For centuries, yeshivas have been the heartbeat of Jewish learning, shaping generations with values of lifelong religious engagement, ethical responsibility, and community service. These institutions foster fluency in multiple languages, sharpen analytical thinking, and provide mentorship and pastoral care. They are not schools.
They are religious spaces that complement home education, offering stability in a world where childhood is increasingly shaped by screens, social disconnection, and declining mental health. Families choose this model freely, exercising their parental right to educate their children at home and to send them to Yeshiva in line with religious beliefs. Britain’s diversity is built on this freedom.
No one forces a child to attend a yeshiva. It is a setting selected by a small number of families within the UK who chose to do this and happily our Jewish community is more vibrant for it.
However, instead of respecting these choices, a deeply misguided campaign, even crusade, has been waged in Westminster and in the media, to undermine yeshivas through misinformation. The greatest sadness, as if that isn’t sad enough, is that this campaign, it seems, is being led in part by Jewish groups.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was meant to address real concerns about children missing from education. Instead, it has targeted Charedi communities without justification.
The Government’s own Human Rights Memorandum concedes that “those institutions which are likely to be predominantly affected are yeshivas” and that the Bill “might be said to have particularly prejudicial effects on Orthodox Jewish parents and young men educated at yeshivas.”
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was meant to address real concerns about children missing from education. Instead, it has targeted Charedi communities without justification
No other religious community or any other faith or out-of-school setting has been singled out in this way.
This is not about child welfare. It is about erasing difference. As Dr Joseph Mintz, Associate Professor in Education at UCL, has noted, “It’s fine to be Jewish in the UK of 2025. As long as you are not too Jewish.” The campaign against yeshivas is built on a wider hostility towards religious life, and seeks to impose educational uniformity.
It is profoundly disappointing that Jewish groups are among those spreading false and damaging claims to policymakers, making yeshivas a legislative target. Instead of supporting religious freedom, they have briefed Parliament with agenda-led and ideologically -driven accusations, far more concerned with “religious power” and “secular reforms” than child welfare.
Shimon Cohen
Rather than engaging with the reality of yeshivas, they have fed the narrative that they are “illegal schools”, disregarding the fact that they do not replace formal schooling but operate alongside home education.
Yeshiva attendees are not at risk. They thrive, leaving with strong analytical skills, deep community ties, and a lifelong commitment to their faith. Yeshivas offer spiritual instruction, a social environment, and supervision in all settings which fully adhere to safeguarding and health & safety standards, a holistic framework which other home schooled children solely lack.
The hostility towards yeshivas has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with an ideological discomfort towards Charedi life. The fact that this is being led by Jewish groups makes it all the more shameful.
Britain is strongest when it respects different ways of life, not when it seeks to erase them. Yeshivas do not ask for funding or outside approval, or for you to enrol your children for that matter, They simply ask to be left in peace. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill should focus on real welfare and educational concerns, not on dismantling faith communities. Those spreading misinformation about yeshivas are harming their own community in pursuit of an ideological agenda. It is time to challenge the bias and tell the truth. We want and need to be “too Jewish” in Britain in 2025.
- Shimon Cohen is a consultant for the Yeshiva Liason Committee (YLC), which operates under the auspices of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC), the representative body of the Charedi community in the UK
