CURRENT ISSUES FOR OUR IRAC COMMUNITY

This week, the new school year began. As my youngest graduated high school last spring, for the first time in 23 years none of my own children will be attending. Still, just as every year around this time, the radio plays the song “Kol Od” (“As Long As”), lyrics by Ali Mohar set to a melody by Yoni Rechter, recorded by Rechter with Avner Kaner:
 
A child walks down the street
On a bright morning in Tishrei
The children are going back to school again
...
A man in the middle of the morning
A man in the midst of his life
Stands alone beside a schoolyard fence
And he remembers how his father
Once walked behind him
 
This song always brings tears to my eyes. Tears of nostalgia for my own childhood. Tears of anticipation for new beginnings and for the promise of learning and growth. This year, "Kol Od" resonates on a national level. With elections just around the corner, there is a sense that we have a real opportunity for repair, for new beginnings, and for rebuilding.
 
There are numerous ways to repair and rebuild. Janusz Korczak, an educator who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto and was murdered along with the children in his care, said: “Those who care for days sow wheat; those who care for years plant trees; those who care for generations educate people.”
 
Alongside our efforts to address the urgent challenges of the here and now, we know that shaping the education of the next generation is one of the most important challenges we face. While this is always true, it is especially so today, when we are hearing more and more voices of extremism and racism coming from the younger generation. Instilling the values of democracy, tolerance, and compassion in the next generation has never been more urgent.
 
This is why we are working to ensure that the mandated core curriculum, including civics and the basic precepts of democracy, is taught in all educational institutions—including ultra-Orthodox schools. All children should learn not only math, English, and science, but also what it means for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state.
 
This is also why we are working to ensure that the Judaism presented to students in Israel’s public school system is pluralistic, not narrow and coercive. In many secular public schools, Judaism is taught by Orthodox National Service volunteers, who present Orthodox observance as the norm and encourage the students to adopt it, even when it contradicts their families' customs and values, and without even acknowledging other ways of being Jewish that are more compatible with their worldviews.
 
There is a growing tendency of young Israeli Jews to reduce Jewish identity to visible markers of ritual observance — putting on tefillin, wearing "modest" clothing , keeping kosher, observing Shabbat prohibitions — without engaging in a deeper exploration of the richness and values of Jewish tradition that, among other things, emphasizes ethical teachings that govern how we are obligated to treat one another.
 
Jewish education in our schools must reflect the idea that the Torah has seventy faces - that Judaism contains multiple voices, interpretations, and ways of being Jewish. It must also emphasize the Jewish values of  compassion and responsibility towards all other human beings, embodied in the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
 
Under a new government, we will work to ensure that students throughout Israel encounter a Judaism that embraces equality, tolerance, and respect for others and that meaningful resources are invested in making liberal and pluralistic Judaism, democratic values, and principles of shared society a central part of Israel’s education system.
 
The education system should also create opportunities for students to engage with those who are different from them — Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, and people from different communities and backgrounds — and foster a genuine commitment to living together in a diverse democratic society.
 
As long as the morning rises
As long as the board is written on
As long as a son walks
And his father follows behind
As long as the children sing
About a new year
As long as everything here
Begins again from the beginning.
 
There is so much that needs to be repaired. The beginning of every school year reminds us that there is a possibility for change. We create it, slowly, through what we teach our children – about Judaism, about democracy, about one another.
 
For 23 years, at the beginning of every school year, I looked forward to watching my children set off for a new beginning. This year, for the first time, none of them will walk through the school gates. But other children will, and what they encounter on the other side will help determine the Israel we become. We owe them an education that teaches them not to fear difference, but to embrace it — and that gives them the values and tools to build a more compassionate, pluralistic, equal, and democratic Israel.
 
There is much to repair. But as long as a new generation is still learning, there is always the possibility of beginning again.
 
Sincerely,
Orly Erez-Likhovski