An in-depth look at the conflicting nature of the tribes of Israel.
By JOEL BRAUNOLDIsraeli classroom(photo credit: REUTERS)
Israel’s population is a mishmash of Jewish communities from around the globe, with a healthy dash of local Arabs. Like any society, Israel struggles to find a way to create a healthy shared society between the disparate parts of the community that came to the land with their own customs, cultures, emotional baggage and expectations.The conflicting nature of the tribes of Israel – the secular, the national religious, the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs – has best been captured by President Reuven Rivlin who has made his presidency about promoting true community cohesion and combating racism and bigotry.In most societies, the place where a sense of civic identity is created is in the public school system. Coming from different backgrounds, the children of a nation are socialized together learning common themes and values, helping to overcome the differences that make up part of their home life.In Israel however, the segmented nature of the education system means that public schooling is the foundation of the walls between the tribes, rather than the melting pot to mix them up. Israel has separate tracks for secular, religious, Arab and ultra-Orthodox education. Though the Education Ministry is the second largest government department (after defense), the minister finds it hard to affect the classrooms of children not from his constituency.Just ask Education Minister Naftali Bennett about the teaching of English and mathematics in the ultra-Orthodox schools at the moment.The divided nature of the school system means that there is no place where Israelis from different religious, and in some cases ethnic backgrounds meet one another.Instead, the fulcrum of civic patriotism moves from the classroom to the battlefield, with universal conscription being the birthplace of a unified society.There are two obvious problems, however.First, ultra-Orthodox and Arab citizens don’t serve in the military, meaning that they miss the access point to civic-national identity that bonds the nation across socioeconomic, religious and ethnic boundaries. Second, unlike the classroom, where free expression and critical thought are the backbone of educational instruction, the army is a place for order, authority and militarism. The national values of Israeli society are not coming from public schools, but from the IDF, which further divides society within the context of the ongoing conflict.The exclusionary nature of conscription within an ever-diversifying state of Israel means that citizens are finding less and less common cause. The divided nature of public education leads to a social anxiety for each segment, each believing itself a minority within a system where the other tribes have advantages or are burdens upon them.
There are some phenomenal efforts to try to mitigate the worst aspects of the systemic educational separation. Groups like Givat Haviva try to ensure that pupils from the different schools meet, the Abraham Fund ensures that each school sector prioritizes the others’ language, Merchavim look to place Arab teachers in Jewish schools. The biggest challenge to the separation of the schooling system is the Hand in Hand school system, whose national network of seven schools looks to create a true bilingual environment for its students.Yet despite these efforts, the root cause of the continuation of the tribes of Israel are the divided schools of Israel. As Israel becomes more religious and more Arab each passing year, how much longer can the divided school system prop up a society with such deep fissures within it? As Israeli patriots like President Rivlin look to try and create a truly integrated, inclusive society, a radical idea might be to start re-examining the anachronistic nature of public education in Israel, and find ways to try and change it root and branch.