The Battle Over Chassidish Schools: What Robert Cover Would Tell Us

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

When Robert Cover died in 1986 at just 42 years old, America lost one of the most profoundly brilliant legal minds it had ever known. During his short time at Yale Law School, he revolutionized how we think about law and society. His work showed us that laws aren’t just dry rules in dusty books – they are the stories that we tell about who we are and what matters to us.  He also showed that the law can both build society as well as destroy it. 

Look at today’s heated battle over Chassidish yeshivas in New York. It is not just another fight about school regulations – it is a struggle for the soul of a community. And nobody would have understood this better than Professor Cover.

The controversy cuts right to the bone of American democracy. Here’s a community that has built something remarkable – an educational system that has kept their traditions alive through centuries of pressure to conform.

These yeshivas are not just schools. They are time machines that connect students to generations past.

They are living breathing institutions where ancient wisdom stays ever relevant. They are veritable fortresses protecting a way of life that faced it all, Chmelnicki pogroms, the anti-Semitic Russian Orthodox Church, the Tsarist Government, Nazi onslaughts and yet they simply refuse to disappear.  We need to realize that. 

Cover had a special term for this – he called it “nomos,” meaning the complete world of meaning that communities build for themselves. The Chassidish schools are a perfect example. Every hour spent studying Talmudic texts, every conversation in Yiddish, every decision about what to teach or not teach – adds up to a distinct vision of what makes life worth living.

Now the state and other well-meaning individuals come along with demands for “substantial equivalence” to public schools. Provessor Cover z”l would have spotted the danger immediately. He called it the “jurispathic” tendency of official law – its habit and unique ability of crushing alternative ways of doing things in favor of one-size-fits-all solutions.

But life is not one-size-fits-all, and neither is education.

Think about what happens when parents sends their child to yeshiva. They are not just picking a school – they are choosing to be part of an unbroken chain stretching back through history – back to Sinai. The limited focus on secular subjects isn’t some flaw to fix. It’s a deliberate choice about what knowledge matters most.

True, the state has legitimate concerns about education. But Cover’s work screams at us to be more thoughtful than just sending in the regulators.

American law can do better.

Remember Wisconsin v. Yoder? The Supreme Court got it right when it protected the Amish community’s different approach to education. They understood that sometimes, keeping a culture alive means letting it do things its own way.

The stakes here are enormous. Go to any city in America.  It is the same Starbucks, the same MacDonalds, the same CVS.  In an age where everything is becoming more alike, more standardized, more mass-produced, the Chassidish schools are keeping something unique alive. Their focus on religious study, their use of Yiddish, their careful limits on outside influences – it all works together to maintain a distinct identity that many find deeply meaningful.

Critics say the price in terms of secular education is too high. But Professor Cover would urge us to think twice before barging in with outside standards. The real challenge is finding ways to respect both religious freedom and educational opportunity. Maybe we need new ways to measure educational success that consider what these communities actually value.

This fight matters far beyond the Chassidish community. It’s a test of whether America can still handle diversity – not just surface-level differences, but profound disagreements about how to live and what to teach our children.

Cover believed that true legal wisdom means finding ways to let different worlds of meaning exist side by side.

The answer isn’t mindless enforcement of standardized rules. It’s understanding that in a country as diverse as ours, there might be many valid paths to a meaningful life. Some might choose deep Torah and Talmudic knowledge over secular subjects. Others might want both. The trick is respecting these choices while ensuring basic opportunities remain open.

We’re not just arguing about curriculum requirements. We’re deciding whether America still has room for communities that dare to be genuinely different. Cover’s legacy challenges us to find creative solutions that preserve both religious freedom and educational opportunity – even when that means letting some communities chart their own course.

Cover showed us that sometimes, wisdom means stepping back and letting communities find their own path to meaningful lives – even when that path looks very different from our own.

The author can be reached at [email protected]