Leave our yeshivos alone: Research fellow Yehoshua (Jason) Bedrick makes the case for educational autonomy

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

With his black hat, suit, and bushy beard, Yehoshua (Jason) Bedrick doesn’t present as a typical think tank analyst or a former New Hampshire legislator, a position he won when he was just 23, on a ticket promoting vouchers for private education. Today, as a research fellow for a conservative think tank, he’s emerged as an articulate defender of yeshivah education under attack. “People think the current campaign is just about chassidim,” Yehoshua says. “But it’s really about everyone”

“When Yaakov went out to meet Eisav in parshas Vayishlach,” says former New Hampshire legislator Yehoshua (Jason) Bedrick, “he did three things to prepare. He prayed, he used diplomacy, and he prepared for war. That’s what we’re going to have to do today to defend our yeshivah system against its opponents.”

Bedrick, who was just 23 years old when he did a stint in the New Hampshire legislature and is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank based in Washington D.C.), has been an advocate for school choice since his college days 20 years ago, when he came across a 1955 paper by economist Milton Friedman entitled “On the Role of Government in Education.” As he himself was the product of a parochial high school education, and the son of parents who strongly valued education, issues of school choice became the foundation of his educational and professional career.

The coeditor and coauthor of Religious Liberty and Education: A Case Study of Yeshivas vs. New York (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Yehoshua — who took on Torah observance in his twenties — has become an articulate and highly informed advocate for private education and a defender of yeshivah education. He doesn’t just have opinions, though. He has data and an insider’s acquaintance with the political process.

Yehoshua lives in Phoenix, but we meet him at a café in Crown Heights. He was in New York for an event to discuss strategies for dealing with current threats in New York to yeshivah education, organized by the Heritage Foundation and the Tikvah Fund. While he isn’t at liberty to discuss the details, he says much of the discussion was about uniting different groups, both inside and outside the Jewish community, to protect the integrity of private education.

From a historical perspective, the New York yeshivah conflict isn’t the first time the government has sought to impose its standards on religious groups. Two of the most famous Supreme Court cases were Yoder v. Wisconsin (1972), in which an Amish group petitioned for an exemption from education after eighth grade for its youth (they won), and Pierce v. the Society of Sisters (1925), in which the state of Oregon, fueled by the Ku Klux Klan, sought to outlaw all private schools. The Oregon case involved the attempt to shutter a Catholic school; much of the pressure to impose state control over education, going back as far as the 19th century, was rooted in anti-Catholic bias. James G. Blaine, a Congressman and US Senator from Maine, led the charge against “sectarian” (read: Catholic) education in the late 19th century, instigating amendments in 40 state constitutions to refuse funding to private religious education.

“People think the current campaign against chassidic yeshivos is just about chassidim,” Yehoshua says. “But it isn’t — it’s really about everyone. It’s about homeschoolers, it’s about other religious communities. If the government mixes in, nobody is safe. While most Catholic schools follow public school models and academic standards, adding prayer rituals and a religion class, there are other Christian and religious schools that seek to be different. Those people share our interests most closely and are aware that government control of yeshivos could affect them as well.”