Guest Post: Private School or Bust, The Gerim Edition

After writing the post mostly highly commented on post "Private School or Bust", I received a letter from the wife of a sincere convert who wanted to share with the readership the challenges and concerns that families with converts share when it comes to educating their children. Converts have essentially promised to send their children to yeshiva, but perhaps the choice won't be the best one for their children (I know of such a case myself where there were special needs involved that the school couldn't meet), or perhaps it will be completely out of the ballpark financially. I have slightly edited the post, mostly to keep personal details out of the hands of those who might be able to identify the couple in question. Please use your commonsense when commenting. Post follows:

I'm a regular reader the blog and some of the recent activity in the last few posts has prompted an honest evaluation of what Jewish education options we might pursue in the future for our family and how this may affect other choices. We are in our early 30s, have been married for a short time, and do not have children yet. I think our situation raises some other concerns about how much our Orthodox communal leaders refuse to see anything other than yeshivah or day school as a means of delivering Jewish education, and I would love to see this addressed on your blog.

My husband is a ger and I am from an Orthodox home. I went to an Modern Orthodox schools and spent a year in Israel post high school. My husband went to a Catholic school for the earliest grades, but my mother-in-law switched him to the local public school because she was unhappy with the quality of education at the Catholic school. With the help of some sweat equity, my in-laws were able to live in a more expensive neighborhood with well-regarded public schools.

In our most recent discussion about Jewish education prompted by the discussion on this blog, my husband informed me that during his geirut process, the beit din "asked" him if he would send him children to yeshivah/Jewish day school, with the clear indication that there was only one right answer to the question: of course he would! The beit din gave him a very hard time throughout the process for reasons completely unrelated to his kabbalat ol malchut shamayim, and so, my husband did what he did in every case where he felt that the beit din was imposing on him an "illegitimate" condition for geirut: he went along with it, while knowing in his heart that he planned to be an observant Jew, committed to the Torah, but not necessarily promising to engage in every single expectation that this beit din imposed. [And no, my husband did not realistically have other batei din options for overseeing an Orthodox geirut. The current mess of how geirim are treated is a whole other post. I still experience some disbelief that my husband even had the fortitude and love of Torah to make it through, despite facing rude and outright cruel behavior.]

The "Will you send your children to yeshivah?" question is standard operating practice in geirut. This is true for single men and women planning to convert. This true for married people planning to convert. This is true for parents who wish to convert a child that they have adopted. It is the norm in the frum world, and the beit din establishment expects nothing less. They do not want to hear about public schools or charter schools and supplemental Torah education. They do not care if a potential ger or giyoret (or adoptive parents) can not afford yeshivah tuition. Perhaps they would accept homeschooling or co-ops, if an FFB parent or local Rav is involved, but maybe not. I'm sure they haven't even considered more broadly what might happen if a ger has a child - or an adopted child him or herself - has special needs that can't be handled in the frum community.

Right now, if someone wants to convert, they are not merely expected to keep mitzvot and continue learning. Universal yeshivah or day school for children is mandatory. While we explore alternatives for our own individual families and our community at large, I think we need to make ourselves clearer to the establishment: There should be no pricetag on becoming Jewish! Private school is a luxury, and nowhere do the criteria for accepting gerim - either as adults or as children - mandate the need for wealth to afford luxuries. While frum Jews who explore other options worry about their children being shunned from having playdates or shidduchim, other, legitimate gerim are being *forced* to accept this as a pre-condition to being Jewish! This is disturbing, and most people are not even aware that it exists.

My husband assures me that he had the frum equivalent of "crossing his fingers" in his heart if he ever "promised" or appeared to promise to send his future children to yeshivah. He knows that it is extremely expensive, though I was surprised to learn this past week that he really doesn't know just *how* expensive. I think my mother-in-law fell off her chair when I told her! More important, my husband recognizes that there can be more than one way to deliver a quality Jewish education, and that even if we will have the money to afford yeshivah/day school tuition when the time comes (who knows), it might *not* be the best return on the money in teaching our future children true Torah values, knowledge and skills. Furthermore, both my husband and I are unwilling to send children to any school that would teach them blanket negative things about "goyim;" you know, people like my absolutely wonderful and accommodating in-laws. Until we are in a position to decide, we do not know what we will do. But we plan to be creative for our own family, we support communal options that do not demand significant wealth, and we want to speak out for the small community of geirim (adults and children) who are being asked to take on the yoke of yeshivah tuition as the price of entry to our people.

If we have children that we do not send to yeshivah, there may be people who question my husband's geirut. We don't believe in retroactivity in geirut; obviously, there are those who disagree. Our current community is an accepting one, where most people send children to yeshivah, but not everyone does. I'm sure my parents, who do not live near me and did everything they could to send their children to yeshivah, would initially be skeptical. Yet they know that we don't make decisions without doing our homework, so I am optimistic that they would be open to hearing about how we plan to provide our children a Jewish education, and I'm pretty sure they'd even be happy to participate in a process that asks them to devote some of their time learning with their grandchildren, rather than money.

I suppose the "good" news is that no one can question *my* Jewishness, so no one can doubt whether any children we have are actually Jewish. I worry what may happen to a giyoret who shuns yeshivah or day school for her children, even if it comes from financial necessity. I worry what happens to a family that adopts a child, converts him or her, and then can't afford a tuition bill. The Torah is clear on what our obligation to gerim is and this requiring this type of tuition is a form of "oppression."