6 Religious Divide’s Influence on Education in Israel
Cora Lanza
This chapter focused on the influence of the religious divide on education in Israel.
We suggest this citation for this chapter:
Cora, Lanza (2024). “Religious Divide’s Influence on Education in Israel.” In Zeedan, Rami (ed.), Israel’s Divides Explained. The University of Kansas. https://opentext.ku.edu/israelsdivides/
1. General Introduction:
Hello, welcome to the podcast series “Israel’s Divides Explained.” This episode focuses on the religious divide in Israel, which plays a key role in other divides within Israel. The main idea that I will be focusing on today in the religious divide is education and how the religious divide affects funding to the different sectors of education in Israel.
This podcast series episode was produced in spring 2023 as part of the course Israel: From Idea to Statehood with Prof. Zeedan at the University of Kansas.
I’m your host, Cora Lanza. I want to take a second to introduce myself. I am a sophomore at the University of Kansas studying political science and sociology. I have always been very passionate and interested in the social sciences, specifically how societies function and the best policies for a population. I do not have any personal connection to Israel; however, through this class, I have developed a better understanding of the culture, politics, and overall society of Israel.
2. Topic introduction:
So, let’s talk about the religious divide and education in Israel.
In this episode, I will investigate and provide an answer to the question of how the quality of education differs between streams of education. This question is important because it helps us understand how religious differences in education affect individuals in Israel and, on a larger scale, how they affect other divides in Israel, such as the political divide.
The information here is based on a selection of primary and secondary sources; however, this is not an exhaustive survey. One of my major sources for this episode is Elazar’s “Education in a Society at a Crossroads: an Historical Perspective on Israeli Schooling” (1997).
I will be posting my sources online. More details will be provided at the end of this episode.
In this episode, I will discuss four major items that help us understand the religious divide in Israel and how it affects education.
The first item will be a short introduction to Israel. Then, for the second item, I will introduce the six divides and provide more background on the religious divide. For item 3, I will discuss our question and explain how the religious divide affects the education system in Israel. Then, to wrap it up, I will look at the future of this topic.
Did you know that the Haredi population, aka the Ultra-Orthodox population, is growing rapidly in Israel?
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, in 2009, the Ultra-Orthodox population made up 10% of the Israeli population. In 2020, they made up 13% of the population. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the Haredi population will make up 16% of Israel’s population by 2030.
This will primarily affect the Haredi education stream. The number of Haredi students is increasing, which also means the education stream needs more funding, supplies, and staff. We will discuss how resources differ between educational streams shortly.
3. Central Section
3.1 Introduction to Israel
Israel started as an idea for Jews to have a safe place to call home. As antisemitism was becoming a big problem in Europe, many Jewish people thought it was time to find a safe place for the Jewish people. Leaders of Zionism decided that Palestine would be the place to start this Jewish state. After years of settling the area, it was clear that the settlements were threats to the existing Palestinians. After many different rulers of the land, wars, and agreements throughout the years, Israel declared itself a state in May 1948.
Although getting recognized as a state was an achievement for Jewish Zionists, some Jews were not as happy about this news. In the beginning, Ultra-Orthodox Jews were opposed to the idea of returning to the Holy Land as they believed it was against the Torah and were not supposed to return until the Messiah was on Earth. This means that from the beginning of the creation of Israel, there were already differing beliefs based on religious differences.
To this day, there are tensions between secular and traditional Jews and ultra-Orthodox Jews, as ultra-Orthodox Jews do not have to serve in the military and get money from the government for studying. Both secular and traditional Jews find it unfair since they are required to serve in the military.
To learn more about the tensions between secular and traditional Jews and Ultra-Orthodox-Jews, ABC News (2022) has a documentary on YouTube called “Inside Israel’s Closed Off Ultra-Orthodox Communities” that explains how these groups differ in culture, beliefs, and daily life.
