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One People, One Education

A unified state school system - where secular and religious children study together, eat lunch together, play basketball and go on field trips together - is the only way to secure our future as a people.
A research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Dror Yinon is Academic Coordinator of the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought. He is completing his doctorate in philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dror has worked as a research assistant for a number of leading scholars. Dror is the recipient of numerous academic prizes and scholarships, and has published papers in English and Hebrew in a number of collections and journals. ARTICLES BY

By DROR YINON
 
Over the past few months, the Israeli public has been so engrossed by the Hamas takeover of Gaza, it has failed to notice the rise of a greater strategic threat, one far more dangerous to the future of the State of Israel: the Nahari Law. According to the law, proposed by Minister Meshulam Nahari (Shas), local authorities will have to augment their support of private schools, so that it equals the funding allocated to state schools. The latter, once attended by the overwhelming majority of Israeli students, are becoming gradually debilitated by the recent proliferation of ultra-Orthodox schools on the one hand, and elitist arts and science schools on the other. State schools are losing more and more of their students, quality teachers and – with the newly approved Nahari Law – funding. If implemented, the redistribution of educational funds could prove to be the final deathblow to the state school system and, with it, to the thin cord that still binds us together.
 
It is no coincidence that, as private schools have flourished, so have the cultural divides within Israeli society. The disintegration of the state school system, a bastion of Israel’s foundational identity as a Jewish and democratic state, has given rise to growing social fragmentation; Israelis no longer have a common language, a shared set of goals and values. The system itself, traditionally divided into secular and religious schools, has effectively broken down into two separate entities – one entirely divorced from Judaism, the other treating democracy with suspect.
 
The last thing Israel needs, at a time of increasing political polarization, is more private educational initiatives. On the contrary – if Israel is to salvage its crumbling public consensus, the state school system must become the only educational option, eliminating not only private schools but also the division between religious and secular education.
 
The idea is hardly new. Every few years it is raised, and promptly discarded as delusory and impractical. People on either side of the educational spectrum have claimed that the ideological gaps are too wide, that a curriculum will never be agreed upon, that technicalities such as prayer time and kashrut cannot be worked out. Short-sightedness, pettiness and, above all, an unwillingness to compromise have prevented Israelis from executing the most crucial educational reform the state has ever needed.
 
It is not too late, however, to rectify the situation. If only our religious and secular educators would sit down together they would realize that the differences between them are not too great and – even when they are – the benefits of collaboration by far outweigh the costs of compromise.
 
It is in this sense, I believe, that we have much to learn from the North American community school system. The notion that people of different denominations can sit together in a classroom, not in spite of their commitment to their worldview, but precisely because of it, is something we Israelis have yet to comprehend. The existence of a shared educational environment is as conducive to the students’ individual conviction, constantly reaffirmed in the face of alternatives, as it is to the unity of society.
 
Coalescence is possible; it is up to the Israeli public to find the middle ground. The secular must drop their hostility toward Jewish studies, and understand that not every time a teacher opens a Bible it is with the intention of converting their children. The religious, on their part, have to forsake the dogmatism which has come to dominate their education, and realize that the exposure to other opinions will not turn their children into heretics. Most importantly, each side must come to accept the other, to tolerate its beliefs and respect its way of life.
 
A unified state school system – where secular and religious children study together, eat lunch together, play basketball and go on field trips together – is the only way to secure our future as one people. Once the children learn to live together in peace, maybe their parents will learn to do so, too.
 
Written with Gila Fine

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