Some participants called it a historic event, proof of a sincere effort to enhance curriculum. Many of them left summer retreats in the Catskills to attend.
But skeptics on the outside said it was a public-relations maneuver to fend off the scrutiny that some of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish schools have drawn. Complaints about yeshivas failing to provide enough secular studies have come up in Hasidic communities from Lakewood, N.J., to Montreal and London.
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