Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Gershom Gorenberg, School opens, minds close - Haaretz, August 29, 2008

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.

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.”