3.2 Introduction to the Six Divides and the Religious Divide
There are six major divides in Israel (Zeedan, 2024). The political, national, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, and gender divides. The political divide is between left and right, but also between how democratic and Jewish the state should be. The national divide is between Arab-Palestinians, who are Israeli citizens, and Jewish Israelis. In many ways, Arab-Palestinians are denied rights in the state of Israel. The ethnic divide is primarily between Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and other ethnic minorities such as Sephardic and Ethiopian Jews. The socioeconomic divide overlaps with the ethnic divide and is about the social hierarchy of the different ethnic groups. There is also the gender divide, which is about how the different variations of Judaism view women’s rights and what rights they should or should not have.
However, today, I will be discussing the religious divide. The religious divide within Israel is primarily between secular Jews and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredi Jews. Secular Jews make up the majority of Jews in Israel.
Before the state of Israel was created in 1948, the Jewish Yishuv created a developed and functioning education system. The biggest problem with the education system was integrating many immigrant children who spoke several different languages. This meant that they had to create a system that catered to the needs of immigrant children while also creating an advancing education system that would set children up for successful futures.
The first time we see the streams of education in Israel was in the early 1900s when different groups of Zionist ideology created streams of education based on their beliefs in Zionism. There was Religious Zionism, which was based on Zionism, Jewish tradition, and socialism. Another stream was the General Zionists, who saw themselves as more European than the Religious Zionists. The Ultra-Orthodox Jews had their own stream not related to Zionism, as the majority of Ultra-Orthodox Jews did not agree with Zionism at the time.
As I said earlier, Haredi Jews are not required to serve in the military. However, there are exceptions to this, as there are Ultra-Orthodox Jews who choose to serve in the military, and a growing number of Haredi men are joining the secular workforce. A big difference between secular and Haredi Jews is that Ultra-Orthodox Jews primarily do not see the state of Israel as a religious authority the same way any other country is not a religious authority.
3.3 The answer to my question: how does the quality of education differ between education streams
Now, we move on to the answer to the question of how the religious divide affects education in Israel.
Education is an integral part of any operating society, and Israel is no exception. Creating quality education for all citizens is even more critical to society. And Israel is by far not the only country that falls short of that. Varying educations in Israel result in unequal education and furthers the religious divide.
First, I want to explore the issue of funding for Haredi education. This has been a hot topic in Israel as it involves both religious and political divides. Educational sectors differ greatly regarding subjects. The Haredi education stream is largely known for its lack of core subjects.
The government’s funding for the Haredi stream is similar to secular streams. However, according to the 2018 OECD Economic Surveys, funding is similar only for Haredi schools that teach secular subjects. Schools that receive funding must teach 100% of the core curriculum. Only about 57% of Haredi students attend these schools.
The topic of government funding, depending on how much of the core curriculum is taught in Haredi schools, is controversial in Israel. Is it just one part of the debate to either help integrate students into the workforce or to add even more incentives for Haredi men to study the Torah? This debate is very political so that I won’t get into that today, but it is important to note how both sides feel about the issue.
As I stated, the number of students in Haredi education is increasing. However, while this is increasing, so is the number of Haredi men in the workforce. So, if the number of Haredi students is increasing, that must mean people value the current educational system. The number of Haredi men in the workforce is also increasing, meaning it is important to prepare these students for the workforce by teaching them core curricula such as math, science, and English that will be useful in their jobs.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post (2022), Ze’ev Sklar is the CEO of Telem, a company that helps integrate Haredi Jews into the Tech sector. Sklar states, “Men and women in haredi society want to integrate into the job market, but it is difficult for those with minimal knowledge of core curriculum subjects – math, science, Hebrew grammar, and English – to begin university studies or get higher-paying jobs.” Therefore, it would be helpful for Haredi schools to teach core curriculum in addition to religious teachings.
Of course, education quality affects students’ skill levels. According to the 2015 PIAAC scores (OECD, 2018), Haredi young adults have weaker problem-solving skills than their non-Haredi counterparts. The main difference between the Haredi educational stream and the other is that it does not focus on secular skills. This is a clear difference between the secular streams. This is just one way that the religious divide is preserved in education.
So, what does the Haredi population think of secular subjects being taught? According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center (2016), 69% of Haredi Jews in Israel think secular education is essential to teach in their schools. This very much represents the divide in Haredi education as the majority of Haredi Jews support secular subjects in education, but there is still a significant amount that does not. Those who oppose secular subjects in Haredi education are primarily represented in the Knesset as members of the United Torah Judaism coalition party. They did not support budgets unless they promised the same funding for Ultra-Orthodox education as secular state-funded schools in February of 2023, as reported by The Times of Israel (2023).
