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Educating For Citizenship

By Benzion Dinur

Shortly after independence, Israel's third education minister outlined the basics of Jewish national citizenship.


Benzion Dinur (1884-1973), Israels third minister of education, was one of the outstanding figures of the cultural revival that accompanied the growth of the Zionist movement and the establishment of a Jewish state. Along with Yitzhak Baer, he founded the Jerusalem school of academic historiography, which understood the story of the Jewish people in exile as a unified narrative, characterized by the longing of the dispersed communities to retain their connection with the land of Israel. Among his most influential works were the two-volume Israel in Its Land and the nine-volume Israel in Exile.
Born in Warsaw, he made his home in Palestine in 1921, where he played a leading role in founding and developing Israels cultural institutions, including the Jewish Teachers Training College, Mosad Bialik, Yad Vashem, the historical quarterly Zion, and the World Congress of Jewish Studies. From 1936 to 1952, Dinur taught at the Hebrew University, pioneering the study and teaching of modern Jewish history. He was elected to the first Knesset in 1949 as a member of Ben-Gurions Labor Party (Mapai), and from 1951 to 1955 served as minister of education. He was responsible for the adoption of the State Education Law (1953), which created a public school system committed to the goals of inculcating the “values of Jewish culture,” “love of the homeland,” and “loyalty to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Among the disciplines on which Dinur had a formative impact was the study of citizenship in Israels schools. In the following speech, which he delivered at a teachers convention in 1953, he set forth the principles for civics education in the State of Israel.
 
 
The subject of this lecture is education for citizenship, both in the broadest sense and as a particular subject of study. We must look at this issue from two perspectives: First, in terms of the role of the high school; and second, with respect to the tasks that face us in our current situation as a nation and as a state.
Students attend high school for a period of four years, from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. This is the time when they mature into adulthood; at the end of high school, the student receives a diploma testifying not only to his readiness to continue on to higher education, but also to his maturity as an active citizen, prepared for military service and responsible for the freedom and independence of the state. The task of training such citizens belongs to the high school.
The fundamental question, then, is how to train and educate a young person in four years to be a mature, conscientious, responsible citizen, a citizen who will be able to defend the state not only when he is in the army, where he is taught to defend his life, liberty, and independence, but beyond. We must educate him to be a citizen all his life, in all his actions, in his attitude toward his fellow citizens and toward society as a whole, in his willingness to take responsibility, in his decency, integrity, and ability to function in everyday life.
Our second concern is our situation as a state, as a people, and as a society. This means that we must educate the younger generation to be citizens of the state, loyal sons of the Jewish people, and worthy members of Israeli society.* As citizens of the state, they must be taught to fulfill the duties of citizenship faithfully and wholeheartedly; as sons of the Jewish people, they must be taught to fulfill the national mission that has been given to this generation; and as members of Israeli society, they must be taught to deserve the name “Israel,” by embracing the spiritual heritage of Israel. The community we are building in Israel perpetuates the social, cultural, spiritual, and ethical continuity of Israel, and students must be educated to be the bearers of this heritage.
As citizens of the state. We are an independent and sovereign state. We are a people united by our laws, and we are obligated by virtue of our independence to live under our own laws. Our people must possess the maximum possible ability to defend ourselves, and consequently we must train the younger generation in civic duty and responsibility, and in the skills required to be citizens of an independent state that is constantly fighting for its survival. Civic responsibility means knowing and observing the law, understanding ones rights and how to exercise them, and willingly fulfilling ones obligations.
As loyal sons of the Jewish people. The nations continued existence is based on unity, a unity that is both emotional and spiritual, and that is built on a particular consciousness and a particular sentiment. The consciousness is of a destiny that is shared with the nation as a whole, and the sentiment is that of partnership with each and every individual within that nation. We must imbue every student with a feeling of Jewish brotherhood, of personal identification with the people and its destiny. We must teach him to live the problems of his people, to understand and identify with the great tasks that face the nation.
As worthy members of Israeli society. To educate students to be worthy members of Israeli society, what I have suggested so far is not enough. Educating someone to become a member of Israeli society is much deeper and broader. It is nothing less than instilling the Israeli perspective on life, which contains within it the entire spiritual legacy of Israel. The question is how to educate the younger generation so that the same moral and spiritual values—the same attitude towards humanity, to ones fellowman, to society, and to the Jewish people which, over the course of generations, constituted the foundation of the spiritual unity of Israel—will form the spiritual basis of his personal character as well. For generations we knew how to distinguish between “that which may be done in Israel” and “that which must not be done in Israel.” (Cf. Genesis 34:7) This standard served as the starting point for every Jew. Using this standard, we could judge whether the forefathers of a particular person stood at Mount Sinai or not; whether he was from “the seed of our father Abraham,” or if there was reason to suspect that he was actually a member of the “mixed multitude” that came up with Israel from Egypt. This is bound up with a whole complex of virtues that make up a persons character. How do we impart them to the next generation?
I would like to focus in this lecture on these three roles: Citizen of the state, loyal son of the Jewish people, and worthy member of Israeli society. Regarding each of them, we must ask ourselves: What can we do and what must we do to impart an education for citizenship, in the broadest sense? And what are the topics that must be covered in teaching civics, as a formal subject of study, to the next generation?
 
The citizen of the state. First of all, we must be fully aware of our situation as a state. We must not let ourselves lose sight of it even for a moment. This must be our starting point for educating citizens. The state was established through struggle—a long and difficult struggle which continues to this day. It was established through a cruel war, and we still find ourselves in a situation that formally hovers between war and peace, but is in practice a state of war, though in a different form. We are like a besieged city. We find ourselves in a sort of cold-war-by-agreement, with our neighbors openly preparing for a war of annihilation against us. We are surrounded by enemies on our borders, the same enemies we faced in the War of Independence, who have yet to come to terms with our existence, and who in the meantime have only become stronger. We too have developed considerably: When the state was established, the ratio between our neighbors and us was forty to one. For every Israeli there were forty enemies who sought to destroy us. Before the entire world they declared that they intended to throw us into the sea, to blot out our names from this land. Recently the numbers have improved somewhat: For every Israeli, there are now twenty enemies among our immediate neighbors. The fundamental fact, however, remains the same, that we are few against many.
The first civic duty, then, is necessarily defense, developing the ability to stand up to the enemy. The problem is not merely defense, but the ability of the few to stand firm against the many. Consequently, the duty of education is to “transform” the few into the many—to turn quality into quantity by means of education. We must prove that just as quantity can translate into quality, so too, high quality translates into great quantity. There are many ways to turn quality into quantity: Through mental tenacity, social cohesiveness, intellectual acuity, technical skill, and the like. The ways are numerous, and though it is neither easy nor simple to follow them, we have no choice. This is our first and most urgent duty. Every moment is precious, and it is difficult to exaggerate the grim nature of the accounting we will have to provide for every delay.


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