N.B. The following diary outlines the theft of government funds by the management of the Central United Talmudical Academy (CUTA) in particular — and possibly Hassidic Yeshivas in general. I offer no criticism of the rank-and-file members of any faith. And the diary takes no position on the role of religion in people’s lives — that is a private matter between the faithful and their God(s) — as long as they do not insist their rules should apply to others.
Jews account for over 9% of the New York State population. New York City is home to 1.1 million, more than those living in Tel Aviv, the city with the second-largest Jewish population. One of four people in Brooklyn is Jewish.
New York Jews run the gamut from the strictly Orthodox, aka Haredi, to the non-religious, with secular Jews making up 75% of the Jewish population. Within the Haredi, there is a sub-group, the Hassidim, who comprise most of the Haredi in New York. They mostly live in the Borough Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn — with significant populations in Monsey, New Square, and Kyrias Joel in the lower Hudson Valley.
The Hassidim have high birth rates and are the fastest-growing Jewish community in America. The women rarely work outside the house. Their primary function is to produce children. When Holocaust survivor Yitta Schwartz died last year at 93, she left behind almost 2,000 descendants, including 15 children, over 200 grandchildren, and roughly 1,750 great-grandchildren.
Whereas most Jews are unremarkable members of the larger community, the Hassidim remain an isolated culture limited in contact with the outside world. Their religious law demands a strict division between men and women. And their schools are usually single-sex. The boys attend Yeshivas — where the education is almost entirely religious, with little instruction in English, Math, Science, Social Studies, or non-Jewish history.
The Hassidic community has some of the highest official poverty rates in America. In the Village of Kyrias Joel. 70% of the population lives under the poverty line. Fifty percent of households reported an income of less than $15,000. However, the community's finances are opaque, as many transactions are in cash.
The Hassidim vote as a bloc for the candidates their Rebbe instructs them to, so they are politically powerful. And have a profound understanding of how to extract money from the government. Over the last four years, 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in the area have received $1 billion in government funds. And what they do with it is anyone’s guess.
Among these schools, the Central United Talmudic Academy is the poster child for financial malfeasance. As reported by the New York Times today,
“The largest private Hasidic Jewish school in New York State stole millions of dollars from a variety of government programs in a yearslong fraud, the school admitted in federal court documents filed on Monday.
The operators of the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, which serves more than 2,000 boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, acknowledged that they illegally diverted money from government programs for school lunches, technology, and child care. They also admitted to setting up no-show jobs for some employees while paying others in cash and coupons so the employees could qualify for welfare, according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
In all, the school agreed to pay $5 million in fines in addition to the more than $3 million it had already paid in restitution as part of the deal to avoid prosecution.”
Whatever the official numbers are, it is obvious that the Hassidim are sitting on a mountain of cash showered on them by cynical politicians, some of whom are Democrats. Although the Hasidim have tended to support Republicans. Mainly because they prefer the GOP's laissez-faire medical policies and support of religious freedom. Unsurprisingly, this led to the Hassidim having the state’s highest COVID rate. And their religious objection to vaccination (not a common position in the Jewish diaspora) has also led to a reoccurrence of polio.
It is not just the city schools that have managed to rake it in. The Village of Kiryas Joel school district’s finances bears no relationship to the other districts in the state. The average expenditure on schools in the US averages around $14,000 per student. In New York State, it is c.$25,000. And in Kiryas Joel, the amount spent per student is $330,923.
It is incomprehensible. Harvard charges $74,528 a year — and that includes room and board. I cannot understand how this insane amount of funding for a school district, which has one elementary school for 121 students, has not set off alarm bells in the office of some state auditor or attracted the attention of the law.
But in America, as L. Ron Hubbard allegedly said, “If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” Religion defenders counter the charge that religion vacuums up cash by pointing out that the average church has very little revenue. I have no reason to doubt them. And laying a blanket charge of corruption against the totality of religion is as wrong as saying that all Italian-Americans are members of the Mafia.
But organized crime exists. And there are religious organizations where the management does not live up to the teachings of their faith.
And this sea of money has done nothing to educate the Hassidim. On Monday, Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement,
“The misconduct at C.U.T.A. was systemic and wide-ranging, including stealing over $3 million allocated for schoolchildren in need of meals. Today’s resolution accounts for C.U.T.A.’s involvement in those crimes and provides a path forward to repay and repair the damage done to the community, while also allowing C.U.T.A. to continue to provide education for children in the community.”
Peace is delusional. What education? When in 2019, CUTA agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students — every one of them failed. And the curriculum is not going to change overnight.