Now, looking at the bigger picture of education divides in Israel, these different streams separate students by ethnicity and religion. One of the most significant ways that education in Israel furthers the religious divide is that children in different educational sectors do not interact with children from other educational sectors. Children come out of these sectors with different values and characteristics compared to other sectors.
This quote from President Reuven Rivlin (2015) explains how a divided education system leads to a divided nation. He says, “A child from Beth El, a child from Rahat, a child from Herzliya, and a child from Beitar Ilit—not only do they not meet each other, but they are educated toward a different outlook regarding the basic values and desired character of the State of Israel. Will this be a secular, liberal state, Jewish and democratic? Will it be a state based on Jewish religious law? Or a religious democratic state? Will it be a state of all its citizens and national ethnic groups? Tribe, by tribe, by tribe, by tribe.”
Laurence Wolff (2017), a journalist at Moment magazine, describes how little contact students have with students of different educational streams. Wolff writes, “Thirty-five percent of Jewish students and 27 percent of Arabs said they have never interacted with peers from the other group. Twenty percent of traditional and secular Jewish-Israeli teens have never held a conversation with an ultra-Orthodox peer. Forty-five percent of Jewish teens said they were not prepared to sit in the same classroom with Arab classmates, while 39 percent of Arab students said the same of their Jewish peers. One-third of Jewish teenagers report that they are fearful of Arabs.” This is precisely how the religious divide and education influence each other.
One of the biggest problems in the non-Haredi Jewish streams is that qualified and passionate teachers are hard to come by. The OECD Economic Surveys (2018) found that this impacts teaching quality. Not only is it hard to find teachers, but this is also influencing existing teachers’ workloads.
Wolff (2017) also explains that there is little overlap in teacher backgrounds in the streams. For example, there are very few Jewish teachers in Arab schools, and vice versa. Secular Jewish teachers are not allowed to teach in Haredi schools. This means students have almost no way of connecting with peers and adults who are different from themselves in school, which is a primary location for any child (Zeedan, 2022).
In Jaffa, there is an educational movement to add more multicultural schools for students of all religious backgrounds to play and learn together. Hand in Hand is the name of a kindergarten school in Jaffa, and many parents enjoy their children being around other children with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Ilan Grossman, Jonah’s parent, who attends Hand in Hand, says his son comes home and tells him about playing with the other students, fighting, and sharing food. Hand in Hand was created in 1998 in Jerusalem just as a kindergarten school, but now has a school that teaches up until the 12th grade.
The religious divide plays a key role in the quality of education in Israel. The government wants to see certain subjects in Haredi classes. This begs the question of what is the best solution to create equality and quality education in Israel while also respecting the religious beliefs of different Jewish sects.
3.4 Looking to the future:
Haredi education is changing. Numerous conversations are going on about secular education in Haredi education, not only in Israel but also in other countries like the United States.
On the other hand, in Haredi education, there is high hope that increased funding for schools that do not teach core subjects is on the way since Benjamin Netanyahu promised the increased budget while campaigning for the last election. The increased budget will continue to be a hot topic in ultra-Orthodox politics.
Scholar and author of Haredi education in Israel: fiscal solutions and practical challenges Ian Kingsbury (2020) thinks that the side that wants to increase the core curriculum in Haredi education is losing as Ultra-Orthodox political parties gain more power in the Knesset.
As for integrating different religious and ethnic groups into the same school, there isn’t much hope for this. It seems as if the Knesset is not open to multiculturalism in education. In December 2015, Education Minister Naftali Bennet at the time banned a story about a Jew and an Arab falling in love. As for the future of education politics, it is hard to know at the tapping of this episode as there is a current regime change taking place in Israel that will affect the education ministry. However, for multicultural education advocates in Israel, the hope is not high for government recognition of schools such as Hand in Hand.
I think this situation between religion and education is not unique to Israel. The debate about religious organizations and educational institutions getting government funding has been very popular in the United States in the past few decades.
