Yesterday, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Executive Vice President of Agudath Israel of America, testified before the Religious Liberty Commission.

Established by President Trump in May, the Commission was created to safeguard and advance America’s founding principle of religious freedom. This was its third meeting, and the focus was on the importance of protecting religious liberty in K–12 and higher education.

Rabbi Zwiebel, a member of the Commission’s Advisory Board of Religious Leaders, participated in a panel addressing the protection of religious autonomy for faith-based schools. He highlighted the remarkable growth of the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States following the Holocaust and underscored the community’s commitment to providing children with a strong religious education.

In his remarks, Rabbi Zwiebel reflected on the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down an Oregon law requiring all children to attend public schools. He warned that current government efforts, particularly in New York, to impose “substantial equivalency” standards on private schools represent a modern-day threat to the independence of faith-based education.

Rabbi Zwiebel quoted two sentences from the Pierce decision that are highly relevant to modern day challenges:

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

The Agudah leader cautioned: “To insist today that private schools, including Jewish and other religious schools, become carbon copies of public schools, is just the latest iteration of the state’s effort to standardize its children. It’s 100 years after Pierce; we ought to know better.”