulfill a core Jewish value: helping others achieve dignity and self-sufficiency.

We cannot accept a reality where tens of thousands of Jewish children graduate without the basic skills they need to earn a living and support their families. Stronger education standards must ensure that Hasidic and Haredi students gain the tools to thrive as adults. 

But elected leaders cannot take action without knowing which schools are denying students an education. And because the state has shirked its role in requiring comprehensive school assessments, existing public data on Jewish school curriculum is sparse. The mayor and the New York City Department of Education can play a key role here by compiling information on what institutions are teaching. Mayor-elect Mamdani should fulfill New York City’s responsibility to track what students are actually learning.

New York State has betrayed Jewish students by gutting education standards and failing to monitor what they are being taught. As the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani must stand up for the right to learn – ensuring that every Hasidic and haredi Orthodox Jewish child receives an education that honors both their faith and their future. 

The well being of the Jewish community depends on it.

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Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to reporters in Toronto, March 8, 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press via Reuters Connect

A Canadian nonprofit organization has succeeded in persuading the city staff of Toronto to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall next week in recognition of the “State of Palestine’s Independence Day” on Saturday.

Braman Thillainathan, press secretary for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, explained that the city’s protocol office had made the decision requested by the International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to fly the flag this coming Monday, not the mayor or city council.

“City Council provided city staff the authority to manage the public flagpole booking process based on policy approved by council in 1999,” he said in an emailed statement to Canadian media.

“The use of the city’s courtesy flagpole neither implies nor expresses support for the politics or policies of nations and/or organizations but raises the flag in recognition of those citizens or members that have made the request,” a spokesperson for the city of Toronto told the CBC.

ICJP lawyer Shane Martinez framed the raising of the flag as a move to counter racism.

“Visibility is something that’s particularly important,” Martinez said. “Anti-Palestinian racism is carried out in large part through attempts to erase Palestinian identity, erase Palestinian voices, and ensure that they don’t have a place in society, that they’re stigmatized, that they’re tabooed, that they’re othered and sometimes that their existence is denied altogether.”

Martinez described the activist move as “really a statement as to Palestinian resilience in the face of oppression, in the face of unprecedented oppression by Israel.”

The statement came days after members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter led a mob that spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which an advocacy group had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Bashar Alshawwa, a Palestinian activist living in Toronto, called the raising of the flag “symbolic,” but said he believed it would “encourage other parties and institutions, individuals inside Canada, to join the journey for human rights and equality and justice regarding the issue of Palestine.”

The decision to raise the flag follows Canada recognizing a Palestinian state in September and Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier this month, Jewish groups also began circulating a petition calling for Chow to resign after the mayor chose to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.

“The genocide in Gaza impacts us all,” Chow said on video. “A common bond to shared humanity is tested, and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger.”

The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation pushed back against Chow’s rhetoric, stating that “the only Gaza genocide was the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and its allies against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Somehow, we doubt that’s what the mayor was referencing.”

The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called the mayor’s statement “reckless, divisive, and dangerous.” The group added that “the Jewish community expects the mayor to make this right by addressing the harm caused and taking immediate action to restore trust and ensure our safety.”

Toronto and Canada more broadly have seen antisemitism surge over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

In May, the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States — released its first J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism.

CIJA provided the data and analysis on Canada, reporting that the Jewish community “was easily the most targeted religious minority, accounting for some 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes (with 900 total hate crimes against Jews recorded). Hate crimes against Jews increased by 71 percent from 2022 to 2023, and 172 percent in total since 2020.”

The report also documented that Toronto police tallied 164 hate crimes against Jews as of October 2024, representing a 74.5 percent jump from the previous year.

“What is at stake is not only the safety and well-being of our community, but the future of a Canada where everyone can live free from fear and discrimination,” CIJA interim resident Noah Shack said in a statement.

Dima and Yuliia Lytvnenko spent their entire lives in Odessa. There, the married couple owned a restaurant, Mama Cassala (Ukrainian for “Mama Said”) and a sausage factory. Both were destroyed in 2022 rocket attacks during the ongoing war with Russia.

Fearing for their safety, the Jewish family — they have three children, ages 15, 11 and 10 — fled to Spain in 2023, and then to New York City in early 2024. Today, they are the proprietors of Papa Did It, a beef jerky and cured meat company based in Staten Island.

Yuliia Lytvynenko has been surprised by how little New Yorkers seem to know about the Jewish community in her hometown. Lytvynenko describes Odessa as a “very Jewish city” with many Jewish schools and synagogues. “But a lot of people don’t know that the Jewish in Ukraine are still there,” she said. 

The Lytvynenko family’s journey of displacement, preserving their heritage and building a home on a new continent will be told this month and next in New York as part of “Diaspora,” a four-course dinner and theater experience inspired by real-life stories of the Jewish Diaspora.

