THREEFOLD “The three elements you need in dealing with indifference are patience a vision and hard work. You need to be patient and realize that changing attitudes takes time… And you have to of course engage in the hard work needed to make it happen; you can’t just wish it into reality. This is a recipe for success in anything we do personally professionally and communally” (Photos: Amir Levy)

L ast week in a nondescript office in Teaneck New Jersey I came face-to-face with the Jewish lobby. And I can happily report that contrary to popular belief it’s not a shadowy cabal of conspirators but a heimish fellow with a trimmed brown beard and black yarmulke and his name is Maury Litwack.

As national director of the Teach Advocacy Network a project of the Orthodox Union (OU) the quietly passionate Litwack is at the forefront of a legislative revolution-in-the-making on behalf of America’s 260 000 yeshiva students. Since his advocacy network went live in 2012 — and he adds “with great thanks to our many coalition partners and the politicians who have come through on this” — he estimates it has helped bring over 500 million dollars to yeshivos nationwide. This money has gone toward things like school security textbooks and technology tuition scholarships and — in a historic first in New York — direct government funding for secular studies teachers.

Last week news broke that Maury has been asked to join the transition team of Phil Murphy the incoming democratic governor of the deep-blue state of New Jersey. It’s the first time that an advocate for the yeshivah community will be part of a committee advising a governor on everything from education policy to specific personnel appointments and it reflects a recognition in the political world generally and New Jersey specifically of the growing prominence and power of the Orthodox community.

With upwards of 40 000 yeshivah kids calling New Jersey home and over four times that number in neighboring New York State — one out of every 13 kids in New York City is now a yeshivah student — politicians know they need to pay attention to the yeshivah community. And in case they don’t Maury is there to remind them.

“I recently saw an article claiming that every week in Lakewood another future yeshivah class is born which I think is entirely possible ” Maury says. “And just last week the Bergen Record the big newspaper here in North Jersey wrote about the explosion of yeshivah kids in this part of the state too.”

Maury modestly downplays his new appointment stressing that he “doesn’t want to make it more than what it is.