(JNi.media) Or Kashti, writing for left-wing Ha’aretz on Sunday, presented what he obviously considers a portrayal of a failed religious public school program (Israel has both religious and secular state schools) under the rule of new Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi), but ends up describing a kind of a dream come true for Zionist Israeli Jews: it turns out the new leadership at the Ministry of Education, has been making great strides in raising Israeli children’s awareness of the nation’s values.
“Several days after the beginning of the new school year, Jerusalem resident Nadav Berman Shifman’s daughter received an agenda from the religious elementary school where she studies,” Kashti reports. “The agenda contains a section at the back with a list of topics including ‘Love of the Land and the Temple’ – a reference to the Temples that stood on Temple Mount in ancient times. The students are asked to indicate the extent to which they have met the demands detailed in the list, including ‘Prayer from the bottom of my heart for the Temple to be rebuilt’ and ‘to have the privilege of carrying out sacrifices’ there.”
It’s true that messianic yearnings taken ad absurdum have caused the Jewish nation a few calamities. But millions of religious Jews have been harboring a deep, searing longing for the arrival of the redeemer, which they’ve managed to balance out with the other values in their lives. From that perspective, as spiritual programs for young people goes, this one looks enticing.
What’s obvious is that Kashti, approaching his story from a secular, even anti-religious stance, doesn’t even see the need to explain why he thinks these are bad things to teach Jewish children. He bewails the fact that the section dealing with “Love of the Land and the Temple,” geared for grades 1 through 6, is mandatory as part of the students’ study of faith.
Here’s one more thing that irks Kashti: “There is no direct reference in the set of lessons or elsewhere … to Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Here’s another element that irks Kashti: To convey a sense of the loss of the Temple, a 9th of Av workshop asks teachers to explore “A list of the most major threats, both spiritual and material, facing the Jewish people, and add all your personal difficulties and those of your students. And then think about how each item on the list would be different if we had the Temple right here, right now.” It is clearly difficult for the Ha’aretz writer to embrace a state of mind which treats the loss of the Temple seriously and views its return as an event that would improve people’s lives.
Ariel Picard, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, told Kashti: “I’m afraid that this heavy emphasis on a yearning for the Temple and concrete study of the work of the Temple could spur rather good students to think about other practical actions. It’s enough for one student to decide that it’s worth blowing up mosques to advance the building of the [Third] Temple. The Jewish Underground’s plan to blow up the Temple Mount mosques still exists in the collective memory of religious Zionism.”
The reader can evaluate on his or her own a statement which depicts the millions who mourn and fast on the 9th of Av as potential terrorists, but, for the record, Ariel Picard is hardly an unbiased observer—although Kashti presents him as such in his piece.
Picard is behind a petition against Jewish ascent to the Temple Mount, together with leftist politicians Dr. Ruth Calderon, Dov Elbaum and Rani Jaeger (they actually open with the introduction “We the undersigned, Jewish intellectuals in Israel”), which goes: “…We call on all who are guided by holiness and life to desist from any initiative liable to disturb the volatile state of affairs on the Temple Mount. Jewish attempts to unilaterally change the status quo at the Temple Mount will bring only destruction, never construction. Such efforts will only push us further away from God, rather than bring us closer to Him. … Therefore, we absolutely reject the call for Jews to go up and pray on the Temple Mount. Such calls and actions go against the spirit of the people of Israel and pose a threat to the well-being of the Jewish people and its Torah.”