Jewneric: A New Platform for the Jewish Voice

OK So I attended grade school at a place called Yeshiva Elementary School or YES for short. YES is one of only 3 Jewish grade schools in Milwaukee WI and of the 3 Yes is the only on that is strictly orthodox . At the time I attended YES was in its infancy and had maybe 60 students between K4 and 8th Grade. As is common in ultra orthodox communities many of the families had multiple children in school with many more preparing to attend. Since YES was only recently established it was in a state of near poverty and though it gave tuition breaks there was no specific benefactor providing the income necessary to fill the gaps the tuition breaks created. When Wisconsin began giving school vouchers it not only gave a significant break to the families sending 3 or 4 kids to Jewish schools it also insured that schools like YES wouldn’t suffer for lack of income. Since then YES has grown to over 200 students (which is large for a small city school) and because of the School Vouchers people have actually moved from other states to live in the Milwaukee Jewish community. The leadership of YES has made of point of creating a relationship with the state and city government and as a result of the open dialog between government and Jewish school there has been no governmental interference in the schools inner workings. It is only because of these vouchers that YES was able to survive and eventually flurish.
Knowing this I would be less quick to shoot down the idea of school vouchers and rather consider the options that the voucher program provides and how we as the Jewish community can help make this program work to both our communities and our cities greatest benefit.

There’s no arguing the fact that school vouchers benefit the private schools whose students receive them. That doesn’t change a thing I wrote in my article.

The money for the school vouchers is taken away from the public schools and/or from private citizens. Building a Jewish school and a Jewish community at the expense of the public schools and the secular community is not acceptable, nor does it benefit the community in the long term.

You say that there has been no governmental interference in the schools “as a result of the open dialog.” Does that mean that in fact the city and state government have the authority to exercise control over the school should they choose to do so, but they choose not to do so? That’s not acceptable.

On-line resources critical of the Wisconson school choice program:

http://www.weac.org/News/2007-08/oct07/voucherreport.htm
http://www.weac.org/News/2007-08/oct07/voucherscores.htm
http://www.weac.org/Capitol/2007-08/aug07/voucher.htm
http://www.weac.org/News/2005-06/june06/voucherschool.htm
http://www.weac.org/news/2005-06/march06/tuckers.htm

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2073

There are plenty more, but I think I’ve made my point.

A) I said there had not been government interference in THAT school singular not schools plural.
B) I am not saying its a perfect system simply that the benefits that this program can have for the Jewish communities (especially in small cities) can be tremendous if managed correctly.
C) Currently I live in a community whose public high school just sent a group of students who sing in the schools glee club to Italy where they preformed at the Vatican. The School, GBN, also just launched a competitive rock climbing team. They have a 3 million dollar theater that seats 1500 people which they use for their multiple theater and music programs.
All of these features are thanks to the neighborhood taxes that insure a better education for children of the families that live there.
Needless to say my heart bleeds an ocean of sympathy for the poor students from this school that would loose money on a voucher program.

Now having said that I also lived for a loooooooong time in Washington Heights NY one of the poorest areas in Manhattan. A friend of mine used to tutor at one of the schools in the neighborhood and he would tell me horror stories about how ill equipped they were and how the building itself was in a wretched state of disrepair. So when Michael Bloomberg announced that he was going to use the tax surplus he had created to pour millions to the NY public school system I was glad to know that it was this kind of school that would be getting a much needed boost.
I would hate to take money out of the hands of a school in such a desperate need for finances but many…in fact most Jewish schools in this country are in exactly that place. Destitute. Very few bountiful Jewish schools like RAMAZ exist and as you move west from NY and east from LA you find Schools that have no one getting in line to donate and a community of people that they allow to let slide on tuition because most of the community simply can’t afford it. Vouchers insure that the Children of our community don’t need to be subject to substandard schooling conditions and since very few Jewish communities are centered in inner city areas the majority of public schools loosing tax money are schools that will have to be willing to give the pope a rain check.

Thank you for confirming my point that taking voucher money leaves a school vulnerable to being manipulated by the government, a position in which Jewish schools should not willingly place themselves.

Your anecdote about a rich high school is irrelevant to this discussion. You can’t enact school voucher legislation and then control where it gets used — it gets used everywhere, in the rich communities and the poor ones.

Your comment about where Jewish communities and their schools are located is simply wrong. Orthodox communities, at least, tend to congregate in urban centers, and the urban centers are where many of the worst school districts are located. Boston, for example, has a large Jewish community and terrible schools.

Furthermore, since school voucher programs usually end up involving state funding, it doesn’t matter whether the private schools taking advantage of the vouchers are located in areas with bad schools — they’re taking money that could otherwise have been used all over the state.

As far as I can tell, your only argument in favor of vouchers is that they’re good for Jewish schools. Well, yes, as I’ve already conceded, school vouchers are good for Jewish schools, but they’re bad for everyone else. We cannot and should not be party to a system which we know will benefit us the expense of harming others.

Your attitude, that we should support school vouchers because they’ll help us, is exactly the attitude that prompted me to write my article in the first place. We have a moral and ethical responsibility to do what is good and right for the world around us, not only for ourselves.

I can’t believe I’m on the side against you, Zee, but I have to be. My refusal to endure hypocrisy in others leaves me in the position of being forced to say that school vouchers would indeed be great for us, bad for everyone else, and therefore should not be part of the discussion. We cannot encourage a measure because it is good for our community alone - it is being a pretty good Jew, but being a very bad American. We choose the system we have now - a Jewish controlled education requiring incredible funding and a totally controlled Jewish environment. That is not the way things were always done; in fact, it is a relatively new concept. In the past, everyone went to public school (my mother attended a public school that was something like 87% Jewish) and to Talmud Torah programs in the afternoon. I do not claim that this system was better, but it worked for a long time and it was far less expensive. Perhaps religious leaders could get together with public schools to develop curricula that cover half the day with secular studies, and kids are then free to spend the balance of their day in religious studies of their choice (only kids willing to agree legally that they are spending the remainder of their day in an alternative program - which could be music enrichment, art appreciation, or religious in nature - would be eligible; the rest would go to regular public schools). This might create a system where everyone is working together to improve a system they have an investment in. Not a perfect plan, but a reasonable idea.

Ok lets take a step back for a second. If you are arguing that we as Jews have the moral obligation to behave in a way that supports the betterment of the world and to that end support ideals and programs that benefit the overall community, then I would whole heartedly agree with you.

