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Who's Sadat? Or, Defining Israel Literacy Upward

At a Shabbat dinner not too long ago, I referred to the excitement caused by “Sadat's trip to Jerusalem” in 1977.  "Who's Sadat?" asked my neighbor--a rabbinical student.  I was shocked.  I had already read and been alarmed by Daniel Gordis' 2011 article in Commentary about young rabbis turning against Israel.  Still, I had imagined that even the rabbis he described (and I'm still not sure how representative they are) knew something about what they were rejecting.  But if this young man, who was by no means an anti-Zionist, didn't know something so basic, what could one conclude about the rest of his age cohort?  

I can't say what percentage of the younger American rabbis are able to identify the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, but I do know that the rank and file of American Jewry is becoming less and less well informed about Zionism and Israel—and so is its leadership, professional and lay.  While this is lamentable, it is also, in a way, a sign of strength.  When Israel was new, small, and weak, it needed the Diaspora to furnish immigrants, money, and political support.  In the days when they were worried about Israel, Diaspora Jews kept their eyes focused on it.  Now, however, when Israel has become a more mature, stable society, by far the strongest state in its region, it commands much less attention.  And since, as Hillel Halkin observed some years ago, American and Israeli Jewry live largely separate lives, why should we be surprised if the former loses sight of the latter?

There are, of course, other factors in play here.  To some extent, ignorance of Israel reflects assimilation and ignorance of things Jewish in general.  Some unassimilated American Jews are much more interested in their own spiritual journeys than they are in something as down-to-earth as Zion.  Others, who do care about what happens here below, don't like what they see coming out of Israel—a country that they perceive, sadly enough, as more than anything else an occupier and an oppressor.

But whatever the cause—benign neglect of Israel or alienation from it—the result is usually the same: a shameful lack of knowledge.  Shameful, however, is not the same thing as inevitable.  Is there anything that can be done to alter the current situation?

Adult educational programs can remedy many of our current ills.  As the founding dean of Boston’s Jewish adult education program, Me'ah (Hebrew for “100,” the number of hours in a two-year Me’ah course), which has served in recent years as a national model, I have seen how a concerted effort can go a long way toward establishing a higher level of Jewish literacy, not least among skilled professionals working in Jewish communal institutions.  Something like Me'ah could no doubt help to increase Israel literacy in a similar fashion, and it could have a ripple effect similar to the one that Me’ah has had on the entire Jewish community of Greater Boston and other areas.    

To achieve its goals, such a program needs two things: educational excellence and an openness to what I’d term “strangeness” rather than “relevance.”  Educational excellence requires a coherent philosophy, as well as a curriculum that embodies and elaborates that philosophy.  This curriculum must be attentive both to historical context and the content of ideas.  The people who present it are of crucial importance.  Me'ah has succeeded because it has featured top-flight instructors, people with deep expertise in their subjects as well as a readiness to take their adult students seriously.  Me'ah has always demonstrated a strong commitment to the autonomy of the learner: no hidden agendas lurk in the program or the teaching.  Me'ah-style education on the subject of Israel would have to be provided by genuine experts who strive not to indoctrinate but to teach in an open and honest fashion.  

Second, it is necessary to come face to face with strangeness.  From its inception, Zionism constituted a revolutionary challenge to the Diaspora and its way of life.  The special character of the Zionist idea cannot be understood without confronting its preference for Jewish sovereignty over the integration of Jews into other nations.  In many of its iterations, Zionism has placed a higher value on the community than the freedom of the individual.  The serious study of Zionism and Israel therefore requires Diaspora Jews to distance themselves from some of their most cherished ideas and think critically not just about texts and ideas but about what it means to have a Jewish nationalist worldview.

Right now, I am aware, increasing money and effort are being poured into Israel education. But they are not being invested wisely.  Most new efforts speak of "encounter", "engagement", or "experience"—that is, creating events, led by rabbis, educators, or communal professionals, at which people can share their opinions and feelings.  This may serve some useful purpose, but how do these encounters enable people to build skills and knowledge?  What do people learn in their meetings about who Ben-Gurion was, what he did, and what difference those deeds made in his time and for ours?  And do encounters, engagements, or experiences really afford their participants an opportunity to exercise their personal autonomy as human beings, learners, and Jews?

