One memorable meeting with Naomi Shemer many years ago left an indelible impression on the young journalist Ronnie Coban. "In a matter of minutes," he later recalled, "she was able to do what no history teacher had done for me in hundreds of hours of study. It connected me to my past, to that pristine, beautiful land that always seemed like a crazy fantasy of the old generation."
Shemer, whose work is interwoven with images, verses, idioms and landscapes from the Bible, was not the only one to incorporate the Bible into her work. Historian Prof. Anita Shapira has found in her research that for Shemer and her contemporaries, for nearly 100 years, "the Bible was the foremost identity-shaping text in the Christian Jewish society in the Land of Israel," and that "the new Hebrew culture was formed in its shadow. The modern Hebrew language has absorbed idioms and stains, images and associations." "However, since the 70s," Shapira noted, "there has been a decline in the lofty status of the Bible as an identity-shaping text, and the place of the Bible in Israeli identity has largely been taken by the Holocaust."
The love and guidance for the Bible came from above in those years. In the Declaration of Independence, the Bible is referred to as the "eternal book of books." David Ben-Gurion, who hosted the best biblical scholars at his home as part of the Bible Circle, often claimed that since his arrival in Israel, his personality has been shaped mainly by the Bible, "that only here in Israel have I begun to understand it in all its depth and have been influenced by it more than any other book and literature." Yitzhak Tabenkin testified that in the room of every worker during the Second Aliyah there was a Bible. The works of the poet Rachel, Shaul Tchernichovsky and Ze'ev Jabotinsky and many others were also cleaned from the Bible.
The biblical scholar and commentator Prof. Uriel Simon recognized years ago that "the Bible made it possible to accept a national yoke, while discharging the religious yoke." Indeed, in one of his studies, Dr. Israel Brand documents the establishment of the Order of the Children of Moses by Ahad Ha'am. That order sought to choose from the old Jewish tradition only "the moral values and emotions necessary for national existence." In this spirit of "peeling nationalism from the mantle of religion and halakha," a school for Bible studies and national history was established in Jaffa in 1894. His days, it should be noted, were short. Haredi pressure led to its closure.
But the golden age of the Bible in the Israeli-Zionist experience has passed. At least for now. Many elementary schools (in the state stream) also marked the "holiday of giving the Torah" on this Shavuot evening, and in some of them the students even scattered to the rhythmic melody of Shlomo Gronich to the chain of delivery of two thousand years and more, which Tractate Avot describes: "Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it to Joshua and Joshua to the elders and the elders to the prophets..." In the last generation, however, the Bible has become, especially among youth, a tool that many do not want. You can find islands of Bible love, but they are not many.
The Trump Foundation (no relation to the former president), which conducted a survey of state school students a few years ago, found that the status of the profession among high school students is at an all-time low. The students were asked which of the professions should invest more. The most popular subjects were English and mathematics. 80% responded that they should be invested. They were followed by physics and computers (35%-30%). 13% pointed to biology and history, and only 2.4% of students in the state education system thought they should invest in Bible studies.
"Foreign language"
The number of weekly hours in which the Bible is taught in the state education system has also declined over the past five decades from 6-5 hours to only two hours. The number of Bible chapters on which students take their matriculation exams has decreased accordingly. If, until 1971, pupils in the state education system were required to take the exam on about 200 sections, since then the amount of material for matriculation has gradually decreased, and today it is only 71 chapters. The drastic reduction in the number of hours and in the number of chapters studied and examined was ostensibly intended to allow more depth and interest in selected issues and chapters, and less "parrot learning" (memorization and emission of material). At the same time, however, knowledge of the historical and biblical continuity was impaired.