I firmly believe that it is our duty as Torah observant Jews to promote good values, and social awareness.

Where we differ is on our opinion as to the damage caused to the overall community by school vouchers.

You believe that it takes badly needed money away from public schooling.

I believe that it gives back tax money to a family that has paid for a service that they aren’t using.

“But private school is a choice and taxes should not be refunded because of a personal preference” I hear you cry

To that I would respond “I don’t really think religious people sending their kids to private school is a choice ” Public school is just not set up to accommodate to the specific needs of practicing Jewish students and parents that don’t want their kids to have to deal with the conflict that comes along with public schooling really don’t have much choice but to choose Jewish schools. At least thats how I see it.

And more then anything that is the truly beautiful thing about opinion. I get to have my beliefs which I have formulated base on personal experience and further readings as you get to have yours. For instance I choose to focus more on Jews living in suburbia and you choose to focus on Jews living in urban sprawl. Numbers to speak to the actual majority don’t even exist and so it is outlook that determines opinion. In the same vein You choose to believe that money retracted for a voucher program damages the Olam and I believe that the Olam will do just fine with out voucher money.

Sure I could say stuff like “your views show that you don’t care about a financially struggling Jewish community” but 1) I don’t believe that and 2) to do so is to be a partisan hack.

You are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine and until further implementation of the voucher program proves either of our opinions to be more valid then the other I suggest we retreat to our respective corners, agree that each has the right to believe what they will, and be consoled by the knowledge that should a vote on this issue ever arise our votes will cancel each other out.

In the end we both believe in our duty to work towards the betterment of mankind anyway and I love your idea about making Jewish schools affordable and the implementation of such a program would be fantastic the only problem is that I really believe that its never going to happen because..well thats a whole other post.

The point is truce

Here is a certificate of authentication

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3116/2299903640_ff0c22e40b_o.jpg

I just have to point out that the following is actually on the Wikipedia page for school vouchers:

History

Hey little kids school vouchers were initially used by Southern states as a method of perpetuating segregation. In a few instances, public schools were closed outright and vouchers were issued to parents. The vouchers, in many cases, were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies. [1]The modern concept, however, of school vouchers dates back to the 1950s, when economist Milton Friedman suggested the idea stating that it would promote competition and improve schools. Vouchers have since been introduced in countries all over the world but continue to be controversial as they reflect political and ideological splits as well as the role of unions in education. Bye little kids.

Jonathan please tell me this wasn’t your doing! (just kidding). Why does everything have to be a racist conspiracy? (Pop tarts originated as a way of keeping the black man down!). Vouchers are actually best for poor, failing minority school districts, many of which would love vouchers to help save their kids from failing schools. I’ll make my own more lengthy comments tomorrow (I am, like most orthodox Jews, adamantly pro-voucher) but I had to copy and paste that before someone takes it down. Now that’s good vandalism.

OK, I’m back. I want to elaborate on my support of vouchers. First of all, I think it’s best to confine the argument to the philosophical realm and not a back and forth over the empirical statistics of whether or not vouchers work well or not, since we all know stats can be bent either way. But in general, I believe one of the lessons of the 20th century is that free markets and competition (which are an extension of individual freedom) are better for everyone involved than centralized government control. This whole argument is really an extension of that greater debate.

In that vein, Jonathan, your points about our responsibility to the outside world are well taken, but how and to what extent I choose to fulfill that responsibility should be my own choice, dictated by my own conscience. I may choose to give money to cancer research or to the boys and girls club. You can give yours to education. But I think you misunderstand the economy by describing vouchers as “taking money away from schools”. In fact, that money (like all tax money) was originally ours, and it was the government that took it away from us first. Vouchers are simply a way of reclaiming that money again, like any tax rebate.

Similarly, you ask: “Do you want your tax dollars” to fund Christian and Muslim schools that preach doctrines we don’t believe in. Again, these are not “my” tax dollars. They should be seen as that Christian/Muslim individual’s hard earned income being returned to them. So, yes, one result of democracy is that I do have to tolerate people of other faiths and the way they would choose to educate their own children if they had the financial freedom to do so.

You fear Christians teaching their children to proselytize to us, but ironically the best defense against this is to give our own children a strong Jewish education! Then we’d have nothing to fear. I guarantee you the average Orthodox day school kid laughs at missionaries because that day school kid is well grounded in his own identity, whereas kids who went to public school are in the greatest danger of being drawn in by missionaries. As for your fears of Muslim schools preaching jihad, I assume (perhaps naively) that most Muslims are not terrorist supporters, but obviously those who preach illegal things or incite violence would be shut down. This would actually force moderation into their schools.

Personally, I fear the secular Godless values of our public schools far more than the hypothetical religious schools you speak of. If you’re afraid of our tax money funding education we don’t believe in, I think we already have that with the hedonistic (and often violent) public school environment, where kids are being taught ethical and cultural relativism, sex ed. at younger and younger ages, being taught about evolution as the only origin of life without discussing it in the context of Genesis, etc. I don’t fear living in a country where our gentile neighbors have the opportunity to be as secure in their community’s identities as we our in ours. I think such people would find more in common with each other, as fellow people of proud convictions, than the average public school kids do with each other.

Another outgrowth of freedom is that some Jews don’t (and shouldn’t have to) agree with your interpretation of Jewish values as demanding giving of our own resources to other communities. Ultra-Orthodox Jews don’t share this value, and they have every right not to. I think you’d agree that their outlook is grounded in some very authentic texts even if we don’t like it or it’s not PC. They would stress that our primary responsibility is to take care of our own children first. This is not cruel or parochial. Charity starts at home, and we can barely afford to educate our own children in the way that our religious convictions demand of us. Jews of this mindset are consistent too in that they also don’t expect any Christian to give a dime to their schools. Let Christians be good Christians and do whatever they want with their own money. You praise us for being the people of the book and valuing education, but the focus of that education was always Jewish children exclusively and the content was always primarily (if not exclusively) Torah. If this sounds parochial, it’s because education is so inherently personal by nature. It’s a means of instilling the most sacred values and community consciousness into our future generations.
I think all of this is consistent with Jewish values of balancing global responsibility with communal identity, as well as American values of religious, financial, and individual freedom.

I believe that it gives back tax money to a family that has paid for a service that they aren’t using.

I have already explained how education benefits everyone in the community, not just the children who are educated or their parents, so I won’t waste my time explaining it all again. Go back and read my article.

