Theocracy and Pedagogy: Public Education in Israel between the Secular and the Religious

• In Event: Education in a Postsecular Age

Abstract

This paper focuses on mainstream public education ("chinuch mamlachti") in contemporary Israel. In analyzing the changes which are introduced to the Israeli core curriculum, it argues for a growing “theocratization” of mainstream education which was originally envisioned as a secular, nationalist education. In recent years, however, Jewish religiosity has played an increasing role in shaping national identity. This "theocratization", in turn, reformulates the enduring tensions between secular and religious notions that have characterized national identity since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. In arguing for these changes in secular education I wish to flesh out, from a theoretical perspective, the complex relations between the construction of national secular identity in contemporary Israel, and a return to religion and religiosity, a change which current scholarship on has acknowledged but not sufficiently analyzed.
The paper will demonstrate recent attempts to “restore” Zionist values, which were allegedly lost during recent decades, to the curriculum. To the extent that these changes aim at reiterating and thus re-confirming the formative nationalistic aims and values of the Israeli education, it could be labeled a “neo-nationalistic” approach to education (Ram 2011). Such a "neo-nationalistic" educational impulse has been discussed as a result of the rise of right-wing nationalist politics in Israel. I argue that such an impulse should be also understood against the background of the contemporary post secular revival of religion. Thus, a spate of new initiatives in public education forms– in the words of the current minister of education Gideon Saar – a return to "Jewish" values and to Judaism. Mainstream public education has therefore seen several initiatives aimed at intensifying “education for values” by increasing studies of Jewish tradition and religion.
I conclude that within the current post-secular context neo-nationalist values form a reemergence of secular-spiritualism because they involve “a pursuit after higher values worthy of devotion” which characterizes any form of religiosity (Alexander 2011). Such an understanding of national Identity preserves the Zionist secular mission, which was imprinted into the public education in Israel. The recent neo-nationalistic turn in Israeli education, however, also marks a break from the secularist tradition, because it is informed by a concept of national identity that is explicitly based on religious reasoning and justifications. A post secular society in Israel denotes therefore a reformulation of tensions between secular and religious concepts of Israeli national identity, a "theocratization" of national public education.

References

Ram U. (2011). Israeli Nationalism: Social Conflicts and the Politics of Knowledge. (New York: Routledge).
Alexander H., Pinson H. and Yonah Y. (Eds.). (2011). Citizenship, Education, and Social Conflict: Israeli Political Education in Global Perspective. (New York: Routledge).
Gur-Ze'ev I. (2010). The possibility\impossibility of a new Critical Language in Education. (Rotterdam: Sense)
Dror Y. (2008). National Education through Mutually Supportive Devices: The Zionist Story. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press. [H]).
Horowitz D. & Lissak M. (1989). Trouble in the Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel. (Albany: SUNY).

Author

• Yotam Y. Hotam, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa