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Renewing Israel in Jewish Life From Herzl to Herzliya Notes Towards Recasting Israel Education By Yonatan Ariel, Executive Director

“From Herzl to Herzliya” seeks to analyze the need for a new direction in Israel Education. It suggests that there is a profound shift in the Jewish

People’s circumstances brought about by some remarkable successes in the last two generations. It argues that Israel education should be built as a sub-field of Jewish education, with significant possibilities for engagement that we have yet to explore. Jewish People have amassed a large

The challenge of rethinking Israel measure of power and influence, in education has been troubling addition to their long-held resilience educators for a long time, and I and agility. suspect that it troubles others too. Although some of the symptoms are The State of Israel, as a core clearly identifiable, such as the element of Jewish civilization, will decline in attachment to Israel soon be home to a majority of the amongst younger Jews, the world's Jewish population. Already it articulation of the underlying is home to thriving scientific problem and the search for a innovation and to the dazzling solution is fraught with both revival of Hebrew and Jewish difficulty and possibility. cultural life. Around the globe, Jews have created voluntary communities We, the Jewish People, are heirs to characterized by care, devotion and a tradition of intellectual vitality, steadfastness in the welcoming cultural fidelity and social activity. conditions of freedom. These are And we are poised on the threshold changed circumstances. For the first of a new era. Two generations of time in two thousand years the remarkable collective achievement world's Jews live as free people. have secured a vibrant State of They have the highest-ever levels of Israel, nurtured the shared memory Jewish and general education, an of the Shoah, and rescued Jews independent Jewish state, extensive from many parts of the world. The experience as a global people and the economic and technological wherewithal to face the future with

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Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom confidence. It is an exhilarating amount to a higher grade of time to be a Jew – or so we would civilization, to spread well- think. being abroad, to build new highways for the intercourse At the very moment when the of peoples, and to forge an Jewish People's sovereign stage has opening for the coming social a sturdy foundation and the era of justice." collective creativity stands poised to unfold, the pertinent data A sober assessment would compel us suggests mass disinterest. Many to conclude that in spite of the young Jews are unaware of their remarkably successful generation's potential to make a transformation in the status of the shared Jewish contribution to the Jews, the lofty sentiments of Herzl's world. Too few Jews around the third road still beckon. In world have experienced the Altneuland, his famous novel that dynamics of Israel as a cultural outlines his hopes for Israel, Herzl reservoir, rather than as a political writes: "I say to you, therefore, that battleground. Too few you must hold fast to the things that have experienced voluntary Jewish have made us great: to liberality, communities overseas as creative tolerance, love of mankind. Only playing fields, rather than as dark then is Zion truly Zion." graveyards. Too many are alienated We work hard to realize Herzl's by cultural, political and dream. Many innovative and noble organizational factors and too few causes are pursued by the have the opportunity to explore authorities and the emerging third their heartfelt concerns with regard sector in Israel, often with the to Israel and Jewish life, without vigorous support of Jews the world pressure to adopt a specific over. There is concern too for position. Jews today do not sense education in all Jewish communities that the global Jewish conversation and growing attempts are made to is inviting, enthralling and develop the most significant challenging. resource - a cadre of personnel who are both inspired and inspiring. And Just over a hundred years ago, yet the evidence signals that Herzl, had a powerful and or any of the alternative, romantic vision. In the pamphlet competing, visions of Zion just do Der Judenstaat he wrote: not ring true to the present generation. There is indeed real "Under present conditions the work to be done to re-imagine Israel Jews have three roads before and Zion in Jewish life for a global, them: one is apathetic technological world. And there is submission to insult and also a need to renew our poverty; another is revolt, assumptions and conceptions as to outspoken hostility to an which content, modes and arenas unjust social system. Ours is should guide our educational the third road. We want to endeavors. This is an attempt to 2 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom sketch out some fruitful avenues for It used to be far less complicated - investigation. the task of initiating young people into a Jewish way of life was carried One of my favorite definitions of out in the home, the shul, the education comes from Richard school and the street, which all Peters, the distinguished neatly reinforced each other. Today philosopher who taught at London's how different it is – we talk of Institute of Education. He defined blended families, hybrid identities, education as "the initiation into globalization and an unparalleled worthwhile pursuits, whilst mobility. The well-documented respecting the autonomy of the decline of Jewish involvement learner". He stresses that any across a range of indicators leads to substantive education requires deep the dawning understanding that layers of cultural residue, as identification with Israel is not what expressed in insights, values, habits it was. The existential conditions and stories. But he also stresses that that drew many of us into a education must also offer its relationship with our people and our students the tools to be autonomous homeland were the precariousness and critical of what is being offered of Israel's existence, the waves of as a cultural heritage. With that in aliya, and the political fight for mind, I want to raise three main Israel's good name and for the challenges for Israel Education: freedom of Soviet Jewry. This was such an overwhelming success that INITIATE – the need to induct young the Zionist's activist sense of history people into a web of understanding looks less compelling today for that gives them anchors in Jewish young people as the causes become civilization, Jewish Peoplehood and less stark, the clarity dissipates, and the place of Israel in Jewish life. the moral qualms continue to fester. ELEVATE – the need to craft Jewish narratives that build on what has The response to this challenge is gone before, but that inevitably often "they don't understand." "They critique what is and point to some don't understand, because they wonderful challenges ahead that the don't know. If only they knew then Jewish People needs to meet in they would understand and then order to be true to its mission. they would be active." I want to suggest that this line of thought LIBERATE – the need to enable inverts the logic of the voluntary young Jews to find their own way, educational process. Do people feel to climb their own mountain, to the way they feel because they realize their potential, to be not know what they know, or do they like us. rather know what they know because they feel what they feel?

