Anticipated Trouble on Dr. King’s Birthday Closed Several Hebrew Day Schools

A number of Hebrew Day Schools in New York were closed on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday last week, the JTA has learned. Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky, national director of Torah Umusorah, said that the schools were closed to avoid trouble that might arise from people who would be offended if they were open. “The schools did not close because of direct threats,” he told the JTA. “They closed because of anticipated difficulties.” There are no figures available on exactly how many schools did close.

Rabbi Jacob Spiegel, an administrator at the Esther Schoenfeld High School on the lower East Side, said that his school decided to close not because of threats, but because they didn’t want their students, most of whom come from other neighborhoods, to travel throughout the city and face possible harassment. He cited the experience of some of the school’s students on Christmas and New Years Day, when many clerks in the City’s transit system would not allow them to use their school bus and subway passes, claiming that it was a holiday.

“If we could have such trouble on Christmas and New Years,” the Rabbi said, “days on which everyone should know that Jewish students attend classes, we felt that on such a sensitive occasion as Dr. King’s birthday it would be best to close.” Rabbi Bernard Weinberger, Assistant Director of the Williamsburg YMHA, said that as far as he knew most schools in Williamsburg were open on Dr. King’s birthday, but that students were told not to carry books to school, so as not to “offend the sensibilities of those who felt they should be closed.” Rabbi David Schwartz, administrator of Flatbush Yeshiva said that the school was closed “for the same reason that all the other schools were closed: We thought it would be administratively better.” He declined to elaborate further.