All see that important disciplines such as philosophy, history, sociology, political science, archeology and cultural studies of all kinds are in deep crisis in all the countries of the "information economy" or post-industrial capitalism.
Precisely when education becomes, more so, a currency passed to the merchant and a source of power, there is a marked deterioration in the status of the humanistic disciplines.
On the one hand they are spiritual, not quite material.
On the other hand, they are difficult to understand, unlike the superficial New Age "spirituality" that has been revived in recent decades as a light respite.
At the same time there has been a severe decline in the professional norms of the humanities and social sciences, that is, within them internally, and not only in their external prestige.
As is often the case in crisis situations, the siege imposed on them from the outside is further exacerbated by the inside.
Relativism, or wild assumptions that "everything goes" and depends on the point of view, destroyed the critical norms of the whole world, and the destruction did not pave the way for the "liberation of the human spirit", but rather for the oppressive coercion of "progressive" thought and "politically correct" censorship.
This is a no-go way we already have historical experience with: the horrors of communist and fascist totalitarianism for its murderous versions were also based on the destruction of intellectual norms.
This crisis does not miss the Israeli academic culture and the high schools that feed on it.
Precisely when the humanist academy in the whole world is degenerating severely, it is precisely then that the rules of Israeli humanities and social sciences are subordinated to the academic centers in North America and Europe.
There is almost no philosophy in Hebrew, for example.
The "considered" journals for academic advancement are those overseas.
It is true that other relatively small-scale cultural states, such as the Netherlands, "outsource" the professional evaluation of their academics.
But it is the giver - both in Israel and in countries like the Netherlands, and even in the United States "in and of itself", a poor and humble provincialism has spread.
This process reaches a particularly depressing low in our Jewish sciences.
In addition to the general crisis of the humanities, we have a crisis in Jewish thought, in the study of the Bible and in the Talmud, in Israeli studies of all kinds, which are being pushed aside by the professions of money, power and material benefit.
History of the people of Israel, history of the State of Israel, sociology of Israeli society - all of these fall victim to the general crisis of the humanities and social sciences, as well as to the factual delivery of their evaluation to academic centers outside Israel.
And this is a particularly serious case, because the State of Israel is an undisputed center of these studies, and yet submits itself to less important centers than it.
In this context we need to see the crisis of the humanities, including Jewish studies in our high schools - history, Jewish thought, the Bible. These subjects are disappearing, less and less taught, and now comes the Minister of Education Shasha Bitton Teaching), inflicts a death blow on them: that will be reduced to professions without a matriculation examination that no one will refer to anymore. The Bible, Jewish history and Hebrew literature will become remote districts.
The social significance of the destruction of the humanities and Judaism is a fatal blow to society's ability to critically examine itself and shape itself.
Without developed humanities and social sciences we will collectively lose our ability to control our own destiny.
We will not know who we are and where we should go.
In Israel, this means the loss of our spiritual independence, an independence that has been in the eye of the Jews since they became a people.
Maybe it's good for the Dutch, it seems not, but for Israel it's a very destructive process.
A rehabilitation process is required: "from above", in the "Kiryat Hasfer" of the educated, some of them academics;
And "from below," in the Israeli school that needs to be rebuilt, a real revolution.
Deep reforms must be brought about in the Ministry of Education, which for decades has been lame from one failed reform to another, and in the faculties of the humanities, which have long since forgotten their social role.
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