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128
srael's culture wars have
erupted anew. This battle
swirls around the "Values Ed-
ucation Authority" of the Ed-
ucation Ministry, which is
controlled by religious political
parties.
The new authority would have
responsibility for teaching "val-
ues" to Israeli pupils. It is the out-
come of the National Religious
Party's Knesset cam-
Zevulun
Paign.
Hammer of
In an attempt to the National
attract middle-of-
Religious
the-road, secular vot-
Party.
ers, the NRP stayed
clear of controversial
issues such as emphasizing the
need for West Bank settlements.
Instead, it concentrated on an ap-
peal to citizens who were afraid
that their children were growing
up rootless, without a sense of be-
ing Jewish.
It worked; the NRPs Knesset
strength grew from six seats to
nine. The party estimates that
the additional seats came on the
strength of non-religious voters.
The vote also returned NRP
leader Zvulun Hammer to his old
seat as Minister of Education. He
then crafted the idea for a Val-
ues Education Authority. The
controversial idea has him re-
peatedly trying to assure liber-
al Israelis that it is an innocent
notion, which it seems to be.
`The strengthening of Jewish,
Zionist and values education will
not be achieved through coercion
or command, but rather through
understanding, explanation, tol-
erance and the desire to know the
sources of Israel's heritage," he
said recently.
The NRP's campaign pitch
was for Jewish values, and this
does appear to be Mr. Hammer's
main concern. But when the Ed-
ucation Ministry talks about
teaching values, it means both
religious and non-religious val-
ues — Jewish, democratic, hu-
man, all kinds of values.
Officially, Israeli schools al-
ready teach these topics; there
are separate units for Jewish ed-
ucation, democracy, family life,
citizenship, even for the preven-
tion of traffic accidents. The new
Values Education Authority
would encompass all these units,
enabling the whole to be greater
than the sum of its parts.
One liberal educator in the
ministry, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, predicted the au-
thority "will swallow up the non-
religious units."
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a Labor Par-
ty member of the Knesset Edu-
cation Committee, said the
creation of the authority consti-
tuted "administrative imperial-
ism. It means imposing one view
— the religious view — on a plu-
ralistic society."
Liberal fears were heightened
with the emergence of a leading
candidate for the job to head the
authority — Avraham Lifschitz,
the former head of the NRP's
Bnei Akiva youth movement.
Bnei Akiva, the largest and by
far the fastest growing of all Is-
raeli youth movements, has
moved further to the right in re-
cent years, both politically and
religiously. The fear among the
non-religious is that Mr. Lif-
schitz, with Mr. Harnmer's back-
ing, will try to turn all Israeli
youth into Bnei Akiva boys and
girls.
Meretz's Amnon Rubinstein,
Mr. Hammer's predecessor as ed-
ucation minister, said, "If it in-
deed proves to be true that the
appointee [to head the Authori-
ty] will be the former secretary-
general of Bnei Akiva — a
movement whose views and val-
ues we know well — it will be a
terrible day for public education."
He added, "There won't be
anyone to defend' [secular] pub-
lic education."
Mr. Lifschitz denies this. As
an example, he suggests in-
creased gatherings in which re-
ligious and secular students
study Jewish texts. The teach-
ing, he stresses, would have "nei-
ther a religious nor non-religious
orientation."
The obvious question in all this
is: Where would Israeli Arab stu-
dents, who make up about 20
percent of the school population,
fit in the drive towards "Jewish
values?" Apparently, planners of
the Authority haven't come up
VALUES page 130
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