The last 200 years saw major events in the Jewish world. Jews gained citizenship; received secular educations as Jewish enlightenment spread through Europe; and saw Theodor Herzl’s Zionism stir the hope for a Jewish homeland.
Most Jewish adults know about these decisive events, but your children do not. True Jewish heroes like Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir dedicated their lives to the rebirth of Israel. You know their stories, but your children know little about them. The heroics that lifted Jews from the ghettos of Europe to a Jewish homeland are not taught. Not in public schools – not even in Hebrew schools – do Jewish children learn about modern Jewish history.
One exception frames this lapse: the study of the Holocaust. That most inhuman of crimes is taught in public and Hebrew schools and even by organizations dedicated to the subject, like Facing History and Ourselves. While the murder of one-third of Europe’s Jews is studied in depth, Jewish history both before and after the Holocaust is missing from school curricula. Can the context of the Holocaust be fully understood without knowledge of the European anti-Semitism that preceded it?
For Jewish children, this lack of Jewish history is a loss of part of their heritage. For the majority of Jewish children, their great-grandparents arrived in this country less than 150 years ago. What happened before then? Where and how did their families live in Europe? For that matter, what happened when their refugee families first arrived in this country? This is not just Jewish history, it is their family’s history; and today’s Jewish children know little about it.
With this lapse in Jewish education, we still expect our children to have close ties – even love – for Israel. We expect it without teaching about the heroes and events that made the rebirth of Israel possible.
This void in the historical background makes Jewish youth susceptible to the Palestinian propaganda that Israel is the “bully of the Middle East.” Without the knowledge of Israel’s wars of survival and ongoing struggle against terrorism, our children do not have the answers to confront anti-Israel libel. They do not have the historical background and understanding of the inherent right for a Jewish state in the Middle East when Israel is accused of being a Western colonizer.
Jewish children must be taught that their people’s Diaspora ended in the 20th century. The place for these lessons is in Hebrew school.
When Jewish educators are asked why they do not teach modern Jewish history, the answer is some variant of, “We do not have enough time.” They are faced with a range of Jewish subjects that crowd the short Hebrew school hours available to them. But the issue of available time must be considered along with subject priorities, a difficult choice.
Are the ties our children have with Israel or even with Jewish identity important enough to include modern Jewish history as part of their education? That question has import when you ask, in the future, how many Jewish children will attend Hebrew schools if they do not have the history of their heritage that gives them the connection to a Jewish life?