A relatively new concept made its way into Israeli educational life a few years ago—the idea of gibush, which could perhaps best be translated as “crystallization.”  Gibush conveys the sense that learning should be civic in nature.  One enters an educational experience not just for the experience itself, or for personal growth, but to learn how to take responsibility for something larger than oneself. The group forms the individual, and vice versa. Deep education organized around Zionism and Israel should take this notion to heart, and focus on pointing the individual toward Jewish history, Jewish ideas, and Jewish purposes, not via comfortable chat but by bringing learners into the conversation that constituted a key part of Zionism from the beginning.  What is anti-Semitism, and is it inevitable?  What right do the Jews have to resettle Palestine?  How ought they to relate to their Arab neighbors?  What kind of a state should the Jews construct?  All of these questions, and many more, preoccupied thinkers like Leon Pinsker, Ahad Ha'am, Berl Katznelson, and Rabbi Abraham Kook.  One must read their writings and get to know them.  And one must know not only what the Zionist thinkers said but what Zionists actors did—Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, the successive waves of immigrants, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin.  Nor should I leave out, just because he wasn't a Zionist, Anwar Sadat.  

David B. Starr is the founder of Tzion, a new program for teaching the history, texts, and ideas of Zionism and Israel.  Dr. Starr also teaches at Gann Academy and in the Jewish community.

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COMMENTS

Seth on March 4, 2013 at 11:29 am (Reply)
Had lunch with him once and found him to be very friendly. Nice post.
DrJLD on March 4, 2013 at 12:03 pm (Reply)
This is not only emblematic of young Jews in America. Americans at large are ignorant of most things in the world around them.

They simply are not educated properly by their horrible, politicized schools. Ignorance of most things of importance is rampant.

Young Jews are largely raised and educated in this environment. It is their parents that are failing them in terms of Jewish and Israeli matters.

My parents required that we attend Sunday (Saturday for some) school until we were graduated from high school. We were well educated in matters Jewish, including history, Hebrew, and Israel. We also went to Jewish summer camp as campers and counselors.

Parents who do not do this are failing both their children and their Judaism. I suppose many try to hide their Jewishness altogether, and their children follow them and then pay the price.
Mildred Bilt on March 4, 2013 at 7:50 pm (Reply)
DrJLD; Right on re; your first two paragraphs. The at large Americans are grossly ignorant of the country they live in and the world beyond the two oceans. As for the Jewish component of the population regardless of any religious training, they fare no better. Obviously your parents were of a different calibre. However most American Jewish parents as we march through the generations don't even know what they're saying when they say 'I am a Jew'. Some of them equate the statement as being equivalent to every Jew who has been awarded a Nobel prize or recognition for some honor or talent. They think this offers status and ergo, being a Jew is something to be proud of. That's the sum total of what they impart to their children who know nothing more. My own trek took me back to the beginnings; to know the histories and travelings of the Jewish people is to know the history and geography of the world. What a story! Who could believe it? Throw in Torah disourses, critiques, archeology,commentaries and there you have it. So that's who these people are. Impossible to believe but it's true. Then Israel is put into context-survival.
Michael Nutkiewicz on March 4, 2013 at 10:18 pm (Reply)
It's not a question of being illiterate about Israel and Zionism; the tragedy is the ignorance of basic world events and history.
vernue on March 5, 2013 at 1:41 am (Reply)
I agree with Dr. Starr that cognitive knowledge is a prerequisite for any reasonable definition of Jewish literacy, but I wonder if education for the sake of civic responsibility is a strong enough horse to pull that wagon. For adults, who have a broader - and deeper - understanding of the world, our place in it, and the questions that connect the two, the idea of gibbush is reasonable. However, my experience in teaching with the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School indicated to me that the main motivation for learning was to address existential questions that adolescence raises and education, from high school to college to life, doesn't often answer.

Israel is not the only answer to our educational woes, and many Israel programs are largely devoid of the type of seriousness that Dr. Starr - and I - see as fundamental. However, an Israel program that is educationally based can be transformational (disclaimer - I teach for the Alexander Muss High School in Israel. Gann Academy, where Dr. Starr teaches, sends a significant portion of their 11th grade class to us every year for a three month program). Teaching material, in this case Jewish history, in a context that both makes sense cognitively and is experientially compelling can have the result of placing a student inside our national narrative. The result we hope for is a life-long passion for Jewish learning and involvement.

