Yeshiva University, hit with a steep decline in assets, is charged with failing to communicate adequately with faculty and students. Faculty voted “No Confidence” in President Richard Joel in March.

yeshivaThe school had a $1.3 billion reversal in its assets, partly due to losses connected to investments made via Bernard Madoff. It has hired Kekst & Co. , communications and consulting firm, and Alvarez & Marsal Holdings, corporate restructuring company.

The Wall Street Journal, in a July 2, 2014 story by Mike Vilensky and Rob Copeland, reported that the budget deficit reached $150 million in a recent year.

Yeshiva faculty, with 64% taking part, voted 80% “no confidence,” in Joel, 17% abstaining, and 3% “confidence in a poll taken March 1 this year. Joel appeared in a videotaped panel on the importance of the eruv Jewish boundary to Orthodox. The panel noted the difficulties in erecting an eruv in Manhattan.

Yadin Teitz, a Yeshiva junior, told The Jewish Week March 15 that, “Everything is rumors, and no one knows the facts. The uncertainty is hurting everyone.”

Students Press for Info

Reporter Hannah Dreyfus, who interviewed Teitz, described him as “leading student efforts to get information from the administration.”

“We ask for information, we get no actual information, just emails full of euphemisms about how great everything is going,” an unidentified faculty member told Dreyfus.

“News hurts, but no news hurts more,” the faculty member said.

Joel became president in 2003. Jewish Week said his administration has been marked by “the reported $100 million loss to the university’s endowment from investments with Bernard Madoff and spiraling deficits that have left the university nearly $600 million in debt according to the faculty letter and plummeting bond ratings.”

The total of $1.7 billion in investments in 2007 fell to about $1 billion by 2009. One plan is to combine several campuses in New York City even if this involves merging single-sex facilities into coed campuses. Orthodox Jewish colleges traditionally segregate students by gender. Student body numbers about 7,000.

“How to Lose $1 Billion”

“How to Lose $1 billion; Yeshiva Blows its Future on Loser Hedge Funds” is the title of 5,928-word article on the school’s financial problems by Steven I. Weiss, managing editor of The Jewish Channel who has written for WJS, New York magazine, Harper’s, Slate and others.

Weiss reviewed more than 10,000 pages of legal and financial documents, conducted dozens of interviews and made many Freedom of Information requests in doing his research.

Between 2007 and 2009, Yeshiva’s investments lost about $525 million in value, he says. Operating surpluses turned into deficits that “regularly” exceeded $100 million. Since 2008, the deficits have totaled $470M. Current endowment is about $1 billion.

As of the date of his article, the school was $567M in debt, according to Moody’s January 2014 report, and its bonds were recently downgraded by the agency to junk status.

The extensive Weiss analysis found that although board and committee members were not to “participate in the discussion nor vote on any matters if they themselves are in any way involved,” the rule often “found exceptions.”

“Risky” Investments Made

The school had “an extremely risky investment portfolio” between 2004-09, according to Weiss.

Joel announced record-setting enrollment for incoming classes in a speech on Sept. 12, 2012, Weiss reports, declaring “The state of Yeshiva University is sound, it is strong, and it is poised for tomorrow.”

Reported Weiss: “As he spoke, Yeshiva was preparing the financial filings that would announce the fourth of five consecutive years averaging a deficit of nearly $100M.”

Joel in the speech said that the board had named him to a new six-year contract.

Eruvim Unconstitutional, Said Yeshiva Prof

Prof. Marci Hamilton of the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva, described by Wikipedia as “an expert on the Constitution’s required separation of church and state,” provided a statement to this website earlier this year saying that eruvim boundaries are unconstitutional.

Hamilton authored an 18-page paper in 2008 under contract with Westhampton Beach in which she argued that allowing eruv markers on utility poles on WHB property “would open the door for the Hampton Synagogue and others to fill the poles with signs of every size and description.”

She rebutted an article in the Feb. 12, 2015 Jewish Forward by Prof. Michael Helfand of the Pepperdine Law School in which he argued that eruvim are Constitutional and are not a “symbol of impermissible government entanglement with religion.”

Hamilton has also been retained on First Amendment issues by Quogue, which like WHB and Southampton, has been sued by the East End Eruv Assn., after they refused to allow construction of an eruv using utility poles.