Restoring Jewish-Zionist Education
Jerusalem Post Editorial

(May 16) - Though she assumed her post barely two months ago, 
Education Minister Limor Livnat is rapidly emerging as one of 
the most innovative ministers in the government. Unlike some 
of her colleagues, who seem to devote an inordinate amount of 
time and energy to pursuing headlines rather than carrying out 
their ministerial responsibilities, Livnat's dedication to 
revolutionizing the educational system is both impressive and 
laudable. Indeed, her latest initiative, a plan announced on 
Sunday to reinvigorate the Jewish and Zionist component of 
the state-run secular schools' curriculum, may very well 
herald a turning point in the country's education policy. 

The gist of the plan, slated to begin in September in junior 
high schools across the country, will involve an extra class 
hour per week that will be devoted to Jewish heritage studies. 
Pupils will learn about Jewish holidays, Zionist history, the 
weekly Torah portion, and the country's national symbols. 
Over the next three years, the plan will be expanded to 
include elementary and high schools, so that every pupil 
emerging from the state school system will have been exposed 
to basic Jewish and Zionist concepts throughout the course 
of his academic career. 

In addition, a class on Israeli archeology, with an emphasis 
on Jerusalem, will be added for 10th graders, thereby 
familiarizing them with the Land of Israel and the Jewish 
people's historical attachment to it. As Livnat told 
reporters when introducing the plan, "I regard the 
educational system as the internal security of the 
State of Israel. We cannot exist here as a people and a 
country if the pupils don't learn about their heritage." 

The introduction of such a program is long overdue, as Israel 
has not emerged unscathed from the wave of post-modernism 
that has swept through various Western countries. In the US, 
for example, post-modernists have increasingly discounted 
the importance of the traditional Western core curriculum 
in favor of more stratified and culturally diverse subjects. 
The result is a generation of students that is unfamiliar 
with the classics of Western literature, such as Shakespeare, 
or the great thinkers of Western political and philosophical 
thought, such as John Locke and Edmund Burke. 

Locally, this phenomenon has come to be known as post-Zionism, 
whose proponents have succeeded over the years in stripping 
much of the Jewish and Zionist content from the educational 
system. Consequently, the average pupil is astonishingly 
ignorant of the most basic and fundamental Jewish concepts, 
nor is he or she well-versed in Zionist and modern Israeli 
history. Indeed, a recent survey carried out by Army Radio 
found that over 50 percent of those polled did not know the 
words of Hatikva, the national anthem. 

Though it should have received universal welcome, Livnat's 
plan is not without its critics. Meretz leader and former 
education minister Yossi Sarid has already disparaged it, 
warning it may inject pupils with nationalist values at the 
expense of more universalist ones. But Sarid's criticism is 
off-base. While it is questionable whether countries such as 
the US and France can perhaps afford the dubious luxury of 
cultivating cultural ignorance, Israel most certainly cannot. 
A nation that has been the target of war since its inception 
requires a firm and resolute belief in the justness of its 
cause if it is to successfully confront the challenges that 
seem to proliferate with the passage of time. That this 
obvious truth is no longer unanimously shared across the 
national spectrum is a sign of how bad the situation has 
become. 

Cultivating universal values of freedom and democracy is, 
of course, important. But for a nation to survive, it must 
be conversant with its own heritage. With the spread of 
globalization and advances in computer technology, the world 
has suddenly become a much smaller place. If Israel is to 
preserve its identity as a Jewish state, it has no choice 
but to ensure that its national and cultural anchors are 
firmly in place. Livnat's plan is a crucial step in the 
right direction. One can only hope that it will succeed in 
making Israeli students as familiar with the Prophets as they 
are with Pentiums.