To that I would respond “I don’t really think religious people sending their kids to private school is a choice”

Moshe Glasser has already proven that’s not true by pointing out that for many years the vast majority of Jewish students in America, Orthodox or otherwise, went to public schools, and that even now, when the tide has turned against it in the Jewish community, there are alternative models we could explore which would help both the Jews and the non-Jewish community, rather than helping the Jews while hurting everyone else.

Public school is just not set up to accommodate to the specific needs of practicing Jewish students and parents that don’t want their kids to have to deal with the conflict that comes along with public schooling really don’t have much choice but to choose Jewish schools.

There is no Constitutional right to avoid dealing with conflict. I know many observant Jews who have sent their children to public schools for at least part of their schooling, including my parents, who sent my two siblings and I to private school through sixth grade and public school for the rest of our pre-college education.

There’s a fascinating chicken-and-egg problem here. Many observant Jews, yourself included, claim that they won’t use the public schools because the public schools don’t accommodate Jewish needs, not to mention the fact that they’re bad, dangerous, etc. On the other hand, by reducing the number of Jewish students in the public schools, we disincentivize their administrators from accommodating Jewish needs, and pulling the students out of the public schools whose families tend to treat their children’s education the most seriously and have the most involvement with the school, inevitably reduces the quality of the public-school experience for everyone else.

The parents who care about education won’t send their kids to bad public schools until they improve. The bad public schools won’t really improve until they stop being drained of all the kids who actually care about education. It’s a Catch-22, and I don’t see a good solution.

For instance I choose to focus more on Jews living in suburbia and you choose to focus on Jews living in urban sprawl. Numbers to speak to the actual majority don’t even exist

It’s a common debate technique to pretend that there’s no data for something when the data doesn’t support your argument. The problem with this argument is that the data does exist.

If you look here, you will see that the top ten foci of world Jewish population, all of which are in major cities, contain over 60% of the world’s population of Jews.

I’m sure I could find more detailed statistics if I kept looking, but it’s really not the point. I’ve already explained why the question of where exactly the Jews live is irrelevant to the discussion of school vouchers. I won’t waste my time explaining it again.

Incidentally, while doing the research to find the statistics quoted above, I found this interesting quote: “In 1962 540,000 Jewish children attended afternoon–weekend Jewish schools. At that time 60,000 were enrolled in Jewish day schools. Now 140,000 attend day schools, but only 240,000 attend afternoon-weekend Jewish schools. Net loss, 220,000 Jewish children.”

If true, then it is reasonable to ask whether those of us who have circled the wagons by changing our communities’ focus from Talmud Torahs to private schools, without finding ways within our communities to make those private schools affordable to everyone, are at least partially responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of Jewish children to assimilation.

And please don’t tell me that American Jews don’t have the money to make our private schools affordable to everyone. The money is there; it’s a tragedy that our community leaders have not made it a priority to find ways to “shake it loose.”

You are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine and until further implementation of the voucher program proves either of our opinions to be more valid then the other

There is ample evidence, some of which I cited in my last comment, proving that voucher programs at least do nothing to help the public schools (voucher advocates argue that they help the public schools by spurring competition, but there are no studies bearing this out and plenty of studies which seem to disprove it) and at most harm the public schools. Again, you are pretending that the data does not exist because it does exist and does not support your argument.

I love your idea about making Jewish schools affordable and the implementation of such a program would be fantastic the only problem is that I really believe that its never going to happen

Why not? It has been done successfully in a number of American Jewish communities. There is no reason why it can’t be done.

There is, however, one reason why it is difficult to do, and that is that it requires cooperation among all segments of the Jewish community. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of unwillingness in some segments of our community to work together for the greater good with those who are different.

First of all, I think it’s best to confine the argument to the philosophical realm and not a back and forth over the empirical statistics of whether or not vouchers work well or not,

… because the statistics don’t support your argument.

Decisions about how tax dollars are spent should not be made based on “the philosophical realm.” They should be made based on evidence.

One could argue that there’s no good evidence on whether school vouchers work unless we try it and collect some data. That’s a legitimate argument, except for the fact that we did try it and collect some data, and it doesn’t work, at least not for the purpose of improving the public schools, which is what the voucher advocates claimed would happen.

Sure, some of the voucher schools improved, but at the expense of the others. And then there’s the whole problem of multiple voucher schools being shut down due to poor performance or outright corruption (i.e., stealing voucher money for purposes unrelated to educating the children).

But in general, I believe one of the lessons of the 20th century is that free markets and competition (which are an extension of individual freedom) are better for everyone involved than centralized government control.

I suppose, then, you believe that we should outsource our police and fire departments to private corporations and let them compete over who should provide those services to the public?

Or what about public transportation? Do you think there’s any city in the world that would have a successful, affordable public transportation system driven by the free market and competition?

How about water and sewer service? Do you think free market would bring better, cheaper water to your door?

In short…

This whole argument is really an extension of that greater debate.

… no, it isn’t.

Education is not a profitable business. A good education costs money. A good education inevitably costs more money than individual parents can afford to spend. Education is no different from the other services listed above — it is a service that must be supported and provided by the government, because when it isn’t, then many, many children end up not getting the education they need.

I have already explained in my article why everyone must support the public education system, even the people who don’t use it directly, so I won’t repeat myself.

But I think you misunderstand the economy by describing vouchers as “taking money away from schools”. In fact, that money (like all tax money) was originally ours, and it was the government that took it away from us first. Vouchers are simply a way of reclaiming that money again, like any tax rebate.

I was wondering when someone would bring up the old Republican “It’s our money and we’re just asking for them to give it back to us” canard.

If the government spends money on private school vouchers, then that money has to come from somewhere. Government budgets are a zero-sum game. That means one of:

less money for public schools;
less money for other government programs; or
borrowing money to pay for it, money which eventually has to be paid back with interest.

There are no other options.

This is true every time someone trots out the “It’s our money anyway, we’re just asking for it back” argument.

So, what’s your choice? Do you choose, by supporting school vouchers, to damage the public schools by taking money away from them, to damage some other government programs, or to add to a debt which you and your children will some day have to pay back?

one result of democracy is that I do have to tolerate people of other faiths and the way they would choose to educate their own children if they had the financial freedom to do so.

They do have the financial freedom to do so. They don’t need school vouchers for that.

You fear Christians teaching their children to proselytize to us, but ironically the best defense against this is to give our own children a strong Jewish education!

You’re absolutely right! So we should pay for a strong Jewish education for our children!

