How a Lakewood rav is proposing to reform the yeshivah and camp schedules

 

By Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

 

As we’re reminded every summer, Elul is al­ways early or late—it never seems to coop­erate and simply be on time.

 

An early Elul can cause all sorts of problems with the school and camp seasons.

 

Next Rosh Chodesh Elul will be one of the ear­liest in recent memory, occurring on August 13. This has sent camps and yeshivos scrambling. Will camps really start in mid-June? Will they really end in mid-August? Will yeshivos cooperate? What about New York high school kids — will they be tak­ing Regents exams in the mountains?

 

One Lakewood rav believes he has a simple solution to these issues, which arise out of the school and camp years running on the secular calendar and having to adjust to the timing of the Hebrew month of Elul: Have the school and camp seasons run on the Hebrew calendar rather than the English.

 

Instead of the current schedule, in which yeshi­vos end in late June and camps begin in late June or early July and end in late August—and then ev­eryone has to scramble to adjust when Elul is ear­ly—Rav Nosson Levine is proposing that schools finish every year at the end of Sivan and the camp season be in Tammuz and Av, with chadarim and girls’ schools starting on the first Tuesday or Wednesday of Elul. (Of course, batei medrash and mesivtas would maintain their Rosh Chodesh Elul start date.)

 

“Nobody would be losing one day of vacation,” Rev Levine said in an interview with The Voice to discuss his proposal. “We’re just making a change to the camp and school calendar, which will bring many benefits.”

 

Rav Levine, who is the rav of Kehilas Somerset Walk and R”M at Mesivta Bais Elazar in Lakewood and Yeshivah Gedolah of Clifton, says he has spo­ken in-person with the heads of some 20 mosdos in Lakewood and on the phone with several in New York, and 90 percent support his plan.

 

The benefits are numerous, he says, and far outweigh the drawbacks.

 

“Currently, girls’ schools start about two weeks into Elul, and chadarim start a few days into Elul. But mesivtas, in Lakewood especially, always start at the beginning of Elul,” he says. “What happened is that families that go to bungalow colonies have their sons in mesivta leave the colony Rosh Chodesh Elul; maybe the father goes too. Meanwhile, the mother and the girls and the younger boys are back in the colony. This plan would end that split because everyone would start going to the colony earlier and be back home by the beginning of Elul.”

 

When girls’ schools and chadarim start school close to Rosh Hashanah, “the students have no time to learn about Yamim Tovim,” the rav says. “Until the school years starts, the whole family is in vacation mode, whether they’re in the mountains or on a road trip or at home. You can’t talk about the eimas hadin until the school year starts.

 

“Also, it takes a while for kids to get settled and acclimated to school—you want them to have Elul to get settled so once the Yamim Tovim are over, they’re in school mode. But if they were barely in school be­fore the Yamim Tovim, they won’t be settled, and the acclimation process could continue into Cheshvan.”

 

While the issue exists in chadarim, the rav has fo­cused most of his efforts on girls’ schools. This isn’t only because they typically start later into Elul, but because the girls’ school schedule has a deeper im­pact on many families.

 

 

That’s because day cares don’t start until girls’ schools do. Women who have non-teaching jobs must find alternate arrangements for their kids until the girls’ schools start and they can send the kids off to day care. This often means that their husbands in kollel have to stay home, watching the kids until day care starts, which results in a shvach Elul zman—a concern that the roshei yeshivah have been express­ing for some time.

 

If this proposal were adopted, the day cares would start two weeks earlier than they do now, alleviating these issues.

 

There would also be advantages to finishing the school year earlier, because once the weather gets warmer as summer begins, the kids have begun men­tally checking out of school in any case.

 

The rav says it’s also hashkafically preferable to have kids’ seasons revolve around the Jewish calen­dar, making clear that having a conveniently consis­tent camp schedule is not his primary concern. But it can be a nice side benefit for camp directors, parents, and camp staff members who are used to months of pre-camp discussion about dates and timing and Elul zman.

 

Rav Levine concedes that there are legitimate concerns, which were emphasized by the 10 percent of schools that opposed his proposal and others who have been discussing and debating it.

 

In some schools, administrative staff must do prep work, and teach­ers have meetings shortly before the school years starts. Having school start the first week of Elul means these women would have to end va­cation before their kollel/rebbe’im husbands do. School staff are typi­cally not very well paid, and one of the perks of the job—which helps retain talent—is having three weeks off with their husbands during the summer.

 

Also, busing during August would have to be private, and some have questioned whether bus driv­ers would be available then.  In non-Lakewood yeshivos, some of the sec­ular-studies teachers are public-school in­structors, who wouldn’t want to start work­ing in mid-August.

 

And for New York high-school students, the Regents exams are given until about June 25.

 

Rav Levine says these concerns are legitimate but generally have solutions.

 

He says some principals have suggested that much of the administrative work can be done at the end of the previous school year. As for the meetings, they can be condensed into the day or two before school begins, rather than the half week before that’s the current norm.

 

Private busing for August would be just $5 a day per child. Rav Levine also met with the LSTA and Jay’s and was assured that with advance notice, they can have a sufficient number of bus drivers avail­able then.

 

Additionally, he says that fewer and fewer ye­shivos are using public-school teachers due to their growing liberalism and viewpoints that are at odds with Torah values. As for the Regents, New York might eliminate the requirement of taking those exams to earn a high school diploma by 2028. For the students and yeshivos that still wish to have Regents, perhaps students would be able to take them upstate. (This year, some camps will begin before all Regents will have been administered.)

 

To the extent that there may indeed be some is­sues in New York, Rav Levine smiles and says, “New York isn’t such a man d’amar anymore. It’s hard to believe they’ll dictate to Lakewood.”

 

Besides, he notes, one of the most passionate supporters of his proposal was Rav Shlomo Halioua, the rosh yeshivah of Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn. Rav Halioua and his talmid Chaim Berlin board member Yehoshua Leib Fruchthandler held multiple meet­ings with girls’ high schools in New York to try to push this plan.

 

Rav Levine was also told by a high-ranking fig­ure in the boys’ and girls’ schools in Passaic that he’s ready to go along with the proposal as well.

 

As simple as the proposal may seem as a permanent fix to a frequent problem, in the end, there’s nothing simple about getting people to change a system that has been in place for as long as there have been Jewish schools and camps in America.

 

“People are always scared to take the plunge,” Rav Levine says.

 

As Lakewood is the ever-growing center of the American Litvish world now, Rav Levine says, “It’s hard to believe that once it happens in Lakewood, the others won’t follow.”

 

It’s not easy to get everyone to agree on anything, including ending school early this year so that there can be a full summer vacation and an early start to next year.

 

Just one Lakewood yeshivah ketanah — Orchos Chaim — has announced that it will end school early this year and start early next year. Many other cha­darim and girls’ schools are in talks about it but are waiting to see what the others will do.

 

The principal of one prominent cheder told his staff that he’s adamant about not ending school early this year unless everyone else does, “because then I’ll have to go along.”

 

“Look, every new idea comes with hesitations; I understand that,” Rav Levine says. “But the ma’alos here are overwhelming. And I honestly believe that once a few schools take the leap and people see how smoothly it runs, they’ll look back and say, ‘We should have done this decades ago.’ Sometimes you only realize how right something is after you finally try it.”

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