Of the 3,000 external education programs operating in Israel's secular schools, 48 receive government funding from the Education Ministry's Torah Culture Department. It is worth noting that the focus of 40 of those 48 programs is Judaism. This is the case despite the fact that these organizations do not operate in the spirit of the Shenhar Committee Report, which in the 1990s, concluded that students in secular schools should learn about Jewish religion and culture through a critical and pluralistic approach, and not through religious indoctrination. These organizations are at work not in religious schools, but secular public schools.
This is the case with one religious seminary in Hod Hasharon, which received 276,000 shekels (around $78,000) in government funds and whose stated objective is "the acquisition of basic Jewish values by children in the public education system." This is but one example of a patronizing and missionary outlook, which sees the secular public as Jews who inadvertently sin because they have not been raised to appreciate Judaism and must therefore be corrected and saved.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Then-Education Minister Naftali Bennett's decision on, of all days, the eve of the Knesset's dissolution, to pass regulation according to which schools are not obligated to inform parents of the activities of religious organizations in their children's schools or receive parents' authorization to do so has the secular public with the sense this last-minute decision was aimed at influencing the very character of the secular schools where they have chosen to send their children.
The public school system is under attack. On one hand, it is discriminated against when it comes to school budgets; the budget allocated to students at secular schools is 25% lower than that allocated to students at state religious schools. At the same time, religious organizations are standing at the schools' gates and offering – through government funding – a patriarchal and political Judaism that puts God at the center and women and men at the rear. This is in complete opposition to the basic values of secular society.
The connection between the religion of Israel, the people of Israel and the land of Israel is well-known. From my lengthy acquaintance with the education system, I can testify that the relationship between religion and nationalism is a subject of concern for but a small number of educated groups.
No, it is not the nationalist political markers in the religious education system that the secular public seeks to draw attention to. This public is truly bothered by the process of religification, a process that it sees happening right before its eyes and is not the product of its imagination. To ignore the values of the public school system, foremost among them humanism, liberalism, democracy, equality and man's position at the center is to not understand the nature of public education and what it is that has the secular public so worried.