As for your fears of Muslim schools preaching jihad, I assume (perhaps naively) that most Muslims are not terrorist supporters,

I won’t speak to “most”, but the fact of the matter is that many of the Muslim schools in our country are supported by extremist sects. A great deal of funding for Muslim schools and mosques in our country comes from Saudi Arabia. If you think the huge increase in Muslim schools and mosques in our country in recent years is just a coincidence, you are indeed being naive.

but obviously those who preach illegal things or incite violence would be shut down. This would actually force moderation into their schools.

It’s funny that you think that the government would be able to do this competently. It’s especially funny since there are schools now that are preaching illegal things that aren’t being shut down.

Less funny is the fact that once you let the camel’s nose under the tent and say that the government should be policing private schools to look out for those who “preach illegal things or incite violence,” you can be sure that the camel will soon be all the way in the tent, trying to exercise control over what the students are taught.

Personally, I fear the secular Godless values of our public schools far more than the hypothetical religious schools you speak of. If you’re afraid of our tax money funding education we don’t believe in,

If you think the public schools are doing something wrong, then it would be great for you to contribute to efforts to fix them. Or you could simply wash your hands of the whole thing and put your own kids into private schools. Many religious Jews, including myself, have made that choice out of pragmatic necessity. But I’m not asking others to pay for my choice.

Another outgrowth of freedom is that some Jews don’t (and shouldn’t have to) agree with your interpretation of Jewish values as demanding giving of our own resources to other communities. Ultra-Orthodox Jews don’t share this value, and they have every right not to.

You’re right. And I have the right to believe that they’re wrong and foolish for thinking that they can live in a bubble without regard for the well-being of the world around them without it biting them in the ass.

In any case, this is just the “tax dollars are our money, and we’re just asking for it back” argument in another guise, so I refer you to what I said above rather than repeating myself.

I think you’d agree that their outlook is grounded in some very authentic texts even if we don’t like it or it’s not PC.

I think their outlook is grounded in a time in our past when we lived in ghettos and shtetls and really could exist in isolation without having any impact on the outside world or vice versa.

In contrast, for an ultra-Orthodox community to plop itself down in the middle of New York City and then pretend that it can exist there in isolation without regard for the world around it is simply laughable.

They would stress that our primary responsibility is to take care of our own children first.

Absolutely true! And in many of those communities, it is common for families to have so many children that they can’t possibly afford to properly take care of them all. And then they go looking for food stamps and other government assistance from the community which they claim to want to have nothing to do with.

They can’t have it both ways.

You praise us for being the people of the book and valuing education, but the focus of that education was always Jewish children exclusively and the content was always primarily (if not exclusively) Torah.

When that was the case, it was universally true throughout the world that communities were divided on religious lines and every community saw to the education of its own children. There were no public schools, and there were no taxes from one community going to support the education of another.

School vouchers are essentially an attempt to return us to that time, an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle. That never works.

I’m not going to weigh in with my opinion, but I do have to ask a question. Moshe Grusgott, I had this debate with a friend 2 weeks ago at a Shabbat dinner at another friend’s apartment, and we ended in stalemate after 2+ hours of debate/argument/ignoring our hosts.

You made a point that he made, which I find interesting:
“In fact, that money (like all tax money) was originally ours, and it was the government that took it away from us first. Vouchers are simply a way of reclaiming that money again, like any tax rebate.”

Does that mean that you would - as an observant Jew - then pay Ma’aser money on the money you receive from the government in the form of the voucher? I know that there is a widely accepted opinion that day-school tuition can be used to fulfill one’s Ma’aser obligation. But that only goes as far as the Torah education component of the tuition. In a voucher system, the money that you get is specifically allocated to cover the costs of the SECULAR education in the school day. You have to foot the bill for the RELIGIOUS component, if you send your child to a religious school (Separation of Church and State, and all that jazz). So, let’s say you earn more than 10-times the amount of money you spend on Jewish education tuition (you’re in your early 30s, you’re a lawyer and your wife is a stay-at-home mom, let’s say, and you earn $175k, taking home $90k after taxes but before retirement savings and health care premiums, etc., and so far you only have one young child in a religious day-school - let’s say in kindergarten - that charges $10k. You receive $5k in a voucher to cover the secular portion of your child’s education. Since, as you say, that $5k was your income to begin with, you owe $500 in Ma’aser money on it. The other half of your child’s tuition takes up just over one-half of the Ma’aser money you owe already from your $90k of after-tax money. You have just “earned” an additional $5k of income, obligating you with an additional $500 of Ma’aser. So, while $175k sounds like a lot of money to some people, with law-school loans, health insurance premiums, retirement savings, mortgage and car payments, your actual take-home pay is much, much less. That $500 could be a big, big deal, as it could probably cover your food bill (not counting Shabbat) for a month, or a month’s worth of utilities.

Are you saying that you are prepared to give that $500 to Ma’aser? Because the government doesn’t let you take it out of the voucher. That $500 has to come out of your pocket. It’s one thing to withdraw 10% of your income from your bank and give it to Tzedakah - that’s hard enough on most people. But now you’ve got to keep track of an additional $5k of “income” that you don’t ever see, but from which you benefit enormously, and take an additional $500 out of the bank, at a random interval at some point in the year, when it could seriously disrupt your monthly budget.

Just something to think about, whether you’re for or against the programs in general.

I make significantly less than $175k per year. My wife does not work. I have five children ranging from four months to almost ten. I live in a city which has the second or third highest cost of living in the country. I am currently paying day-school tuition for three children at a school whose “rack rate” is around $20k. Thank God, they take economic diversity seriously and give us a healthy tuition discount, but even with that discount, the tuition we pay is over 20% of my gross income and almost three times our annual mortgage payments.

In light of all this, I hope you’ll understand why I don’t have much sympathy for the people who say they can’t afford day school without vouchers.

(And yes, back in the days when we were still giving ma’aser, we counted tax refunds as income and allocated 10% of it to ma’aser.)

(We are no longer giving ma’aser because our rabbi went over all the sources with us and convinced us that we aren’t obligated to put ourselves more into debt to give 10% of our income to tzedaka. Believe me, it took quite a bit for him to convince me. So now we give what we can afford.)

(Back when we were still trying to afford to give 10%, I asked my rabbi what the story was with counting day-school tuition as ma’aser. He said that his rav taught him that since the parents and community are equally obligated to educate children, we could find out the total annual budget of the school, divide it in half, divide it by the expected enrollment to arrive at a per-student figure, and count toward our ma’aser anything we paid above that amount. Since it came out to be higher than what we pay after the tuition discount, we couldn’t actually count any of it.)