The low Bible ratings among state students are also reflected in the almost zero percentage of students who choose the Bible as a track and take the test on 5 units of study, instead of 2. Most schools do not allow for an increased Bible program at all. Over the past three decades, only about 1.5% of state Bible scholars have chosen the Bible as their trend. In 2021, for example, it was 925 students out of about 64,2. In contrast, the share of those taking the 30-unit Bible matriculation exam among twelfth grade students (under state supervision) has risen over the past 70 years from about 90% to about 70%, and their average final grade has also risen from 80 to <>.
Why, then, is the status of the Bible in the education system so poor? Israel Prize Laureate for Biblical Research Prof. Yair Zakovitz identifies several inherent failures that led to this drop.
"For many today," he says, "the Bible is written in a 'foreign language.' When my friends and I studied the Bible in school, the language of the Bible was not foreign to us. Today, however, the plural language has dwindled, and reading the Bible requires almost as much effort as when they read a foreign language. It's very difficult for them."
"The sense of the Zionist miracle has also weakened since my days as a student at school," Zakowitz notes. "For us, studying the Bible was the same as being a Zionist. Ben-Gurion greatly influenced this. When we studied the Bible, we felt that we were returning not only to the language of the Bible but also to the values of the prophets, to our land, which we had returned to cultivate. The connection was much more natural. That's how we felt then, but today the recognition that the Bible is the root of Israel's culture has disappeared, and the lower the attraction to the Bible, the lower the connection to it in state education."
During the 80s and the first decade of the <>s, Zakowitz headed the Committee for Bible Studies at the Ministry of Education. Even then, he identified "antagonism" to Bible study among the non-religious public, as a result of the appropriation of the Bible and its monopoly demand, both by the ultra-Orthodox and by religious-messianic groups. The secular," he asserts, "are wrong. Did they take you? - Don't give! On the contrary, show that it is as much yours as theirs. Don't give up."
Zakowitz believes that the use of the term "biblical criticism" goes further than closer, and has even "brought a bad name to the study of the Bible." It is, he explains, "an informed reading that seeks to clarify the time and trend of the text and what is the socio-political context within which it was created. Informed reading does not impose uniformity on the text, nor does it sweep problems under the rug in a way that people, especially students, might feel worked on."
Why didn't the ministers of education you knew act to change that? Why didn't they add more hours and more teachers and more teacher training?
"I served under quite a few ministers. The most empathetic to Bible studies was Yossi Sarid from Meretz. The others dismissed me, from a team of learned people, by recognizing the importance of studying the Bible, but there was a huge gap between their high-and-high talk and what they were willing to invest in. We must understand: The Bible is the root of our entire culture. Without it, we have no foothold in the country. Only here can we return to our heritage. That's why we live here, not on the banks of the Thames in London."
"People make big mistakes"
Zakowitz talks a lot about the lack of adequate teaching staff, especially in elementary schools, where he says the situation is difficult, and in middle and high schools, "where the situation has improved, but not enough." He was one of the initiators of the "Revivim" program on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which he calls the "cruiser" of Bible teacher training in Israel.
"Revivim" is an honors program for teacher training in Jewish studies. Students complete their bachelor's and master's degrees as well as teaching studies within four years, without paying tuition. In return, they pledge to teach Bible and Israeli culture for four years in middle and high schools.
Yael Spiegelman, a Bible teacher at Givat Gonen High School in Jerusalem, is one of the graduates of this "cruiser," who today trains teachers herself at Revivim and serves as pedagogical coordinator there. "When people hear that I'm a Bible teacher," she says, "their reaction is lukewarm to cold. It's not something that counts, and this reaction reflects the status of the profession, but people make big mistakes.
"There is everything in the Bible - education, values, and current events, and it can also be used to touch the soul. In the past, people also spoke the language of the Bible. When I expose my students for the first time to words from Naomi Shemer's well-known poem: "The urn of flour shall not be exhausted and the slate of oil shall not be missing," taken from 1 Kings, or even to a text from Boaz Sharabi's poem "HaLevi," which uses "A Gentile shall not carry a sword to a Gentile" from the Book of Isaiah, it means nothing to them.