What we lack in the young Jewish Initiate – The Challenge: world is not access to knowledge – Connection and Conviction even though knowledge is a cultural 3 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom and pedagogic imperative; what we What could be a renewed ritual that lack is the motivation to find the recaptures the imagination of a knowledge that is readily available lifelong involvement with Israel in in copious amounts in courses, every Jewish family? What might libraries and on the internet. What make the yearly cycle celebrations we lack is the initiation into a world and commemorations – Pesach, Yom of concepts that make Western, HaShoah, Yom Hazikkaron, Yom Israeli and Jewish cultures part of Ha'atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim - the life world of the young. These become potent, robust moments of three narratives – the Western, the meaning and creativity, not for the Israeli, and the Jewish – have to few, but for the many? embrace each other, challenge each Initiatives in Israel Education will other, and jostle with each other as require us to speak in different we induct another generation into a cultural idioms, not necessarily the web of association. That web ones with which we were celebrates the word Israel in all of acculturated. These idioms will vary its suggestive and aromatic from generation X to generation Y; ambiguity – as medina, eretz, am, from one continent to another; from clal, knesset, ahavat, torat, tzur one milieu to another. The and netzach yisrael. educational challenge is to nurture young Jews' convictions to core A central part of the initiation values, ideas and symbols and to process of any culture is the events cultivate connections to their peers and ceremonies surrounding the and to the stories of those who have lifecycle. How might we infuse the gone before. lifecycle rituals of birth, bar/bat mitzvah, wedding, and death with a Elevate – The Challenge: Move new sense of Israel and Jewish from Zionist Hardware to Jewish Peoplehood? Consider by way of Software illustration of the kinds of question The big theory of was that we will have to ask and answer: designed to solve the Jewish that in the 1970s there was an problem. While it has profoundly active twinning of Bnai Mitzvah in succeeded in eliminating the words the west with Soviet Jewish "Jewish refugee" from the youngsters who were forbidden from international vocabulary, it has not such celebration – what might the brought respite from Jew-hatred contemporary version of such and physical and verbal antagonism. Peoplehood engagement look like Additionally, it has yet to develop a that is not based on crisis? Or form of Jewish culture that can reflect that despite the traditional readily sustain Jewish life outside of understanding of the breaking of the Israel, and there are many questions glass at the wedding ceremony as a surrounding the kind of Jewish powerful symbol of attachment to experiences that Israel has forged , many rabbis now report for its own youngsters. that the sentiment lacks resonance. Furthermore in light of emerging 4 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom historical evidence, many find it learning classic texts, academic impossible to retell the essential Jewish study and spiritual stories that embody Zionism without expression. These are very welcome appearing to themselves and their and necessary, and yet they have friends as bewilderingly naïve and largely occurred with a strong sentimental. For example: Israel is a individualist orientation. There has paradigm of modern rationalism, yet yet to be a parallel burst of a significant sector of the creativity in regard to what we population identifies with mystic might share and value as Jews amulets; and Israel is talked of as across our considerable and the embodiment of peace-seeking heartfelt differences. Without new humanism, yet a significant part of kinds of collective orientation, it is its population demonizes its difficult to conceive that we will Palestinian neighbors. capture the imagination of Jews so that they may come to share a I vividly recall that on my own teen sense of fate and realize their seminar to Israel a generation ago, purpose. the trip to Masada was a highpoint both topographically and But this we know: the pressing experientially. The early morning problems, whether in Israel or climb was resonant with pathos around the Jewish world, are not because here at last we were able amenable to the real estate solution to bear witness to what we had of building buildings. The key heard so much about at summer and challenges Israel confronts are winter camps since we were little many. Think of the growing social kids. In effect we were climbing the and cultural gaps; the shameful magic mountain. Such Zionist incidents of injustice and violence narratives are encrusted with against women, Arab citizens and success and have become stagnant foreign workers; the environmental and are thus only partially useful in neglect poisoning the chances of the dynamics of educational future generations to drink the programming. Today I am one of water and breathe the air; the crisis those educators who think that the in the education system at all way I was told the story was levels, and the alienation of many distorted at best and manipulative Jews from a sense of identification at worst. To hold as a symbol the with Jewish culture and the Jewish mass suicide of some People. uncompromising zealots no longer looks to me either like a moral Likewise, around the Jewish world, pedagogy or like a great way to the high levels of assimilation, low offer a vision of what Jewish life levels of literacy, low-birth rates should be about for the next and aging population, alienating generation. institutions and lackluster To add to our challenge much of the programming are not necessarily recent creativity and innovation in solved by building physical Jewish life has been in the realms of structures. 5 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