Jonathan you and Zechariah seem to be having two different arguments. It started simply enough with a disagreement as to the value of school vouchers. You are against Zechariah is for. You believe vouchers are harmful enough to public education that they shouldn’t be offered, Zechariah thinks the harm to public schools is so minimal that the voucher program still has merit.

Then your argument changes. Zechariah states that he has his opinions and you have yours and you are both entitled to believe what you believe.

You argue that Zechariah is horribly, abysmally , woefully wrong. You blame him of using “debate techniques” (which in and of its self is a debate technique and therefore hypocritical) to disprove data that you claim exists. Well where is it? Show me the data and then we can blame Zechariah for trying to discount it. Your argument is so fervent and discounting of others opinions that it actually makes me trust your opinion less.

Zechariah seems to be arguing his point with the belief that if you don’t except it thats ok its what he believes. You seem to be arguing that if someone doesn’t agree with you they are just wrong.

Unless this program is implemented there will be no serious data to prove any of your points and thus all of this is nothing but conjecture based in personal dogma.

Before you respond to this comment which I am sure that you will I would like you to consider a quote I once heard Zechariah make on the radio program he hosts. He was talking about his tenure as the captain of YU’s debate team and how people would fervently argue their points in a way that resembled zealotry. He said “Just because you win, doesn’t make you not the loser”.

Jonathan you and Zechariah seem to be having two different arguments.

I disagree.

Zechariah thinks the harm to public schools is so minimal that the voucher program still has merit.

Actually, as far as I can tell, Zechariah doesn’t seem to care how much voucher programs harm public education. He has not made any effort to engage me in the discussion of harm to public education from vouchers, and I have in fact posted references to study which show said harm, which he has ignored. Another common debate technique: Ignore arguments for which you have no good response, and hope that no one notices.

Zechariah states that he has his opinions and you have yours and you are both entitled to believe what you believe.

It’s a pointless tautology for someone to say that he’s entitled to his opinion and I’m entitled to mine. This statement is yet another deceptive debate technique — attempting to deflect argument against one’s position by essentially painting one’s opponent as intolerant for having the audacity to challenge it.

Of course Zechariah is entitled to believe what ever he wants, and I’m entitled to believe what I want. And he’s entitled to argue against my beliefs, and I’m entitled to argue against his.

You argue that Zechariah is horribly, abysmally , woefully wrong.

Yes, I believe he’s wrong, and I’ve provided a detailed explanation of why. In your rule book, are people not allowed to challenge other people’s beliefs?

You blame him of using “debate techniques” (which in and of its self is a debate technique and therefore hypocritical)

Hogwash.

to disprove data that you claim exists. Well where is it?

I posted the links already. Did you read them? If you don’t like the ones I posted, you can find a wealth of information, including numerous studies, simply by googling for “school vouchers.” Or you can google specifically for “school vouchers Milwaukee” to find references, including studies, to the specific vouchers program that Zechariah wrote about.

Your argument is so fervent and discounting of others opinions that it actually makes me trust your opinion less.

When I disagree with someone, I tell him I disagree, I tell him why, and if my disagreement is based on evidence, I provide sources to back up my arguments. I’ve done that here. You seem to be saying that you trust Zechariah more than me because he’s more laid back. I dn’t think that’s a terribly good reason to trust someone. You might want to consider, instead, actually considering the arguments being put forward by both sides and examining the evidence that is available.

You seem to be arguing that if someone doesn’t agree with you they are just wrong.

I have not invoked argument by authority, which is what you are accusing me of. I have no more authority to pronounce what is right and wrong than Zechariah does. I have supported every single point I’ve made with detailed justifications and/or evidence. If you, Zechariah, or anyone else wants to debate my justifications and evidence, have at it. But it is yet another pointless tautology to claim that I believe that people who do not agree with me are wrong. Well, duh. Zechariah believes that I’m wrong, too. He’s just so friendly that he finds it necessary to let me know that it’s OK with him for me to continue to believe the wrong thing. I didn’t really need his permission for that.

Unless this program is implemented there will be no serious data to prove any of your points and thus all of this is nothing but conjecture based in personal dogma.

First of all, school vouchers have been implemented, and there is serious data about their results. As I mentioned before, I’ve already posted links to some of it, and more is easy to find. Again, did you look at the links I posted? If so, and if you believe that the data is not convincing, then I would love to hear your reasons for why so that we can have an intelligent discussion about them. Claiming that the data doesn’t exist, when references to it have already been provided, is not intelligent discussion.

Second, yes, some of my argument is based on my personal beliefs. However, those beliefs did not come out of thin air. I have explained the basis for those beliefs in detail and I am happy to discuss them, as I have been doing. You seem to be saying that I’m somehow not allowed to express my beliefs and not allowed to defend them when they are challenged, which is just silly.

A clarification:

There are two kinds of “debate techniques” — those that are used to make or rebut a point through fact or logic, and those that are used to avoid making or rebutting a point.

When I accuse someone of using a debate technique, I am accusing them of using the latter, i.e., of employing misleading rhetoric, emotion or false logic that does not add anything substantive to the discussion.

It is not hypocritical to point out when someone has attempted to make a point in a way that does not withstand scrutiny.

It would be hypocritical if I were to do the same thing. If you think I am guilty of employing misleading rhetoric, emotion or false logic to make my points, please feel free to call me on it.

Jonathan- try to maintain a civil tone. For example, describing an opposing argument as “a republican canard” and making generalizations such as “the facts don’t support you” followed by links to partisan websites lowers us to the level of Fox News/MSNBC talking heads. Try to address the substance of the ideas themselves.

I want to keep the argument in the philosophical realm because stats about the effect on schools are not relevant to the underlying principle: I’m saying I should have a choice to use vouchers even if they do hurt public schools (I’ll explain again below the basic economic fact that taxes are in fact the money of individual citizens which is taken by a centralized government by force, often justifiably, often not). You don’t seem to realize you’re actually arguing very similarly: that we can’t use vouchers, even though they would help Jewish schools. That’s also a principled argument which ignores the evidence of benefits to the other side, and you’re right to make it. Recall you used this argument to deflect evidence that shows that vouchers help those who use them. You said those facts are irrelevant on principle. I agree.

