Moreover, the new curriculum undercut the schools’ ability to develop students’ identification with the Jewish state by removing almost all material about the Zionist movement and its institutions in the period before the founding of Israel. While the committee members recognized the significance of this historical background, they concluded that time constraints limited them to “recommending that textbook authors accompany the study material with short historical references.”³⁰ Though the Zionist movement and the founding of Israel would continue to be studied as part of high-school history classes, their near-total elimination from the civics curriculum meant that when students came to grapple with questions of Israel’s character as a Jewish state, they would be doing so without reference to the historical context—the Holocaust, for instance, or the opposition of the British government and the Arab regimes to Jewish immigration into Palestine—that could help them understand why it had been critical to establish a Jewish state, and why they should identify with its goals.

More ambiguous in its impact was the committee’s determination that the old curriculum had downplayed “the tensions and conflicts within Israeli society,” and that the new program of study should stress differences of opinion on all issues.³¹ Such an approach held out the prospect of allowing students to learn to respect a range of viewpoints, and to find and develop that conception of Israel as a Jewish national state that best fit their own worldview. But the danger inherent in such a curriculum should have been clear as well: Carried too far, the emphasis on points of contention among the various streams of Zionism would obscure the broad consensus that lay beneath the idea of founding a Jewish state, and that supported the creation and maintenance of the central laws and institutions expressing Israel’s character as the state of the Jewish people.

Finally, the new program called on textbook writers and teachers to focus on the “tension” between the Jewish and democratic elements in Israel’s character.³² The underlying premise, which had not been shared by the 1976 curriculum, was that Israel’s status as a Jewish state is necessarily in conflict with its status as a democracy—and therefore, by implication, that the maintenance of Israel’s Jewish character undercuts its ability to function as a full-fledged democracy. Though important Israeli figures had begun speaking about such a tension several years before the 1994 curriculum was published, it is important to bear in mind that the view they articulated went against the dominant trends in Israeli political thought, which had traditionally seen no disharmony between the state’s overarching Jewish aims and the quality of its democratic government.

As a result of the committee’s conclusions, the stated aims of the 1994 civics curriculum marked a dramatic change from those of the program it replaced. In the section on “Goals Concerning Knowledge and Understanding,” not one of the nine goals referred to Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Whereas the previous curriculum had required young Israeli Jews to focus on the case for Israel as the state of the Jewish people—marshaling arguments in the realms of philosophy, history, and politics and culture—they were now asked only to “examine the issues from the viewpoints of the various sectors and communities in Israeli society.”³³ In other words, they were to learn to see Israel’s status as the Jewish state not only from a Jewish national perspective, but from all possible perspectives—which meant, at least in principle, that Jewish nationalism was to be given no greater weight than the anti-Zionism of those elements in Arab society that relate to Israeli independence as al nakba (“the catastrophe”) or of haredi extremists who see the reassertion of Jewish sovereignty as heretical.

The retreat from teaching about the Jewish state was also dramatized by the new section on “Goals Concerning Values.” According to the 1976 program, students were to develop “a feeling of solidarity with the Jewish people.” In the new curriculum, however, they needed only to “recognize the fact that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and understand the commitment of the State of Israel to the Jewish people in the diaspora.”³⁴ Now, as the only Jewish aim in a set of goals aimed at inculcating values, this is rather lame: It calls only for “recognition” and “understanding”—which is to say, for the inculcation of no values at all. And this value-neutral language stood in sharp contrast to the four other goals on the list, which reflected a no-holds-barred embrace of democracy in general and of Israel’s democratic character in particular. The citizenship course, the committee members wrote, should teach students to “internalize democratic values”; to “work to realize” human and civil rights; to “be prepared to fulfill” their duties and defend their rights; and to “be involved” in public affairs.³⁵ These four goals are couched in highly active, if not emotional, terms—and the contrast seems to imply that Israel’s character as a Jewish state is something in which students need not have a personal stake.

Moreover, the detailed course of study outlined in the new curriculum focused so heavily on the divisions among supporters of the Jewish state that the points of consensus were hopelessly blurred. In the section on “The State of Israel as a Jewish State: Characteristics and Different Worldviews,” textbook writers and teachers were asked to present students with no fewer than five separate views on what a Jewish state is: “A state containing a Jewish majority”; “a state that belongs to the entire Jewish people”; “a state possessing a secular Jewish character”; “a state in which the Jewish religion plays a major role in legislation, in institutions, in the judicial system, and in the way of life”; and “a state based on the principles of Jewish law.”³⁶ Absent completely from this section of the curriculum was any attempt to describe the broad areas of agreement that united the leading figures in these camps, or to describe those essential Jewish-national features of the actual State of Israel that had been enacted with the support of all of them.

Finally, despite the committee’s explicit decision to put “equal weight” on Israel’s character as a Jewish state and as a democratic state, the detailed program of study reflected nothing of the kind. The most obvious problem was that of the 90 total class hours, only 12 were devoted to examining Israel as a Jewish state.³⁷ More significant, however, was the qualitative difference between the “Jewish” and “democratic” sections of the course. The section on democracy ends with a unit on “Why Democracy?” in which students are to compare democratic regimes to all of their competitors and understand why a democratic regime is the best of all possible alternatives. Tellingly, there is no parallel unit in the section about a Jewish state: The authors of the new curriculum apparently did not think it necessary for students to be taught why it is preferable for Israel to be a Jewish state rather than any of the possible alternatives.

 

The 1994 curriculum was not immediately implemented throughout the Israeli school system, as time was needed to develop a textbook conforming to its guidelines. Indeed, through the end of the 1999-2000 school year, the 1976 curriculum, with a few modifications that had been introduced over time, was still officially in effect. Nonetheless, the impact of the new curriculum began to be felt right away, as its ideas were adopted in various ways by Education Ministry officials. Civics teachers throughout the country were required to take enrichment courses based on the new program, while sample textbook materials conforming to its guidelines were widely circulated and tested in various schools.³⁸ Most strikingly, within months of the new curriculum’s publication, the content of the nationwide matriculation examinations in citizenship began changing in accordance with two of its most problematic elements: The downgrading of Israel’s Jewish character as a subject of study, and the emphasis on the controversial nature of this character.

Thus in the Summer 1994 exam, not one of the thirty-six questions posed to students in general Jewish high schools required them to know that Israel is a Jewish state, let alone to be able to justify this status—the first time in the history of the citizenship exam that knowing about Israel’s Jewish character was not worth even a single point.³⁹ Nor was this omission a fluke: In 1997 and again in 1999, not a single question was asked about Israel’s Jewish character; and in 1995 and 1996, students could only earn a maximum of 10 points out of 100 by answering questions about Israel as a Jewish state.

Moreover, the few questions that were asked about the country’s Jewish character tended to focus on its negative consequences for the state’s non-Jewish citizens. In 1995, for example, students could gain credit for knowing about Israel as a Jewish state only if they elected to “explain two difficulties with which Arab-Israelis must grapple because of the fact that Israel is the state of the Jewish people.”⁴⁰ In 2000 as well, students could use their knowledge about Israel as a Jewish state only if they chose to respond to the following question:

Thus in most of the years since the new curriculum was published, understanding why Israel should be a Jewish state, or even why it had been established as one, could gain the student nothing in taking his matriculation examinations.