Prime Minister Yair Lapid's innocent greeting to the first graders was, in my eyes, a frightening text:
"Dear students, there's something you're really good at, and you don't know about it yet. That's the whole idea in school - that you have something that in time you'll discover you're really good at.
"That you have an area of excellence that you don't know yet, and here at school you will get to know it, because there will be people who will work with you together and help you understand what you are best at...".
First of all, this is simply not true: those who know the Gauss bell know that most of us are in its center.
I mean, most of us don't have any "zone of excellence".
The sweeping promise that "you have something that you are really good at and you don't know about it" mainly indicates a prime minister with a vision on the level of Bazooka Joe: he promises our children that by the age of 21 they will reach the moon, and those who did not understand where their moon is, should go to the counselor's office and she You will already arrange an affordable month for him.
What can a good education system provide to all students?
It can give them the holy grail of life on earth - it can give them meaning.
A person feels meaningful when he is connected to everything that is not in the Prime Minister's blessing - to things that are bigger than him.
An Israeli boy or girl who is about to start learning to read is the only one in the world who will be privileged, for example, to read the wisdom of King Solomon, the wisest man, in the original language.
This is a small example of the connection to the Jewish story that is completely absent from the Prime Minister's blessing.
The prosperous high-tech country, which allows its children to receive free education, is the result of two other great stories: the Zionist story, which turned a two-thousand-year-old generational dream into reality, and the universal story of the scientific revolution, which began in the Renaissance.
All of these are absent from the Prime Minister's greeting.
In fact, the Lapid blessing, more than it expresses the values of the State of Israel, expresses the values of a new and dangerous church.
The Dark Church of the Middle Ages insisted on placing the Earth at the center of the universe.
It theologically fit her with the belief that man is the crown of creation, and to hell with the scientific observations that proved the opposite to be true.
At Lapid Church, the student is once again at the center of the universe, and all the heavenly bodies of the education system revolve around him and help him become a bright and unique snowflake instead of a successful link in the chain of generations of the people of Israel.
Even this model will not stand the test of reality: these snowflakes will melt quickly in the Middle Eastern sun.
After all, why shouldn't these children grow up and continue to develop their "zone of excellence" in Silicon Valley, for example?
Why do it specifically here with the annual shower of rockets from Gaza and with 30 reserve days a year?
Without the big stories, there is no reason to insist on living here.
The reason for living in Israel lies in "we", not "I".
Articulating a real vision, which is able to generate in the next generation the drive and the ability to survive here, is probably not part of Yair Lapid's "area of excellence".
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