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To stand a chance of addressing follow the crowd. It requires a great these challenges we need new measure of agility to figure out generations of creative people that when to be counter cultural and sense a Jewish and human when to be conservative, when to obligation to keep improving on the break the boundaries and when to world that they have inherited. We seek their preservation. need a response that is about education and culture – a spurt of We neither can, nor should, deny learning and creativity so that the individual character of our hundreds, then thousands and then young people. Rather, we should hundreds of thousands of young furnish them with abundant people will take up the energy of opportunities to figure out the ways collective challenges that cherish in which the will mean humanity and embody Jewish different things for them at various values. Such agencies and programs times, so that they will feel the pull will tell a complex and engrossing to engage in myriad ways story of Jewish success, throughout life. We must aim to shortcomings and possibilities. We allow each person to become need to articulate more of these him/herself, to build a life of narratives so that they unlock meaningful endeavor in general, and further potential for collective in regard to Israel in particular. A endeavor. Compelling narratives generation ago the American Jewish are not amenable to being drafted leader Abba Hillel Silver called it by individuals in their study or on "an errand on earth". top of their mountain. They emerge to be articulated by wonderful So the challenge to liberate asks communicators from a delicate not to operate in command and interplay of the existential need of control fashion, but to open up to the hour, the wellsprings of the the possibilities of alternate ways of cultural inheritance and the doing things, of empowering young momentous hopes and dreams people to make informed choices embodied in human activity. from sophisticated and compelling alternatives. The philosopher Liberate – The Challenge: to Hannah Arendt wrote that: balance loyalty with liberty "Education is..(when).. we The third challenge relates to the decide whether we love the autonomy of the learner, or to the world enough to assume learner's sense of liberty. One of the responsibility for it… whether wonders of our era is the driving we love the world enough to sense of liberty – to develop one's save it from ruin…by offering own talents, aptitudes, passions, it to the new and the abilities, and critical faculties. Not young…for renewal…" to do what everyone else wants you The modern history of the Jewish to do – but what makes the most of People should give us confidence your uniqueness. Above all, this that young people can forge means to stand apart, to not just remarkable innovations. In a 6 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom multitude of circumstances, further experience.” Rather than sometimes with the help of a inviting a profound engagement, guiding spirit but often without, Israel education has largely been they succeeded in political about the "initiation" domain, to the campaigns, cultural creativity, neglect of the "elevation" and educational and social projects. So "liberation" domains. The ways in we have to do much – but not which we have largely "done" Israel everything. Most of all we must education for both Israelis and Jews clear some space so that we do not around the world has in effect knock from the hands of the young stunted the growth of the students the opportunity to do something and participants. We need to different, something innovative, and investigate the extent to which our something significant. frameworks have inhibited or expanded the potential for young Building the Field of Israel and Jews to renew Israel in their own Jewish Peoplehood Education Jewish lives. Have the experiences There is a clear and undeniable that we have provided struck an tension between these domains. If appropriate balance between we were to excel at initiation then initiation, liberation and elevation? we undermine liberation, and vice Or have we too readily required versa. Were we to craft compelling conformity with our understandings, new collective narratives and mores and norms? Could our elevate Israel and Jewish frameworks be offering fruitful new Peoplehood, then we risk alienating avenues of engagement for both young people who treasure their individual Jews and as a collective? liberation. If we succeed in stimulating autonomy then we This effort will need to place Israel destabilize our attempts at as a core component in the initiation and we may end up with a conceptions of Jewish identity. It barely recognizable continuity with cannot be based on a crisis view of Jewish experience. These Israel that needs to be "saved"; but challenges are faced by any on an inviting view of Israel that educator and they are not amenable needs to be "enjoined". To build the to easy resolution. field we now understand that to engage with Israel is a multi- Indeed, an intelligent mode of dimensional process that involves, encounter might well be to maintain at least, three overlapping arenas: all three domains in a delicate • Education – the knowledge and balance. My sense is that Israel understandings of Israel and education in recent decades has Jewish Peoplehood that largely been "mis-educative," to use shape lifelong experiences the philosopher John Dewey's • Arts – the creativity and evocative phrase. Dewey defined it vitality of Israeli culture that thus: "Any experience is mis- shape imaginative interaction educative that has the effect of with Israel's complexity and arresting or distorting the growth of potential 7 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