"I want these texts to become part of Hebrew culture, but it is very difficult to convince children of this deficiency when they do not feel it, and when their main deficiency and challenge in life are high-tech and 8200 in the IDF. Their heads are elsewhere. There isn't a Bible teacher who hasn't been asked by his students, 'What will the Bible help me in life?'"
And what is the answer?
Spiegelman: "The answer is less than a year whether the events of the Bible occurred or did not occur, or did not occur exactly as described. What matters is that the Bible is our founding ethos that they must know and that has another level: the Bible educates us to think critically, to form a position, to get to know the human soul. To recognize moral dilemmas.
"The levels of depth reached in Bible classes," Spiegelman believes, "have very few, if any, parallels in other subjects. You can complete a few units of math later, but if you haven't developed the ability to think about what it means to be human during your Bible studies, you've missed out on a lot. In the end, the story is the quality of the teachers. The more the teacher loves the Bible and is connected to it, the more children will stick to it. You can't lie to children. If the child feels that the teacher is faking and that he also sees the Bible as an inferior subject, it will stick with him too.
"A few weeks ago," she says, "I took ninth-grade students to the Israel Museum and they couldn't say goodbye there to the Book of Isaiah, one of the seven scrolls found randomly in the Qumran caves. It was a moment of comfort." According to her, "The Bible must be conveyed in an experiential way. We have biblical cooking and biblical portrait making workshops, and an escape room around biblical themes, and we study poems that use Bible verses, and we also dedicate a place to the Bible on the school radio. Deepening is not enough, an experience is also needed."
Please give me an example of how you teach one well-known chapter of the Bible.
Spiegelman: "The Binding of Isaac. We will not be afraid to ask difficult questions and criticize both Abraham and God. I line up the students and present them with dilemmas: 'They tell you that they will kill you if you don't do this and that.' The so-and-so starts with stealing gum from the grocery store, moves on to breaking into an apartment to get money, and ends, not on us, with murder. It works. This illustrates to them what a clash of values is, somewhat similar to the way Abraham experienced such a clash: on the one hand loyalty to God, and on the other hand loyalty to his Son."
Book "Angels"
Miriam Blumenthal, director of content development for the "929 - Bible Together" project and a teacher of the Bible in post-secondary settings, also teaches and mentors teachers and students. She also asks her teachers and students to "create questions of breadth and meaning and to encounter the Bible, not necessarily at the level of knowledge but more as an invitation to engage with identity."
"There are chapters and passages in the Bible," she explains, "from which to develop a discussion about leadership, interpersonal relationships, national identity and social issues. The Book of Ruth, which we read on Shavuot, really invites clarification on the issue of 'treatment of foreigners'; A discussion about a society that accepts or rejects elements that were not born here. "929" does not have lesson plans, but we contribute by raising the issues, and by voicing a variety of Israeli voices and contemporary readings of the Bible on these issues. We know that teachers use the site a lot, specifically visiting the chapters they are required to teach as part of the curriculum."
So why, in your opinion, despite everything, and despite the Ministry of Education's investment in recent years in teacher training and content improvement, the Bible's ratings among students are so low?
"Because in the end, it's a story of tension and competition with the professions that are considered to build our children's future: math, English, science. In the end, that's what matters. The two significant moves that could have changed the situation – additional study hours and reducing class sizes – are the most expensive components of the system, so it is easier to conduct seminars that will provide more content and enrichment to teachers than to touch the infrastructure – adding hours and reducing class sizes. In the end, the big investments stay with math, English and science."
The courses you mentioned don't come to the elementary teachers either. In 45/1, only 500 of the <>,<> teachers who studied the Bible were from elementary school.
"Disgraceful situation. There, unlike middle school and high school, there is no guild or professional identity of Bible teachers. The system," Blumenthal identifies "today invests mainly in middle and high school, not elementary school. There she gave up a bit. There, in elementary school, many times the Bible enters into the world of something else that a general, casual teacher (once it's a sports teacher and once it's a physics teacher; PS) teaches or doesn't teach, because another casual teacher is just missing.