We cannot compromise on knowledge, because knowledge is the key for understanding the "big questions," and provides the tools for interpreting experience. But knowledge is necessary only to the extent that it answers a question that flows from the heart.
ben on March 5, 2013 at 4:43 am (Reply)
Once in Jerusalem, some 10 years ago, I had a Shabbat dinner at a friend. A girl who was a reform rabbinical student was there. It was amazing to meet her. She was studying to be a "rabbi", and it was more or less the first time she was at a regular Shabbat meal, and she had no idea what the word "minhag" was.
So not knowing who Sadat was is really nothing serious.
reuven spero on March 5, 2013 at 11:45 am (Reply)
I agree with Dr. Starr that cognitive knowledge is a prerequisite for any reasonable definition of Jewish literacy, but I wonder if education for the sake of civic responsibility is a strong enough horse to pull that wagon. For adults, who have a broader - and deeper - understanding of the world, our place in it, and the questions that connect the two, the idea of gibbush is reasonable. However, my experience in teaching with the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School indicated to me that the main motivation for learning was to address existential questions that adolescence raises and education, from high school to college to life, doesn't often answer.

Israel is not the only answer to our educational woes, and many Israel programs are largely devoid of the type of seriousness that Dr. Starr - and I - see as fundamental. However, an Israel program that is educationally based can be transformational (disclaimer - I teach for the Alexander Muss High School in Israel. Gann Academy, where Dr. Starr teaches, sends a significant portion of their 11th grade class to us every year for a three month program). Teaching, in this case teaching Jewish history, in a context that both makes sense cognitively and is experientially compelling can have the result of placing a student inside our national narrative. The result we hope for is a life-long passion for Jewish learning and involvement.

We cannot compromise on knowledge, because knowledge is the key for understanding the "big questions," and provides the tools for interpreting experience. But knowledge is sought by a learner only to the extent that it answers a question that flows from the heart.
Steve on March 5, 2013 at 9:44 pm (Reply)
Unfortunately unless you are going to an Orthodox Talmud class, "Jewish" learning these days consists largely of reiterating the democratic party platform. Whatever your position is on abortion, gay marriage, race relations, affirmative action, I don't associate any of it with anything particularly "Jewish". But that is what passes for "Jewish" today in my experience. Most Americans are poorly educated for essentially the same reason. For example the history of WWII in my daughter's high school textbook was predominantly (by number of words) about the effect of the war on women, Mexicans, blacks, Indians. There was far, far more on the LA "zoot suit" disturbances than the battle of Stalingrad. However important those riots were, I just don't think they were quite as important as the battle. Any high school student even memorizing that book would would finish it knowing virtually nothing about the war. And I will guarantee you this - the good rabbi who knows not Sadat, knows all about how horrible the "settlements" are.
Rabbi Loren Sykes on March 12, 2013 at 12:19 pm (Reply)
Dr. Starr points to a key gap in the knowledge, education and understanding of far too many Jews today: Zionist thought and philosophy. While many have passion for and are "Pro-Israel" - witness the 13,000 plus people I just joined in Washington DC for the AIPAC Policy Conference - for many, if not most, Herzl, Ahad Ha'Am, Rav Kook, etc, are just names at best.

There are many potential explanations for this gap:

1. For those educated in Hebrew or religious school, there was limited time and many things had to be left out. Zionism was just one of many topics.

2. The "left" and "far left" demonized Israel and Zionism to the point that referring to one's self as Zionist was the equivalent of being a "racist." Pro-Israel was just easier. If Israel is an embarrassment to a self-declared Jew on the left, it is no wonder that they might not know of or want to learn about the great Zionist thinkers. For so many secular Jews, Israel represents a space they cannot even discuss in a positive way because it will cause friction with their other "friends" on the left.

3. The "right" and especially the "religious right" have taken or been allowed to take ownership of the great religious Zionist thinkers and those who were on the right in the movement. There is a sense that these thinkers are not ours or, worse, they are "their" philosopher and thus off limits.

My own rabbinic training, completed in the early 1990's (full disclosure - Dr. Starr and I were in the same Rishonim Class) lacked any meaningful exposure to Zionist thinkers. It was only my years at Camp Ramah, undergraduate courses at Columbia, and studies in Israel, that exposed me to the Zionist philosophy.

Dr. Starr's call for a a program that restores the great Zionist thinkers of every flavor to the knowledge base of Jewish education for every age and stage is right on target. I hope our national adult learning programs, from Melton to Context, as well as our day schools, camps, and religious schools answer his call. Zionist philosohy provides the intellectual commitment to Israel that is a necessary addition to the mifgashim that happen between North American Jews and Israelis as well as to the "Big Questions" that focus on our individual quests for meaning, purpose and connection.

Yasher Koah David!

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