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• Travel – the transformative the individual." spiral of trips and visits that shape a maturing relationship In history and social studies we have on the personal and the opportunity to think and collective levels experience beyond ourselves. As education professor Sam Wineburg Each of these arenas rests on writes: differing assumptions as to what is "Mature historical knowing desirable and acceptable in terms of teaches us to go beyond our knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. own image, to go beyond our They "speak" in different codes that brief life, and to go beyond educators will have to learn to the fleeting moment in speak and create and it will be human history into which important not to artificially reduce we've been born. History the opportunities embedded in educates ("leads outward" in these codes. the Latin) in the deepest sense….it does the best in Each arena has the potential to use teaching those virtues once Tanach, history, social studies, reserved for theology - the Hebrew and the arts as guiding virtue of humility, in the face content and as profound resources of our limits to know; and the for creativity. For example, by virtue of awe, in the face of exploring the Tanach as a text of the expanse of human Israel, we authenticate our efforts. history." It is extremely difficult (although some have succeeded) to teach In our context, its invitation to Tanach devoid of place and Zionist young people to enter into the story symbolism. The renowned Israeli of Israel as active interpreters of novelist S.Y. Agnon once spoke the events that shaped our about the multi-faceted nature of contemporary situation is also an Israel. invitation to refuse to settle for "Some say: A land in which what older generations have there will be no want, bequeathed. It is to stimulate them echoing the book of D'varim to look at their own personal history chapter 8. And others say: A and the origins and development of land which devours its their own Jewish community as a inhabitants", as is written in way of gaining pride and ownership the book of BaMidbar chapter of their Jewish story. On that basis 13. I said to them, it is they can engage with wider circles similar to the sun - the of history to build points of righteous are healed by it and connection and separation. It may the evil are burned by it, and also indicate the tantalizing it is one and the same sun. possibility that all is not completed; Thus it is with the Land of that human actions can shape Israel - the Land is but a momentous events; and that if reflection of the character of much of what we have today has 8 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom been made by humans, then it can from various backgrounds and be remade by them as well. countries, from Israel and around the world. As Israel Studies is itself Literature and the arts offer us the only a generation old and much of it remarkable educational potential is concerned with the political for empathy. Whilst not exclusively arena, our content specialists will so, novels, poetry, music, dance, be drawn also from Bible, Jewish theater, and the associated creative literature, philosophy and history. forms are notorious for giving The second source of expertise will educators headaches. Just when the be those educationalists who think gifted teacher has shaped order out about ethnicity, cultural citizenship of chaos in the student's mind, along and social and collective identity. come the arts to rattle the cage and The third voice will be expert protest that "out of the crooked reflective practitioners from timber of humanity, nothing straight schools, camps, arts festivals, will ever be made," as Isaiah Berlin synagogues and adult learning made famous. The edginess and programs. Such a group will grapple iconoclasm leads anthropologist with the design of the intellectual Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to and educational tools that are claim: worthy of being experimented with "What is clear…is that Jewish in our era. They will challenge each youth subcultures are a other and provide the focal point laboratory where new kinds for a concerted, but disparate, of community are being effort to be more innovative. formed, aided by the latest technologies, and Recognizing the Potential participants are engaging in The tremendous potential inherent innovative cultural and in the Jewish State and the Jewish artistic expression – and communities presents a forming a distinctive sense of responsibility to wrestle afresh with themselves in the process." great themes of human concern: solidarity, power, liberty, justice The arts scene in Israel is vibrant and homecoming. These themes and things too are happening in route the Jewish story through a Jewish communities around the perpetual dance that links Israel and globe. What would a Jewish Jewish Peoplehood, and can Peoplehood and Israel arts engagingly link the search for education look like? individual and collective meaning. It In order to unravel some of these can galvanize educators, community conundrums and provide some workers, rabbis and cultural thoughtful suggestions for educators innovators, to unleash thoughtful and community arts workers, teams conceptions of the collective future of people will need to be assembled that have a moral conversation at to build the field of Israel and their heart. There will be a kind of Jewish Peoplehood education. The broadminded communitarianism, an contributors will have to be drawn open ethnicity, a liberal 9 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom peoplehood. It will be a design can now offer young people an through which Jews can bring enchanting canvas upon which to Zionism (as an activist orientation) create: "tov l'chiot b'ad ameinu – it to history, Israel (as a unique Jewish is good to live for our people." This political and cultural laboratory) people have a unique role in the and Jewish Peoplehood (as an world and the platform of the anchoring affinity of varied talents) independent Jewish state is a robust into creative tension with other one upon which to inherit our cultures. collective future.