You employed a reductio ad absurdum (the kind of poor “debating technique” you blasted Z.M. for using) in asking why I don’t believe in privatized police, fire dept., sewage etc. Before addressing those points, this is what it would sound like if I did that to you: “so you believe in government schools do you? Well why not nationalize all restaurants? And movie theaters? and raise children on communal farms? Communist!”.. I understand and respect the difference between a socialist democrat and a soviet communist, and you should understand the difference between an Ayn Rand libertarian and a plain old small government conservative. Police and firefighters (like armies) provide basic physical protection and are within the legitimate realm of what governments absolutely should be involved in. Water and sewage services also provide basic, immediate physical needs. I also believe in public schools by the way. I was only arguing that people who choose to opt out of those schools should be able to take a portion of their income tax money back- not even all of it-

My point about income tax money originating from the individual’s production and then being taxed away by the government was not a statement of ideological opinion but a fact. That’s what a tax is. You simply believe (as I do) that governments have the right to forcibly take away some of our income in order to provide for some of society’s basic needs. We only differ in degree. I think govt. should do this in a very limited fashion. So while I am partly responsible for funding public schools, I should not be AS responsible if I don’t take part in them AND if I can’t afford private school without suffering losses in quality of life that a public school family with the same exact income doesn’t have to suffer from. I understand this is a slightly nuanced argument (I think all truly intelligent positions are).

You put it perfectly when you cried that if govt. didn’t have as much tax money, some govt. programs would lose out…Exactly! I’d love nothing more. Let one of the thousands of useless wasteful govt. programs (NOT education) shut down completely (like farm tobacco subsidies, the strategic milk reserve, berry research, these are all real). So please just admit that your position is: you think government should have the right to take some of my income (backed up by force) in order to pay for other children’s’ education even though it puts my ability to educate my own children while maintaining a desirable quality of life in serious peril.

You admit that you struggle greatly with your own tuition payments, but that you can afford it in the end. What about families that make less than you? Should they not be able to send their kids to yeshiva b/c they have an overarching responsibility to the public schools? (and there are thousands of such families so this isn’t hypothetical). Compassion for greater society’s needs to the detriment of one’s own family/community doesn’t strike me as admirable altruism, but rather as strangely unnatural.

The only issue I take emotional exception to is your rejection of contemporary Orthodoxy’s values as being shtetl based, from the past, etc. (I think they’re based primarily on God’s revelation of Truth to mankind). If you reject traditional Jewish belief on who and what the focus of our education efforts should be as being a product of outdated thinking then fine but don’t also turn around and invoke “Jewish values”- a fuzzy cover for saying “it’s nice to do nice things” without any scholarly rigor examining what authentic Torah sources might say, because we’re afraid they’re outdated and reactionary. If you think Haredim are living in the shtetl and there was a once a purer time when Jewish values did reflect your modern progressive beliefs, when was that time? In medieval Europe? Talmudic Babylon? That’s anachronistic thinking. The OU and Aguda support vouchers and the rabbis working for them are pretty expert on authentic jewish values. You can keep preaching that Haredim are shortsighted and can’t go on living so isolated (I actually agree partially, I’m modern orthodox) but don’t force the govt. to make them see that, try to convince them on your own. I think they’ll ignore you, as they’ve ignored people who fear them for centuries, and I think they’ll be fine. Also, in terms of those Haredim who accept food stamps, which I also agree is not a good thing, it’s still not inconsistent with wanting vouchers because food is a basic physical need (recall my point about police and armies) while public education is not.

Seth- very interesting question about maaser money on vouchers, hadn’t thought of it. My initial instinct is one wouldn’t have to tithe it b/c the govt. is not actually giving an outright tax cut back to you to spend as you choose; it’s a voucher specifically allocated for education and you can’t use it on anything else.

However, if it did have to be maasered it would simply come down to a cost-benefit anlysis and see if it’s still financially worth it. I think it probably would still be worth it.

Though I feel there is little to say after Moshe G’s exceptionally through response I did want to add this little piece of data in regards to the links posted above that are referred to as “serious data”. I had argued before that I felt that the monetary loss to the public school system was minimal and therefore acceptable
And yes Jonathan I do care if there is actual harm done to the public school system by the voucher program. I just don’t think there IS any.

And so in order to put to rest the debate regarding data as it pertains to this issue, I called the WEAC who’s website was linked as source material.

After speaking personally with both Dustin Beilke ( WEAC Media Relations Officer) and Christina Brey (WEAC Web Journalist and author of the articles in the links provided) I was informed that data as to the actual harm of this program to public schools DOES NOT EXIST because no study has ever been conducted by the WEAC (or it’s affiliates) on the matter.
What I did find out was that less then four hundred million dollars has been spent on the voucher program in the course of its almost 20 years of existence compared to the 1Billion dollar yearly operating budget of the Milwaukee public school system. Although it should be noted that the majority of this was spent during the 2006-2007 school year and so a rise in voucher spending will likely occur in the future.
The majority of studies on vouchers have centered around this programs merit based on the effectiveness of private education vs public education. These studies show that public school students out perform students from private school in standardized testing. Though the purpose of this study is to point out the ineffectiveness of private schools it also suggests that public schools are capable of keeping up their level of education regardless of money lost by the voucher system.

Just thought you might like to know

Jonathan, now that Z has shown your cited evidence as not actually confirming the points you were trying to make, I have to point out that you were also guilty of this when trying to prove that most Jews live in urban areas. The link you directed us to only shows that most Jews live in the greater metropolitan areas of major cities, not in the cities themselves. Suburbs are part of those metro areas. This could still mean (and in my opinion likely does mean) that most of those Jews live in suburbs, as Z was arguing. The flight of Jews (and other white people) to the suburbs over the last few decades is a well documented phenomenon. I think it’s certainly clear that most modern orthodox Jews live in suburbs.

I must say that it’s a pleasure to debate an issue such as this one with people who are so competently able to argue the opposing point of view. I know that sounds sarcastic (the Internet has a way of making everything sound sarcastic), but I really do mean it. It is, of course, ingrained in Jewish culture and tradition that the best way to explore the validity of one’s opinion about something is to argue about it with someone who disagrees.

Having said that, I’m not so sure how I feel about the whole two-against-one thing :-).

Responding to Moshe:

Jonathan- try to maintain a civil tone. For example, describing an opposing argument as “a republican canard”

A reasonable objection. I apologize for that particular choice of words.

and making generalizations such as “the facts don’t support you” followed by links to partisan websites

Pretty much all the websites about this topic are partisan. There are strong opinions on both sides, and much of the research on the topic is being funded by people with an agenda. The fact that research is reported on a partisan Web site does not make it invalid; what makes the research valid or invalid is the methodology used to conduct it.

