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PDF FormatNowadays complaints are made about “Siberia” not by the fathers, but by the sons. The younger generation has “grown up.” But if we studied all parts of Israel in detail in school, if the student learned about the western Galilee or the Negev through detailed study of these areas’ settlement and development problems, and of the cardinal importance of these problems—which we, teachers and students, are called on to resolve—the attitude toward them would necessarily be different.
The same holds true for the obligation of military service. The study of the law governing service in the national defense, which is connected to the establishment and development of the Israel Defense Forces, accompanied by an explanation of the relationship between defense and a national army and the independence of a modern state in general, educates young people to fulfill their duty by raising their awareness. It decreases the likelihood of evasion of military service by impressing upon the student the grave personal consequences of draft-dodging for his status in Israeli society, which will effectively cast him out.
Young people should also become familiar with some of the country’s other laws, such as the Elections Law and the Local Authorities Law, the Free Compulsory Education Law, and the laws governing taxes and the budget. The study of these laws imparts more than information to the student; it also educates him for citizenship, as it places him in the position of the head of state, of the maker of its laws and the person called upon to carry them out, who must study the situation, understand the problems, and find solutions. This method of study teaches the student civic responsibility by teaching him the issues.
Learning civics means learning about the way the state works, its structure, governance, laws, and practices. Accordingly, knowledge of the land and the State of Israel should be included as a component in the study of civics. Knowledge of the land will be incorporated into learning the history of the Jewish people’s renewed settling of its land, studying its laws and institutions, and explaining its missions and the means by which they can be achieved. The thorough practical knowledge gained through the study of this subject will both illustrate and complement the wider principle of education for citizenship.
A loyal son of the Jewish people. The nationalist consciousness, the awareness that I am not only a citizen of the State of Israel, but a member of the Jewish nation, is a fundamental element of education for citizenship in Israel. The structure of the State of Israel, its establishment and development, are all organically connected with recent generations of Jewish history. The First Aliya and the beginnings of the new yishuv in Israel are linked to the anti-Semitic movement and pogroms in Russia (Bilu, Rishon Letzion, Gedera, and Ekron), Poland (Yesud Hama’ala), and Romania (Rosh Pina and Zichron Ya’akov). The Jews of Hungary, and the disappointment felt by the younger Jewish generation after the emancipation there, also played an important role in the founding of Petah Tikva. We have interesting testimony from Yehoshua Stampfer concerning his immigration to the land of Israel, and other accounts as well. The view that seeks to portray the beginning of the new yishuv, and especially the establishment of Petah Tikva, as the natural development of the old yishuv in the land of Israel, while ignoring the organic link between the renewed settlement of Israel in its land and the war that anti-Semitism declared against the Jews—which was, in fact, an expression of the complete failure of the settling of Jews in all the lands of their dispersion—this view denies the obvious historical facts. Why were all previous attempts at renewed Jewish settlement of the land so unsuccessful?
In general, whoever downplays the decisive role of the war of oppression, expulsion, and annihilation decreed against the Jews by the anti-Semitic movement renders all of modern Jewish history incomprehensible. Anti-Semitism was not only a social and political movement devoted to conducting war against the Jews; it was also the first movement for which war against the Jews served as an organizational platform. The lack of comprehension exhibited by many Jews regarding its essential nature and consequences was undoubtedly one of the reasons for the scope of the Holocaust and for Zionism’s failure to achieve its goals in time to rescue European Jewry. Anyone who misconstrues this episode sins not only against historical truth, but against the next generation’s education in Jewish national consciousness. Here, too, developing an accurate and thorough understanding is a precondition for identifying with this historical experience.
One fact which leaves a bitter impression is the utter complacency of the Jewish community at the time regarding the approaching disaster; this unconcern was quite conspicuous in the Jewish literature and newspapers of Eastern European countries. Research projects carried out by several of my university students confirmed this. Although here and there authors and poets wrote something about the situation of the Jews, they generally did not sense the dangers at all. On the contrary, they showed great optimism regarding the future of the Jews “here,” in the lands of the diaspora. Such obtuseness would seem to suggest an organic flaw in the survival instinct of the nation itself. We were simply blind and deaf, we saw nothing and heard nothing; we have an obligation to draw from this the necessary conclusions.
One conclusion is that we must instill in each and every member of the younger generation in Israel a feeling of Jewish partnership, of the shared Jewish fate from the beginnings of the Jewish people to this very day, together with an awareness of Israeli uniqueness, and to elevate this feeling into a profound Jewish sentiment. This can be done through study, by conferring the thorough knowledge that leads to emotional identification. A comprehensive acquaintance with recent Jewish history and an awareness of Jewish uniqueness and the fate of Israel among the nations will foster a profound Zionist consciousness—which is actually a distilled form of the Jewish historical consciousness and of the sense of Jewish national life—that will penetrate the heart, encouraging complete identification with the mission of our era, the mission of ingathering the exiles. It is impossible to be a child of the Jewish people with a full Jewish consciousness without being infused with a sense of the special Jewish experience. An understanding of the experience of exile can spring only from this deep sense. Only one who fully senses the Jewish experience can feel the significance of the tremendous historical mission of charting a course from exile to redemption, which is identified with the salvation of Israel. I call this “education for the historic missions of our generation.”
Here too there is a need to instill a Zionist outlook, namely, the combination of an awareness of the past, an understanding of the present, and a vision of the future. This approach, which encompasses the establishment of the State of Israel and its place in Jewish life, the experience of Jewish communities in the diaspora and an assessment of their struggle, the inherent incompleteness of the Jewish personality in the diaspora, and the Jewish fear, both unseen and overt, natural and inevitable, that suffuses diaspora life, will be introduced in schools as the subject of “Knowledge of the Jewish People,” in which students will learn about “Israel in Exile: Its Mission and Its Fate.”
Such knowledge, however, will be one-sided and even distorted to a certain extent, if “knowledge of the Jewish people” is restricted to information about the exile. A knowledge of the Jewish people in the diaspora encompasses not only “exiles” but also “communities.” Students must be given basic knowledge about the ability of the Jews to form communities and to fight to sustain them. The organization of the communities, the entire range of institutions in which independent Jewish life was concentrated and consolidated on foreign soil, the life of religion and Tora (synagogues, study houses, and rabbinical courts), educational institutions (the heder and yeshivot, schools of various levels and systems, higher seminaries, and literary and scientific organizations), philanthropic institutions, charitable and mutual-aid societies (charity, philanthropy, free-loan funds, and so forth), professional, economic, and political organizations—this is one of the sublime chapters, not only in the Jewish people’s struggle to survive, but in all of human history. It is the story of the struggle of the few against the many, a battle of the spirit and the will against power and authority.
This story can instill in the younger generation both the wisdom of life and the ability to fight for our independence. It is therefore appropriate that as part of the high-school subject of civics, knowledge of the Jewish people in its two aspects—as exiles and as communities—should be taught.
