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School opens, minds close By Gershom Gorenberg Tags: Israel, education The season for buying schoolbooks has come: Math and Mishnah, history and humash with commentaries. On the first day of classes, parents will drop their kids off at religious schools on their way to the office. Someone with an eye for detail might notice that the female teachers are nearly all wearing headscarves or hats. Most mothers have their hair uncovered. If you ask a father the date, he'll answer, "September 1." On the chalkboard, a teacher will write, "Elul 1." At the gates of the state religious schools, in many places in Israel, two cultures meet. One, religious and modern, turns over its sons and daughters to the other, more insular, to educate them in its stead. The parents live with their children alongside secular families in mixed neighborhoods. A quick glance at a list of the teachers' phone numbers reveals that many live in settlements or in neighborhoods known as Haredi or Hardali - religiously ultra-Orthodox, politically ultra-nationalist. The geographic gap reflects a rift in attitudes toward religion and toward the wider world. It expresses itself in how each side relates to secular culture, to non-Jews, to the limits of rabbinic authority, and to the manner of thinking about politics. The parents are often unaware of the gap. Most lean rightward politically. But their views are based on pragmatic and nationalist considerations - in contrast to the messianic politics of many of the teachers. And the minority of parents who lean leftward? If they pay attention to the right-wing atmosphere in the schools, they accept it as the price of religious education. Advertisement My eldest child will be drafted soon. Since he entered kindergarten, I've kept a mental list of the "educational" messages he and his sisters have been given in school as if it were impossible to teach someone to be religious without them: The kindergarten teacher who devoted a morning to teaching that "the Tomb of the Patriarchs belongs only to Jews"; the homeroom teacher who spoke daily of approaching redemption and of the new dress she kept in her closet to wear when the messiah comes; the teacher who added psalms to morning prayers to entreat God to stop the "expulsion" of the Gush Katif settlers, and who didn't understand my complaint that she had injected politics into the classroom. In Shabbat conversations with friends, I sometimes shout, "This isn't my religion." "Why get upset?" they answer. After all, everyone knows that Haredi and Hardali educators run the schools. At first glance, the reason is obvious. Haredi and Hardali society is highly ideological. Education is regarded as a mission. But fulfilling a mission requires supportive conditions. Here are some: It's no secret that teachers' salaries have eroded. It's easier to support a family on that shrunken pay when the state is underwriting your livelihood in a settlement - when, for instance, you pay for a home bought at a reduced price with a large, subsidized mortgage. It's no wonder that the settlements, some of them homogenous religious communities, are home to many of the teachers of religious schools in the cities. That might change if the settlement budget were used instead to fund education. Even a person of faith does not expect miracles on that order. The unintended consequences of feminism also play a role. Once teaching was the default profession for educated women. Today in moderate religious society, a young woman can aspire to be a lawyer, businesswoman or software engineer. That welcome change is coming far more slowly to Haredi society, which meanwhile exports its surplus teachers to the state religious system. On the male side, the hesder yeshivot manufacture teachers. For hesder students, whose army service is combined with religious studies, getting a teaching certificate is much quicker and easier than acquiring another profession. For those who are already married by the time they finish their studies and army service, this is an offer nearly impossible to refuse. They arrive in the schools to teach religious subjects, bearing messianic theology but with virtually no general education. These conditions aren't about to disappear, nor is the parent-teacher gap. The problem is that many parents don't challenge the messages their children absorb in class. They treat their own choice of moderate religiosity, their decision to acquire higher education, their rejection of the latest halakhic excesses as if these were signs of religious weakness. The opposite is the case. These are principled choices, which they should defend and pass on to their children. Once, when my son was little, we were walking to synagogue on Shabbat morning and discussing the Torah portion. Another worshiper who heard our conversation and was apparently surprised by my "leftist" interpretation leapt out from behind me and said, "You're indoctrinating your son." "If I don't do it myself," I answered, "others will gladly do it for me." Gershom Gorenberg blogs at southjerusalem.com Bookmark to del.icio.us   World War III A top Iranian general says an attack on Tehran would ignite a 'world war'. Raising the price Hamas says won't compromise, Israel must free 1,000 prisoners for Shalit.

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