Produced by a group of Broadway alumni and entrepreneurs, “Diaspora” is the latest project from StoryCourse, an immersive dining and theater collective that’s focused on telling the stories of marginalized people. Running for 13 performances throughout November and December at a studio space at 245 West 18th Street, “Diaspora” treats audiences to performances based on real-life immigration stories of Iranian, Ethiopian, Mexican and Ukrainian Jewish families, accompanied by vegetarian and nut-free food that represents the four countries. 

StoryCourse Diaspora creative director Charly Jaffe (left) and head of operations Andy Hartman in the Chelsea studio where the dinner-and-a-show experience comes to life. (Jackie Hajdenberg)

“I think this is an experience that will really widen people’s perspective on what Jewishness can look like, can taste like, can feel like, and it’s an experience that allows for everyone to have a seat at the table,” said Adam Kantor, the director of “Diaspora,” whose previous credits include “The Band’s Visit” and “Rent.”

“We’re in really divisive times now in terms of anti-Jewishness and anti-immigration policies,” Kantor added. “So it feels like this is sort of a latent sociopolitical act, but it’s one that does not aim to be overtly political, necessarily. It aims to bring people together over community and food and heart.”

Inspired by the Passover seder — that is, combining storytelling with a festive meal — StoryCourse was founded in 2017 by Kantor, composer Benj Pasek and Brian Bordainick, the creator of the membership-based supper club Dinner Lab, all of whom are Jewish. StoryCourse went viral with its virtual “Saturday Night Seder” in 2020 — held as a fundraiser for COVID-19 emergency relief — and has also put on shows centering the stories of LGBTQ+ chefs. 

“Diaspora” embraces the Jewish roots of StoryCourse, according to Charly Jaffe, the organization’s creative director. “In a time where so many people are feeling like they’ve lost their sense of home, whether it’s a literal home, political home, or the-earth-we-live-on home … it’s looking at what we do at StoryCourse, and what our Jewish lineage — what we have in our history — actually has so much value for us,” Jaffe said.

The three other Jewish families at the heart of “Diaspora” are Stephanie and Yvonne Ohebshalom, daughter and wife of real estate developer Fred Ohebshalom. who have Iranian roots; Beejhy Barhany, the owner of Harlem’s Tsion Café, who came to New York from Ethiopia via Sudan and Israel, and Fany Gerson, owner of Fan-Fan Doughnuts in Bedford-Stuyvesant, who hails from Mexico.

“People think: ‘Jewish New York,’ and they just think, like, Katz’s Deli, or Borough Park, or neurotic Woody Allen,” Jaffe said. “There’s so much richness in [the] global Jewish tapestry.”

Andy Hartman, StoryCourse’s head of operations, said he hopes audiences will leave with an “expanded understanding” of Jews and Jewish food. “I think so much of what we have been trying to do is sort of push back on the Ashkenormativity that exists in the United States, more broadly, but even in New York, in terms of what Jews look like and what Jewish food is,” he said. 

“Diaspora” will explore these themes over four courses adapted from the four families’ own recipes, including Persian naan-o-paneer and Shirazi salad; Ethiopian messer wot lentil stew; Ukrainian borscht, and Mexican dessert flavors like guava with cheese. They’ll be prepared for guests by two Jewish chefs, Dave Dreifus, the founder of Best Damn Cookies, and Lottie Gurvis, owner of Oh My Noshhh private dining. 

About 50 guests each night will travel the world from their dinner plate while learning about the lives of these real, New York-based Jewish families.

Ethiopian chef Barhany, who is also the author of “Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond” is participating in “Diaspora” because, she said, “I wanted to bring the perspective of other Jews that we have to immerse ourselves and celebrate our differences and be more inclusive.”

Beejhy Barhany opened Tsion Café in 2014. (Josefin Dolsten)

Barhany, 49, was born in Ethiopia; as a child, she spent three years in Sudan before her family arrived in Israel, where she eventually served in the Israel Defense Forces. After traveling the world, Barhany settled in New York, where she’s lived for more than two decades. 

“I don’t think there is much knowledge on the flavors, traditions and what Ethiopian Jews have to offer to the landscape of the deliciousness of Jewish food,” Barhany said. “Tsion Café, or myself — we’re adding to that landscape of the diverse, unique flavors that the Jewish diaspora has to offer.”

Yuliia Lytvynenko said she hopes “Diaspora” informs its New York audience about contemporary Ukrainian Jewish life. (Case in point: Her husband’s surname was not originally Lytvynenko — his father, for whom Papa Did It is named, changed the family’s surname from Rabinovich due to rising antisemitism in Ukraine in the 1970s.)

During the Lytvynenkos’ course — the third — Ukrainian borscht, a favorite dish of the Lytvynenko children, will be served, along with a few creative interpretations of traditional Ukrainian spreads.

Asked what he hopes audiences will walk away with from the show, director Kantor said: “I hope that they will be crying into their borscht.”

“StoryCourse: Diaspora” will run for 13 performances throughout November and December at 245 West 18th St. Tickets, $180, include a four-course meal and wine. 

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