Nadav Shragai's important article on the sorry state of Bible studies in state schools made me forgotten.
The Crisis of Bible Teaching in Israel is a local edition of "The Depletion of the Spirit in America" (Alan Bloom). Here, in the language of professionals, we talk about the decline of the verbose subjects – Bible, literature, history and civics – that are in serious decline in our schools.
It is no coincidence that Shragai focuses his gaze on the most prominent of the "depleted" professions - the Bible, a profession that establishes national identity. If we are in the bankruptcy of identity building, it is an issue of existential importance.
What does this say about the generation of our children and grandchildren in this country? About their future between us and our country? How long will we build Israeli cities in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or New York? Yes, there is a connection, unfortunately.
I was a Bible teacher for 20 years. I left my job in the Prime Minister's Office following Rabin's assassination and became an educator. As a teacher of an "unpopular profession," I am compensated tremendously by a deep and lasting connection with my students, years after their graduation. I find myself enthusiastically accepting their invitations to lecture in the pre-military preparatory courses, in their officers' courses in Bahad 1, and in their workplaces. Their visits to my home after the army move me very much.
But it is important for me to confess a resounding personal failure of mine, which has been repeated over the years. As a veteran tour guide, I am a big believer in teaching through the feet in the field, with an open Bible. Over 20 years of teaching, I repeatedly offered to guide my class on the annual trip, but my offer was never accepted. It always sounds complicated or unrelated. I have always suggested "harming the plan" or constituting a "deviation from the course".
There could be no more meaningful gift for twelfth graders, some three months before the matriculation exam, than to see with their own eyes on a field trip the sites of idolatry against which Elijah and Jeremiah set out, to point out the ancient pagan temple at Tel Megiddo, and immediately afterwards to look to the top of Carmel, to the place where Elijah and Ahab coped; Or illustrate Hezekiah and Josiah's famous cult concentration reform, touching the altar at Tel Be'er Sheva; Or to understand the ethics of the prophets and support for the weak – a stranger, an orphan and a widow – in the fields in the field, in places where gather, wigs and forgetfulness were left for them.
In the era of privatization, when an annual trip is a transaction between a service provider and its recipient, the contracting company provides a packaged "package" of transportation, feeding, accommodation, guidance and sometimes also security and paramedics. This solves for the service recipient - the school - the monstrous bureaucracy involved in building the trip. A teacher who takes the initiative is just a nuisance in this situation, and sometimes even "subversive."
So here we are, our dear children and grandchildren sitting on the bus. The microphone is completely silent, without guidance, and in the field, in front of a significant historical site, the guide can be heard explaining with pathos: "Breathe nature", "merge with nature", "let your body unite with nature"... And the heritage site opposite remains orphaned. Indeed, an identity-forming experience.
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