Somehow the days in Israel just seem longer than back home in Stamford…or maybe it just seems that way when traveling on a JCC Association Israel seminar.  For many people, today was their first full day in Israel, and I don’t know how they made it through.  From an early wake-up call at 7:00 a.m. until just now at 10:30 p.m., there hasn’t been a free moment.  Of course, there also hasn’t been a 15-minute period when someone wasn’t shoving food into us.

For me, today was particularly challenging as we explored some of the issues of diversity in modern Israel.  Michael Melchior, a member of the Knesset and the former Deputy Foreign Minister and Deputy Minister of Education, as well as the head of the Knesset’s coalition on Jewish-Arab coexistence, began the day with a brief d’var Torah about the leadership lessons of Moses and his selection as the leader of the Jewish people.  What looked initially like it was going to be a rather tame start quickly moved to a rather impassioned argument about the problem that religious diversity poses for the Israeli education system. 

The current educational system, dominated since the State of Israel’s founding by the Orthodox community, has left many secular Israelis feeling that they have been left outside the box.  There has been no common language or narrative that has bound together the Orthodox and the secular communities.  As the Hardedi population has grown rapidly, this gulf continues to widen.

Perhaps even more challenging, and in many ways more disturbing for me, is the ever widening gap in the Jewish educational system and that for the Israeli Arabs. Today more than six times as much is invested in the education of a Jewish child than in an Israeli Arab child.  While according to the law there is supposed to be 100% equality in the education, in fact, nowhere is that true.  As an American history freak, I couldn’t help but think about how until Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954, our own system accepted the concept of separate but equal.  And think today, how disgusting that very concept is to us. If separate is inherently not equal in America, why is acceptable in Israel?  I guess it took us from 1789 to 1954 to reach that point in our development, and another 55 years until we had an African-American president.  Unfortunately I’m not sure Israel can survive as a Jewish state if it takes 200 years to address this ticking time bomb.  Education is the key to economic survival, and if Israel doesn’t do something to take care of providing a proper education for its Israeli Arabs, then Hamas or some other radical element will step in and do the job…and that just can’t be good for the future of Israel.

Simplistic?  I’m sure.  But it really shouldn’t be all that controversial.  After defense, the most important obligation of a state is to educate its citizens.

Nothing like some light thinking at 9:00 in the morning!

Off to see our good friend Richie Juran in his new position at the Mandel Leadership Institute…

Shalom,

Gary


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