Jews in Israel and around the world Jacob wrestled with the angel to will rediscover a conversation that earn the blessing of becoming enriches them and inspires them to Israel. Many people around the adopt new projects in response to world ask the question: what will their shared sense of common Israel become? It is a good and challenges. There will be countless important question. But it is only and varied ways, in which they half the equation. We must ask not learn, live and laugh together. They only "what will Israel become," but will cross established lines and "when will we become Israel?" When figure out how to celebrate and will we have worked so hard at our commemorate together. They will future individual and collective challenge each other to forge challenges that we are worthy of engaging links across time and the name Israel? place, whilst addressing matters of ultimate concern in Israel, That is the challenge of Israel throughout world Jewry and in other education: to initiate so that we all places of human need. All of this know of Jacob's name change, to will galvanize change at the liberate so that we each tousle with grassroots of Jewish life, and will our own angel and realize our inevitably lead to renewed potential, and to elevate so that our communal frameworks and collective actions merit the blessing international configurations of being called Israel. appropriate to the new era. The tasks are no longer the ones that Herzl accomplished; they are the Yonatan Ariel is MAKOM’s ones that confront the modern city Executive Director. He lectures of Herzliya. widely in the fields of

Contemporary Jewry and I grew up on the understanding that Experiential Education. Yosef Trumpeldor, the valiant defender of Tel Hai, left this world with a phrase on his lips: "Tov lamut (Article published in "From b'ad artzeinu – it is good to die for Altneuland to : Of Dreams our country". Thankfully we have and Deeds" Ed. D. Breakstone & A. succeeded in establishing the Feldstein, The Zionist Library 2006) sovereign state in the land and we 10 From Herzl to Herzliya / Ariel www.makomisrael.net

Israel Engagement Network מקום-Ma-kom

MAKOM – Israel Engagement Network

MAKOM is the Hebrew word for place. It is also a name for God. Resonating with both the earth and the heavens, it symbolizes our efforts to renew the place of Israel in Jewish life. Through a network of labs, local leaders - in travel, education, the arts and religion - are mentored to create the compelling content needed to build the field of Israel engagement for our times. MAKOM is a collaborative initiative of the Jewish Agency's Education Department, Jewish community leadership and philanthropic partners.

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