I want to keep the argument in the philosophical realm because stats about the effect on schools are not relevant to the underlying principle: I’m saying I should have a choice to use vouchers even if they do hurt public schools

This is obviously a question about which we fundamentally disagree, and further debate on this particular point is unlikely to change either of our minds.

You employed a reductio ad absurdum (the kind of poor “debating technique” you blasted Z.M. for using) in asking why I don’t believe in privatized police, fire dept., sewage etc…. Police and firefighters (like armies) provide basic physical protection and are within the legitimate realm of what governments absolutely should be involved in. Water and sewage services also provide basic, immediate physical needs.

My argument is predicated on the fundamental belief that public schools are just as much a basic, essential service as police, fire departments, water and sewage. I explained this in my article. The fact that public education is required by law throughout the country would seem to imply that my view is widely shared.

My argument was not reductio ad absurdum exactly because I believe that public education is comparable in importance to the other services I mentioned.

You put it perfectly when you cried that if govt. didn’t have as much tax money, some govt. programs would lose out…Exactly! I’d love nothing more. Let one of the thousands of useless wasteful govt. programs (NOT education) shut down completely (like farm tobacco subsidies, the strategic milk reserve, berry research, these are all real).

I have three points to make in response to this argument:

1. The correct way to address wasteful government programs is to work for those programs to be eliminated. The fact that some government programs are wasteful is orthogonal to the discussion of whether a particular government program that is independent from them should be instituted. Therefore, bringing up the fact that there is waste in our government is an irrelevant tangent which does no more than distract us from discussion of the real issue.

2. The reality is that school vouchers don’t take money away from “wasteful government programs (NOT education)” — they in fact take money away from public education. As noted by the ADL, for example, “Milwaukee’s program has resulted in a huge budget shortfall, leaving the public schools scrambling for funds.” You, yourself, spoke of school vouchers as being valuable because they promote “free markets and competition,” and the only way that can work is if more money going to voucher schools means less money going to public schools!

3. Thank you for admitting that it’s OK with you for school voucher programs to take money away from other government programs. I think it’s important for this fact to be stated plainly. To be blunt: You want a bigger share of the pie, and it’s OK with you if somebody else gets a smaller share as a result. That is not necessarily a bad or unreasonable thing. Much of what is done in the political arena has to do with convincing the government to spend more money on the things we care about and less money on the things we don’t. It does, however, need to be stated plainly — school vouchers are not cost-neutral, even though many voucher advocates try to pretend that they are.

This article illustrates that rather starkly:

A study showing similar educational results for children in Milwaukee Public Schools and those using state-paid vouchers to attend private schools also verified a funding disparity that hurts city residents, the head of MPS says.

The outside researchers said city property taxes rise for each student using a voucher, compared to the tax load if the student went to MPS, while state income taxes decrease, as do property taxes in most other parts of the state.

So please just admit that your position is: you think government should have the right to take some of my income (backed up by force) in order to pay for other children’s’ education even though it puts my ability to educate my own children while maintaining a desirable quality of life in serious peril.

Yes, because like all the other essential services provided by the government, public education is an essential service whose success or failure impacts you and everyone else, regardless of whether or not you personally use that service.

And, as I’ve pointed out, there are other solutions to the problem of how you can afford to educate your own children the way you want.

You admit that you struggle greatly with your own tuition payments, but that you can afford it in the end. What about families that make less than you? Should they not be able to send their kids to yeshiva b/c they have an overarching responsibility to the public schools?

I have already answered this question and won’t repeat myself.

The only issue I take emotional exception to is your rejection of contemporary Orthodoxy’s values as being shtetl based, from the past, etc.

I did no such thing.

The “value” which I reject, which in my opinion isn’t really a value at all, is the belief that one can situate an Orthodox community smack-dab in the middle of a larger secular community, with so many dependencies on and links with that larger community that it is impossible to enumerate them all, and then claim that the Orthodox community can disregard the well-being of the larger community without threatening its own well-being.

I have already explained why this is simply impossible. I won’t repeat myself.

(I think they’re based primarily on God’s revelation of Truth to mankind)

As do I. Did you think that you could conclude that I must not be Orthodox because I oppose school vouchers?

If you reject traditional Jewish belief on who and what the focus of our education efforts should be as being a product of outdated thinking

I don’t reject traditional Jewish belief on who and what the focus of our education efforts should be. Please take more care not to allow your assumptions to bias your interpretation of what I’ve written.

Clearly, the focus of our education efforts should be on our own children and our own community. My objection is to the claim that we can focus exclusively on our own children and community, ignoring the educational needs of the greater community.

There is another point to be stressed here which I think is very important. Back when we were living in the shtetls, the adult products of the non-Jewish educational systems over which we had no influence were the ones who were preaching the blood libel in churches and provoking pogroms and hatred against Jews. The acceptance, and indeed stature, of Jews within American society gives us an unparalleled opportunity to influence that society in a way that is not only beneficial to it but also directly beneficial to us, by decreasing the ignorance and intolerance which, frankly, can make things very dangerous for Jews.

For evidence of what happens to the safety of Jews when the Jewish communities keep to themselves, one does not need to refer back to ancient history; it’s sufficient to refer to modern France.

The OU and Aguda support vouchers and the rabbis working for them are pretty expert on authentic jewish values.

I could invoke my own Jewish organizations who have their own rabbis who say that Jewish vouchers are bad for the Jews, but I really don’t think there’s any point in us getting into a “My rabbis can beat up your rabbis” debate. Weren’t you the one who asked that we address the substance of the ideas? It doesn’t seem like vague invocations of authority figures is quite the best way to do that.

You can keep preaching that Haredim are shortsighted and can’t go on living so isolated (I actually agree partially, I’m modern orthodox) but don’t force the govt. to make them see that,

The status quo (with a few exceptions) is no school vouchers. It’s the people trying to change the status quo who have an obligation to prove that the change being proposed is in the overall best interest of all the people who will be affected by it. If the Haredim want school vouchers, then they’re the ones who need to convince me and the others who oppose them that they’re a good idea.

Responding to Zechariah:

I had argued before that I felt that the monetary loss to the public school system was minimal and therefore acceptable

See above for at least one differing perspective on the “minimal” impact that the Milwaukee voucher program has had on the public schools.

I was informed that data as to the actual harm of this program to public schools DOES NOT EXIST because no study has ever been conducted by the WEAC (or its affiliates) on the matter.