"Elementary teachers," she confirms, "rarely attend training, and so the low age, at which we seek to plant the foundations, is not exposed to the Bible, or is exposed to it by occasional teachers, not always professional, who do not have broad vision and sufficient knowledge and depth and motivation and vision."
בלומנטל ממליצה להעביר את הדגש "מהבגרויות אל המקום הבונה והיוצר, שעדיין נמצא מדי בשוליים. מערך 'רוח נכון חדש בקרבי' שהקים משרד החינוך הוא מהלך מושקע ויצירתי בכיוון הנכון, אבל הוא עדיין צריך לחלחל למורים בשטח".
פרופ' נילי ואזנה מהחוג למקרא באוניברסיטה העברית, שכיהנה כראש ועדת המקצוע במשרד החינוך לאורך העשור האחרון, כואבת בעיקר את הבורות: "יש תלמידים שיושבים אצלי בחוג וקוראים לספר מלכים 'ספר מלאכים', ולשפן הסופר מתקופת שלטונו של יאשיהו מלך יהודה - 'עכברון'. וכשאני שואלת אותם מה היא 'משענת קנה רצוץ' הם עונים: 'אחת המתנות שקיבל שלמה המלך'. שגיאות מביכות ועצובות. יש לי קובץ שלם של שיבושים מצחיקים מסוג זה שליקטתי. הם משקפים מציאות של בורות.
"מכיוון שהמיתוס המכונן של מדינת ישראל היום הוא השואה ולא התנ"ך", אומרת ואזנה, "ההתעניינות בתנ"ך היא אזוטרית. התנ"ך הפך להיות ספר אזוטרי, וזאת בשונה מהמצב ששרר כאן לפני שניים-שלושה דורות. אז - יצאו לשטח, המחיזו, דיברו, הכירו את השפה. היום התנ"ך כבר אינו השפה המשותפת, לא של הצעירים ולא של דור הביניים. אנשים לא יודעים תנ"ך ולא מכירים תנ"ך. לדתיים יותר אכפת ממנו. עבור החילונים הוא הפך להיות ספרות של פעם".
טקסט טעון
ואזנה סבורה אף היא ששעתיים בשבוע בלבד הן מתחת לסף המינימום. "עד לא מזמן מורים נדרשו להחליט אם הם מוציאים מתוכנית הלימודים את הפרקים של יוסף או את הפרקים של יעקב, וזה כבר היה לחתוך בעצמות התנ"ך, ולא רק בבשר החי".
את ספר הספרים היא מגדירה כ"טקסט טעון, טקסט שאינו ניטרלי. גברים ונשים קוראים אותו באוטובוס בזמן הנסיעה, בעיקר תהילים, אחרים מגיעים אליו דרך פרשת השבוע, והוא גם מהווה בסיס לספרות העולמית הטובה ביותר. למרות זאת, רק מעט מבוגרי המערכת של היום בקיאים בו. יש בורות איומה".
The number of students in Bible departments, testifying and listening, is decreasing. "Some Bible classes at universities have closed or are on the verge of closing. It's saddening. During my time as head of the subject committee, we began to implement a change in the education system, designed to bring the Bible closer to the students. We emphasized the genesis stories from the books of Genesis and Exodus, and also gave the students tastings of various literary genres, such as prophecy or wisdom literature. For veteran teachers, it was a little difficult. For young people - easier. I understand that the current Commissioner, Anat Sidon, continues this line with the 'And a New Right Spirit in Me' program. It's positive, but it's a process that takes time."
Vazna has warm words about the Revivim program and its counterpart at Tel Aviv University, Ofakim, "the lifeline of Bible studies in the state stream," but she is aware that together they provide the system with no more than 26 graduates a year, "a drop in the ocean."
