Friday's weekend Haaretz offers insight into what animates Israel's left -- and it is not liberalism.
The top story is an attack on Education Minister Naftali Bennett's decision to
remove an Arab-Jewish Romeo and Juliet love story from the high school reading
list.
Personally, I have no strong feelings on the issue.
But the paper's
shrill treatment of the issue –claiming that the book is being banned – seems way
out of proportion to me. There are lots of local school system's that make decisions about what is and what is not appropriate reading for teens.
And, need it be said -- no Muslim school (though funded by the State of Israel) would allow the book in question to be on its reading list.
The non-liberal left is no less upset that Bennett wants to push for a minimal level of
Jewish literacy among students in the secular school system.
It is tragic that parents must decide, when their children enter first
grade, whether they will get an Orthodox education or one almost entirely bereft
of Jewish literacy. Either/Or.
Why can't the focus for all be on Jewish civilization with modules
that would familiarize students with Jewish prayer, ritual, and tradition? Why
should not every Israeli Jewish child become familiar with the canon? With how
Judaism is practiced in the Diaspora?
David Ben-Gurion knew his bible as well as any rabbi. Did that make him any less left? Why do people of
the left these days disdain Jewish literacy? Why not enable students to
understand Jewish civilization so that they can make informed choices?
Paradoxically, Haaretz's other Big Story on page 1 Friday was headlined:
"And Then the Boarder Police Raked My Wife's Car with Bullets."
Readers familiar with Gideon Levy's byline could roll their eyes and turn the
page.
But what about innocent readers (especially those who see the paper in English and on the web)
who might misconstrue Levy's unlabeled page one dropping for news?
