Should bible studies remain in Israeli public schools? Teachers' attitudes towards bible teaching as a mandatory subject

Religious Education, Spring 2003 by Idalovichi, Israel

Zionist ideology has been grounded on the similarity between the modern settlement of the Land of Israel and the biblical conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. The Bible's historical credibility is deeply tied up with the history of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel and the claims of the Jewish people to its homeland and its heritage. The conquest was one of the shaping events of the people of Israel in biblical historiography, which put down in writing how the land was conquered from the Canaanites. Yet, serious difficulties have cropped up precisely in attempts to locate archeological corroboration for the narrative. There are biblical scholars who, based on archeological findings, suggest the conquest stories should be viewed as etiological legends-no more.

Yet, any questioning of the reliability of biblical portrayals is perceived by Zionists as an attempt to undermine their historic right to the Land of Israel and shatter the ethos of the Zionist endeavor as renewal of the ancient Kingdom of Israel by the nation. Biblical symbols serve as critical elements in the construction of the modern Israeli identity. Adoption of archeological facts, invalidation of biblical myths as historical events, threatens Israeli identity and undermines the foundations of many fundamentalist Christians' core religious beliefs.

Others argue that what is written in the Bible-a collection of legends and stories inspired by many sources, mainly from Babylonian sources-is totally irrelevant to the Jewish people's right to the Land of Israel. Still, even these individuals who view the Bible as literature perceive it as sitting at the very core of Zionist cultural rebirth that places emphasis on the biblical rather than rabbinical and halachic (Jewish laws) texts-the latter largely tied to Diaspora existence. Thus, secular Jewish society exhibits a strong affinity for biblical texts-quoted time and time again by educators, social figures, military leaders, and politicians-primarily as ammunition in political debate, a kind of "showdown" between verses about peace and verses about war. This bible-spouting, however, is worthless from the Jewish-religious standpoint: from the enlightened Orthodox worldview, the Bible's power is solely derived from the authority of the rabbis (religious leaders) who selected the twenty-four books (these and not others), which are considered sacred-Gods word (Leibowitz 1992).

THE NEW ISRAELI ETHOS

The new Israeli ethos (secular, modern, social-democratic, and universalistic) espoused by half the country's population is denied by the other half as subculture, non-Jewish, containing no "values." Traditional religious society condemns secular society to be a contemporary consumerist, materialist culture, disassociated from the primordial being of earth, from its Jewish roots and culture. According to the religious worldview, modern secular culture is urban rootlessness, commercialized, false, a ravishing of nature by technological violence.

The rejection of one's Jewish identity by most of Israeli society has emerged in the general public arena, deepening the country's identity crisis and its cultural war. The secular Israeli society tries to replace the national-Zionist Jew with a universal man and at a higher level with "an enlightened European intellectual." These Israelis imagine themselves to be the sole carriers of the values of modernity and enlightenment, struggling against clerical attempt to impose on Israel a return to the Dark Ages and strict collective religious identity. For secular teachers, teaching the Bible is a problematic issue; the most embarrassing aspect being the omnipresence of God in the texts, who is treated in the Israeli society as the monopoly of Orthodox Jews. It is hard to understand and to discuss the prophetic experience, for example, without talking about God.