Milwaukee isn’t the only place in which school vouchers have been tried. According to The Heritage Foundation, six states and Washington DC have voucher programs.

The WEAC and its affiliates aren’t the only researchers who might choose to study the Milwaukee program.

Did the people to whom you spoke mention these two studies?

From the The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The first full-force examination since 1995 of Milwaukee’s groundbreaking school voucher program has found that students attending private schools through the program aren’t doing much better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.”

And this too, from the same newspaper:

A study being released today suggests that school choice isn’t a powerful tool for driving educational improvement in Milwaukee Public Schools.

But more surprising than the conclusion is the organization issuing the study: the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank that has supported school choice for almost two decades, when Milwaukee became the nation’s premier center for trying the idea. The institute is funded in large part by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, an advocate of school choice.

“The report you are reading did not yield the results we had hoped to find,” George Lightbourn, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote in the paper’s first sentence.

“We had expected to find a wellspring of hope that increased parental involvement in the Milwaukee Public Schools would be the key ingredient in improving student performance,” Lightbourn wrote. But “there are realistic limits on the degree to which parental involvement can drive market-based reform in Milwaukee.”

Even some of the most ardent supporters of school choice in Milwaukee have seen that the purest version of the idea - in which there is little government oversight of schools, and parental decisions in a free market dictate which schools thrive - does not square with the reality of what happened in Milwaukee when something close to such a system existed.

That reality can be summed up in two phrases: “bad schools” and “little change.”

Neither of these excerpts addresses the specific question of harm to the public schools, but note that the first study referenced above is the one which proved that the Milwaukee program is causing property taxes to increase for residents.

What I did find out was that less then four hundred million dollars has been spent on the voucher program in the course of its almost 20 years of existence compared to the 1Billion dollar yearly operating budget of the Milwaukee public school system. Although it should be noted that the majority of this was spent during the 2006-2007 school year and so a rise in voucher spending will likely occur in the future.

So, if I’m understanding your numbers correctly, the public school system has a $1 billion annual budget, around $200,000 million was spent last year on the voucher program, and you agree that it’s likely that spending on the program will increase in coming years.

And it doesn’t seem likely to you that an annual drain of more than 20% of their budget will impact the quality of the public schools?

The majority of studies on vouchers have centered around this programs merit based on the effectiveness of private education vs public education. These studies show that public school students out perform students from private school in standardized testing. Though the purpose of this study is to point out the ineffectiveness of private schools it also suggests that public schools are capable of keeping up their level of education regardless of money lost by the voucher system.

Or that they’re spending more time fighting to restore lost funds and less time improving the education they’re giving to their children. At a time when public schools across the country are being urged to improve, “Didn’t get any worse” is damning with faint praise. Have any of the studies looked at how the Milwaukee public schools fared during this period compared to comparable schools in districts without voucher programs?

Or that, as you pointed out, the real test hasn’t come yet, since only in the last few years has voucher spending increased to the point where it is likely to have a severe negative impact on the public schools.

I’m perfectly happy to let the states that already have the programs in place continue them for long enough to collect more data on their efficacy at improving education for both public and private school students. Everyone seems to agree that there isn’t yet enough data, so since we’ve begun the experiment, let’s finish it.

It does not seem prudent to spend huge amounts of money and create new entrenched bureaucracies to create voucher programs where they don’t already exist, when the results aren’t in for the experiments we’re already running.

Jonathan, now that Z has shown your cited evidence as not actually confirming the points you were trying to make, I have to point out that you were also guilty of this when trying to prove that most Jews live in urban areas.

You’re right, the study I forwarded you to didn’t make the point I was trying to make. Let me try again.

The only Jews who are clamoring in significant numbers for school vouchers are the Orthodox. Vouchers are opposed by pretty much all prominent non-Orthodox and non-denominational Jewish organizations, including, for example, the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly and the Anti-Defamation League.

You’re absolutely right that most Jews have moved to the suburbs. However, that’s irrelevant to our discussion, because “most Jews” don’t support school vouchers. The relevant question is where most Jews who support and are likely to use school vouchers are located.

The answer, as far as I can tell, is that they are in the cities, for two reasons:

1. Orthodox Jews need to live close to their synagogues and they can’t do that in the suburbs.

2. Most school voucher programs restrict vouchers to families who are poor or whose students are in underperforming schools, and those are exactly the families who are most likely to live in urban areas.

I have also pointed out that since school voucher programs are often funded at least in part by the state, it doesn’t matter where exactly the recipients live — the impact of the voucher spending is not localized to their neighborhoods.

It is also worth pointing out that there are plenty of suburbs with bad schools, so the argument that it’s OK to take voucher money away from school districts in the suburbs because they can afford it is specious.

Furthermore, just because the schools in the suburbs is OK doesn’t mean that it’s OK to take money away from them for vouchers and reduce their quality, even if the reduced quality is still good. Aren’t the residents of those suburbs entitled to the best quality schools that can be built with the money they’ve paid for those schools through their property taxes?

I think it’s certainly clear that most modern orthodox Jews live in suburbs.

That is not my perception at all. You’re the one making the assertion, so how about providing some data to back it up?

Perhaps it also depends on how you define “suburb.” Certainly, the large Jewish communities near me in Brookline and Brighton are in the city, not in the suburbs. You could make the case that Newton is a suburb, but I don’t think you could say the same for the Orthodox community in Sharon. The huge ultra-Orthodox Jewish population in New York City is clearly living in the city, as are many of the ultra-Orthodox in the Baltimore area. I could go either way with Silver Spring.

How do you guys have sooo much free time?!?!

One of my friends in college had a favorite saying: “Sleep is for the weak and sickly.”

My wife adds the following corollary: “If you don’t sleep, you’ll get weak and sickly.”

Thanks for the calmer tone this time JK, I definitely see you point of view more clearly now. I think we’re at the point where we’ve argued our respective sides as thoroughly as possible and will just have to agree to disagree (as Z put it above). I second the comment about the pleasure of debating an intelligent adversary.
I want to apologize for accusing you of bashing Orthodoxy (as you pointed out, you yourself are orthodox, so you obviously weren’t doing so). I went back and read your comments and I see you were only bashing the mindset of many orthodox, but not the Torah itself or anything, so I apologize; this definitively should not have veered off into a theological debate, so that was veering off point on my part. (I am bit sensitive to orthodox bashing having experienced a lot of it from non-ortho friends so perhaps I’m too much on guard for it).