4. Wrap-up and closing remarks
According to sociology, education is one of society’s most essential intuitions. Education helps strengthen a state’s polity and economy.
Education in Israel comes down to one of the biggest questions of the country: Can you have a state that is both religious and democratic? Education is a crucial part of a state’s democratic process. Giving citizens equal access to knowledge of many subjects is also essential in a democracy.
So, it begs the question, can separate mean equal? From the information I gathered in this episode, education in Israel is unequal. Many Haredi students are not prepared for the workforce if they choose to, and there is an increasing number of Haredi men in the workforce. There are also problems with equal education in the Arab-Israeli population, however this was not covered in this episode as this topic focuses on the Jewish religious divide in Israel. The separate stream of education also makes it very hard for students to interact with other students from different streams. So how exactly can education prepare them for the real world if they only learn in a bubble of people just like them?
As I stated before, this isn’t just a problem for Israel but also many other countries in the world. But it is crucial to fight for equal education for all.
I will be posting my sources for this episode online. Look at the page where you are listening to the episode for details about my sources.
And that brings me to the end of this podcast.
Thank you for tuning in; I hope you learned something new about Israel’s religious divide and education. To learn more about the other six divides of Israel, check out the other episodes of this series, “Israel’s Divides Explained,” produced by my classmates in the Spring 2023 semester. That is all I have for today. Thank you, and have a great day or night wherever you are.
5. Bibliography
5.1 Primary sources:
Australian Broadcasting Company News In-depth. “Inside Israel’s Closed off Ultra-Orthodox Communities | Foreign Correspondent.” Yutube, 14 Apr. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJnOlaZwMeg. Accessed 25 May 2022.
OECD (2018), “Improving the education system to enhance equity,” in OECD Economic Surveys: Israel 2018, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/eco_surveys-isr-2018-6-en. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Mitchell, Travis. “7. Education, Values and Science.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, 8 Mar. 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/education-values-and-science/. Accessed 11 October 2024.
Odegaard, Lena. “The Fight for Equal Education in Israel.” AlJazeera, 12 Feb. 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/2/12/the-fight-for-equal-education-in-israel .Accessed 11 October 2024.
Rosenbaum, Alan. “Is Eshkolot the Future of Haredi Secular Education in Israel?” The Jerusalem Post, 5 Nov. 2022, www.jpost.com/judaism/article-721400. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Rivlin, R. President Rivlin’s Speech at the 15th Herzliya Conference. The speech was given on 7 June 2015. https://www.runi.ac.il/media/vtylyqpp/presidentspeech2015.pdf (accessed on 28 August 2024). (In Hebrew). Accessed 11 October 2024
Staff, ToI. “Haredi Education Budget Said Raised by 40%, but UTJ Laments Promises Not Fulfilled.” Times of Israel, 26 Feb. 2023, https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-education-budget-said-raised-by-40-but-utj-laments-promises-not-fulfilled/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Jewish Virtua Library. “The Israel Briefing Book: Education.” Jewish Virtua Library. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-israel-briefing-book-education. Accessed 11 October 2024.
Wolff, Laurence. “Education in Israel: Divided Schools, Divided Society.” Moment Magazine, 8 May 2017, momentmag.com/education-in-israel-divided-schools-divided-society/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
iMovie Sound Effects: Off-Broadway, Midnite Dialog Short
Hand in Hand. https://www.handinhandk12.org/ Accessed 11 October 2024.
5.2 Secondary sources:
Elazar, Daniel J. “Education in a society at a crossroads: An historical perspective on Israeli schooling.” Israel Studies 2, no. 2 (1997): 40-65. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30246812
Kingsbury, Ian. “Haredi education in Israel: fiscal solutions and practical challenges.” British Journal of Religious Education 42, no. 2 (2020): 193-201. https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2018.1556603
Zeedan, Rami, and Rachel Elizabeth Hogan. “The correlation between budgets and matriculation exams: The case of Jewish and Arab schools in Israel.” Education Sciences 12, no. 8 (2022): 545. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12080545
Zeedan, Rami. “Social Identity and Voting Behavior in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of Israel.” Societies 14, no. 9 (2024): 177. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14090177