"The system," Vazana is convinced, "needs stability. Every minister reinvents the wheel. Even welcome changes require time to implement. I had interactions with ministers during the period when I was chair of the profession committee," she says. "Bennett recognized the importance of the Bible, but as we know, he prioritized other professions. Shai Piron told me: 'If I increase the number of hours, they will come out against me for religion.'"
Piron (Minister of Education from 2014-2013) responds: "I don't remember anything I said in 2014. A sentence may have been said in one context or another, but I never thought that Bible studies should be curtailed." Firon believes that "it is appropriate for all of us to take stock of a boring, irrelevant and identityless curriculum that has accompanied us here for years." According to him, the attitude of the youth to study the Bible is undergoing a profound change due to the significant curriculum he instituted during his time, and he is proud of it.
The current Bible Commissioner, Anat Sidon, who has served in the position for eight years, says that over the past five years, about 5,000 teachers have undergone training courses in the spirit of the training and enrichment program "and a new right spirit within me." The program places the teacher at the center. It enriches the pedagogical toolbox and its world of knowledge and content, and gives it the opportunity to choose the appropriate material for it and its students. The hope is that it will succeed in creating an emotional connection and meaning between the field and the students' world.
Sidon believes that the decline in the status of the Bible in the education system, compared to the first decades in the country's education system, was caused in no small part by a distorted identification that saw it as a niche and religious profession.
"In my country," she clarifies, "we teach the Bible not from an attitude of halacha and observance, but out of the knowledge that this is our cultural-identity story. The appropriation of the Bible by certain factions of society damaged its image and status. The Bible belongs to all of us. I want to make students and teachers feel at home when they open a Bible, to make them feel like it's theirs."
Sidon's recommendation to Education Minister Yoav Kisch is to increase the weekly Bible studies in the state stream from two to three hours, and to recognize it as a core subject. Today it is defined as a "compulsory profession" only. This recommendation by Sidon is significant and may significantly raise the importance of the Bible as a profession, both in the eyes of students and teachers.
Let us explain: A student who does not pass a matriculation certificate in one of the core subjects is not entitled to a matriculation certificate. If the Minister of Education adopts Sidon's recommendation, students who do not pass a matriculation exam in the Bible will not be eligible for a certificate. On the other hand, today every student is "entitled" to fail one of the compulsory subjects - as stated, the Bible is defined as such - and will still be entitled to a matriculation certificate.
Put the teacher at the center
Maital Hadadi, a national Bible instructor on behalf of the Bible Commissioner and responsible for the professional development of Bible teachers in the state stream, points with regret to the diminishing status of all textual subjects – not just the Bible – in academies, colleges and universities. "This is a natural derivative of our definition and constant preoccupation with ourselves as a high-tech superpower; a derivative of a generation that is very 'fast'; A generation that the Bible often threatens with its language and foreignness. This creates alienation. If, in addition, a student is reincarnated in a classroom where the teacher is not connected to the Bible and has not been trained to teach the Bible, the result will be accordingly."
It's your shift. Is that about to change?
"Anat Sidon and I, as responsible for professional development, set ourselves a goal: to place the teacher at the center, to provide him with skills with which he can make a difference during the lesson. This happens gradually already in middle and high schools. It will happen in the future, I hope, in elementary school as well."
How does this happen? How will this happen?
"Here's an example from the field, from the classroom. This is how it is appropriate to study chapter 12 of the book of Genesis: On the one hand, Abraham is presented there as the ultimate believer who obeys God, leaves his land and homeland and emigrates to a foreign land. At the end of the same chapter, Abraham is portrayed in a different, perhaps less flattering, light when he asks his wife's ministers to lie to the Egyptians and tell them that she is his sister, for fear that the Egyptians will kill him and that she will be "lived."
"The traditional stream," says Hadadi, "will find a satisfactory explanation for Abraham's behavior and refrain from criticizing him, or God. State education, on the other hand, will see the story as an invitation to look at the figure of Abraham, which contains a range of human behaviors and has sides one way or the other.
