Israel Education and the Jewish Problem

During times of great moral and ethical challenges, it’s quite normal to reflect on one’s judgments and actions and sometimes reconsider them to fit new realities. As an educator, I’m doing this right now in the face of the war in Gaza. And my focus is turning to questions of education about Israel.
Israel has always been a component of Jewish education, but the goals need to be clear and the methods need to serve those goals. What should Israel education look like during times of conflict?
I was raised with Zionist education as a child in Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. We learned about Israel through the lens of idealism. The heroes we were taught about were men and women who, like Abraham our forefather, left their homelands and travelled to a land they didn’t know to start a life that they could only imagine. When the pioneers of Israel arrived, they had returned to the land of Zion, the place where Solomon built our First Temple, the place where we Jews lived as a sovereign nation. They had also left a brutal Europe where anti-Semitism was rapidly morphing into Nazism.At that time, Zionism served two purposes: the reconstitution of a Jewish nation in its original homeland and the establishment of a national refuge for our people. Just as these purposes of the state are very different from each other, so are Israel education and Zionist education.
I am very familiar with Zionist education and still cling to the somewhat anachronistic goals that brought us the revitalization of the Hebrew language, the kibbutz, the Israeli, universal health care system and much more. I am proud of the accomplishments of the pioneers and of many projects of the Jewish state but teaching Israel is not the same as teaching Zionism.
I find it very comfortable to teach Zionism because it is an ideal. In this curriculum, there is the proud tradition of Judaism as a spiritual and religious body of knowledge, tradition and ritual. According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, “It is an astonishing and unique spectacle to see an expatriated people…scorned by all nations…preserving its characteristics.” Zionism adds to that story the aspirations of a dispersed people to reunite, grow together and be a “light onto the nations.”
But as a story of and curriculum about a nation-state, Israel education is much different. Israel is tangible. It has absorbed Jewish immigrants from all corners of the world. It has made great contributions to medicine, digital technology, agriculture and much more, and it has provided the Jewish people with a Hebrew culture par excellence.
And there is the Israel that has engaged in numerous wars during her mere sixty years of existence—not all defensive. I even served during what many call Israel’s Vietnam—the first Lebanon War. Add to this the 41-year-old military occupation of the West Bank with its significant Palestinian population.
Teaching the gray history of any nation is challenging, but the difficulties are lessened by the fact that when we learn the history of the country we live in, we are more willing to find ways to accept the stains that compromise the aspirations of the inhabitants. As an American, I can be upset with slavery and the treatment of the indigenous people, or I can be optimistic and recognize the growth of our democracy to include African-Americans and women. It’s almost incumbent on me to be optimistic because I live here and this makes me a participant regardless of whether or not I agree with the direction of the country.
To educate about Israel from abroad is so different. We are not active participants in the building of that state. We may put coins in our JNF boxes or write to our legislators about our concerns for the state, but we don’t vote there. We don’t pay taxes and we certainly don’t serve in the military. So when the state doesn’t behave as we please, we can act like the good consumers we are and shop elsewhere. This is the challenge for Israel education from abroad.
Ironically, the solutions that have been devised to address this problem have been harmful to Israel. Some develop affinities with Israel from a distance through the celebration of the state’s successes and through visits to its many wonders, but I suggest that this approach is bound to fail. Teaching with the goal of having Diaspora Jews love Israel through acquaintanceship without sharing her shortcomings is dishonest. And I am not suggesting that teaching her failures would be any better. Going to the deprived Arab villages in Israel or discussing the occupation will not create Israel loyalists either.
What I suggest is a new kind of Zionist education that roots our relationship to Israel in history, culture, ritual and prayer. What we need is a strong and enduring connection with Judaism and the uniqueness of our people. If we love our mission as Jews, we can decide to fulfill it in the largest national drama the Jewish people have staged in 2000 years or we can support it from afar, but our support will be Jewish in nature and not nationalist.
The State of Israel fulfills two functions for our people—asylum and collaboration. Let’s focus on strengthening Jewish education instead of Israel education which is nationalist in nature. The conflation of nationalism and Judaism is not going to disappear, but our goal should be to make Jewish interests always come first. This will give us a country that we all can be proud of without jeopardizing the religion that is the purpose of our being.