Unorthodox Education

Description

Trailer

Synopsis

Tens of thousands of Jewish schoolchildren graduate from ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn yeshiva high schools without knowing who George Washington was, or that the Earth moves around the Sun.

We’ll hear from graduates of these schools as they describe how they were denied the legally mandated education needed to become independent adults. Some were never even taught how to speak English. Today, many boys receive, at most, an hour or two of secular education at the end of a long day devoted to religious studies.

We’ll meet Naftuli Moster, a graduate of a Hasidic yeshiva who is leading the fight to compel educational authorities to enforce the law. We’ll also meet Beatrice Weber, a mother of ten and the Rosa Parks of this movement, who sued the city to force her son’s school to comply with state standards. And we’ll watch as Mayor Bill de Blasio and other education officials insist, year after year, that they are addressing the issue, even after city investigators concluded the Mayor delayed action for years in exchange for political support from the ultra-Orthodox community.

Director

Joe Kolman is the producer/director of two documentaries in production: An Unorthodox Education, a film about the poor secular education students receive at ultra-Orthodox schools, and Chicago Plantation, a film about the 1963 cold-case assassination of Ben Lewis, the first Black to serve the 24th Ward in the Chicago City Council. His credits as a print journalist range from the Chicago Reader (1979) to The Economist (2017).