"In our view, criticism is permitted. In our view, there are no role models in the Bible. There is no figure who is one hundred percent pure and clean, just as we are imperfect. The characters are human, and the Bible is an educating book. The Bible understands human beings and tells us a human story. That's what will connect the kids to his character. State education seeks to make the Bible accessible to our personal lives, and the way of study is varied: both in a critical-research approach, in a literary approach, and in a traditional approach."
Haddi teaches Bible at the Maayan Shachar School in Emek Hefer. In the past, she introduced her students to the singer Corinne Elal, who composed the Book of Ecclesiastes, and even organized an educational game for them, "The Race to Paradise," about the weight of the "Race for a Million." She speaks of the teacher's "personal voice" that will excite the student, which will only make the Bible relevant to him, and admits that in the elementary grade the shortage of teachers of this model is felt many times more: "An elementary teacher who has been assigned to teach the Bible, even though he has not been trained for it, and is not familiar with this craft, creates alienation and distance." Mutual wishes to emphasize that even when the student is confronted by a teacher who has received training and inspiration, it is a process. "It's not Zbang and we're done." She, too, mentions the concerns surrounding religion. "We need to dissolve that as well. The very study in the research approach makes it possible to interpret the Bible as it is."
***
The philosopher and scholar of Jewish thought Joshua Heschel, one of the most important thinkers of American Jewry in the second half of the 20th century, once said that the main message of the Bible and the prophets of Israel is that God takes man seriously. Heschel suggested that we take the Bible and God equally seriously.
Prof. Yair Zakovitz is one of those who treat the Bible and its potential students seriously, as seriously as possible. He projects from the recent renaissance of the Israeli flag – when it was adopted by all parties to the legal reform dispute – into a similar renaissance that the Bible may experience in the future. "Perhaps after the flag will come the turn of the Bible," he doubtfully appreciates, doubtful hopes, "and then it will finally be made clear that the Bible is an asset of all, which does not belong only to one camp."
***
"The teachers are great, and the kids love the Bible"
Dina Wiener, one of the founders of the Reut school in Jerusalem (religious, secular and traditional), with 37 years of Bible teaching experience, is apparently an exception in the system. Wiener defines the claim of low Bible ratings among students as "an unfounded myth that, perhaps, who knows, serves education ministers who want to prove that they are fixing the world." Her experience, as someone who taught the Bible in both the state and state-religious streams, teaches her that "the children actually love the Bible, and that the Bible teachers, especially in Jerusalem, are excellent teachers."
The Achilles' heel, also in her opinion, is the low number of hours, only two hours, allocated to the Bible subject. "It's a bit like piano lessons. If you don't practice a lot, you won't excel and you won't specialize. Two hours a week – it is indeed limiting." The children, in her experience, "overcome the language difficulty and cope with it. The stories and insights of the Bible challenge and stimulate them to think and discuss, whether it is Ecclesiastes, Job, or the books of Genesis and Exodus. The Bible," she says, "has many layers: religion, history, philosophy, national basis, and universal values." Wiener advocates the addition of Bible hours, "but not to make people more religious, but to make people more thinking..."
"I liked what Shai Piron was trying to do," she says, "the autonomy he tried to give teachers. Every teacher," she believes, "knows best what suits his students, and he is the one who has to choose whether to focus on law, wisdom, philosophy, prophecy, or story. Let the teachers fly with the children and you will see that a great wonder happens. Stop limiting them and telling them what's allowed and what's not," says Wiener, a doctoral student in Bible and Judaism at New York University. One day, she hopes, "despite the limited educational framework of the Bible today, we will have another 'Meir Shalev,' who will weave his vast knowledge of the Bible into his work. Such diverse works and similar ones," she believes, "will bring the Bible even closer to the world of children, and also to the world of adults."
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