With primary elections in five states this week, the last primary elections this year, we have this not very typical example of majority rule and what a mess it can make. Our story takes place in a suburban school district an hour north of New York City, East Ramapo, New York. Picture yards, strip-mall sprawl, box stores. Super diverse– you’ve got big Latino and Haitian and African American populations, some white enclaves, working-class and poor and well-off areas.
And for a long time now, Hasids have been moving in in large numbers. Hasids are, you know, ultra-religious Jews. You’ve seen the ones in the long black coats and the hats. The men have beards. The women keep their heads covered in public. Like the Amish, they prefer to keep to themselves, so they don’t send their kids to public schools. They send them to religious schools called yeshivas, where Yiddish is spoken as the primary language. And in East Ramapo, mostly the Hasids are poor or lower middle class.
And here is the situation. Because they’re living in the suburbs, they’re paying high property taxes, which, of course, are high because they’re paying for local public schools, which their kids don’t go to. And then they’re also paying for these private schools, these yeshivas. So they’re getting squeezed, right?