NEW YORK (Yaakov M / VINnews) — Prominent Jews have taken to Twitter to blast the New York Times over its latest in a series of vicious hit pieces against Chassidim.

Citing only anecdotes while quoting no relevant data, the antisemitic paper published a story this week entitled: “Why Some Hasidic Children Can’t Leave Failing Schools”

The disingenuous article attempts to falsely characterize the Chassidic community as an evil cult-like society where men force wives to relinquish parenting rights and yeshiva-choice, in return for a Get. However, in reality, the story focuses on several tragic custody battles (assuming the details are remotely accurate), in which one spouse abandoned their religion or at least their sect, which led to challenging circumstances. (Read excerpts below).

Even more disgraceful, the story’s main highlight is the woman in charge of YAFFED, a bitter and resentful person on a crusade to destroy yeshivas and incite hatred of Jews and orthodoxy.

Former Trump advisor Jason Greenblatt tweeted: “NYTimes again attacks Hasidic community-seeks to tear down religious communities. Cherry picked journalism-no shred of community’s many/highly positive aspects. Description of community derisive/offensive. Stop painting Hasidic/other religious communities as backwards/valueless”

Rabbi S Litvin of Chabad in Kentucky observed how the newspaper bogusly altered its photos of Chassidic boys playing. He tweeted: “This is how the @nytimes depicts Chassidic children. Drained of color, vibrancy, life, and Joy. Shot to exclude playgrounds & highlight the fences, present at every school in the country, but far more necessary at these schools. (thanks to NYT in part)”

Agudas Yisrael released a scathing rebuke of the newspaper on Monday.

Below are excerpts from the article:

“Beatrice Weber wakes up most mornings afraid that her son’s Hasidic Jewish school is setting him up to fail. Her 10-year-old [son] brims with curiosity, and has told his mother that he wants to work for NASA. But his school, like other Hasidic boys’ schools in New York, teaches only cursory English and math and little science or social studies.

It focuses instead on imparting the values of the fervently religious Hasidic community, which speaks Yiddish rather than English and places the study of Jewish law and prayer above all else. Recently, Ms. Weber said, Aaron’s teacher told him that the planets revolve around the Earth.

But when Ms. Weber, a divorced mother of 10, tried to withdraw Aaron from his religious school, called a yeshiva, and enroll him in another one with stronger secular studies, she found that she could not do it. She had signed away that right in a divorce agreement drawn up by Hasidic leaders.

Across New York’s Hasidic community, parents like Ms. Weber often end up trapped in an impossible position, anxious to get their children out of some of the worst-performing schools in the state but hindered by social pressure and religious institutions.”

“…They {Batei Din] often ensure through binding divorce settlement agreements that children must remain in intensely religious schools, even if they provide little secular education, according to interviews with four dozen parents and attorneys and a review of hundreds of pages of court filings and other documents.

The agreements are typically upheld by New York State judges seeking to follow precedent by maintaining stability for children amid divorce. But in doing so, the judges can sometimes find themselves in an unusual position, ordering children to remain in Hasidic yeshivas that appear to be violating a state law requiring private schools to offer a basic secular education…”

“…many Hasidic parents embrace them despite their lack of secular instruction, saying they would not send their children anywhere else.

But others described feeling anguished as their children fall behind. One said she could barely stand to see her son leave for his Hasidic yeshiva in the morning but has left him enrolled for fear of losing custody. Another said his son’s English was so poor that the boy could barely read the side of a cereal box. A third said she became so fed up with her son’s yeshiva education that she secretly enrolled him in a secular after-school program, saying she feared that one day he would ask her why she had not done more for his education.”

As reported by VINnews