Israel Policy Center, Efrata Teachers’ Training College Launch Joint Program in Civics Education

Israel Policy Center, Efrata Teachers’ Training College Launch Joint Program in Civics Education

The Israel Policy Center and Efrata College in Jerusalem are collaborating in designing and operating a program to train civics teachers for Israel’s high schools. The one-year, 24 credit program intended for teachers holding or studying for academic degrees will qualify them to teach civics in any Israeli high school, though Efrata specializes in training teachers for “national-religious” schools. Efrata intends to develop a full, four-year degree in political science and civics education and IPC will help shape the content of the program.

The new program is unique in emphasizing Jewish identity and values as the basis for committed, democratic citizenship in Israel. Another central feature of the program is the emphasis placed on Anglo-Saxon theories of democracy, which regard the obligation of the state to respect individual rights as the basis of the social contract. These themes are notable for their absence in current Israeli civics curricula.

In the future IPC plans to develop programs of civics education which similarly emphasize Jewish identity and values and the sanctity of rights as the basis of a living, sustainable social contract for mainstream Israeli teachers’ training colleges. IPC also plans to design a new civics curriculum for Israeli high schools.

IPC has identified civics education as a critical area in reinforcing Israel’s Jewish character and strengthening civic commitment in Israel. Public morale and a sense of commitment to the public good have undergone a disastrous decline in Israel, reflected by a decline in public confidence in public institutions across the board and a growing disinclination by young people to serve their country in the military. In a sense, the public’s lack of confidence in the institutions of the state is not surprising. Jewish nationalism and the historicity of Jewish peoplehood are increasingly drawn into question in Israeli public discourse. Personal ethics have likewise eroded, especially the behavior of individuals in their character as public figures.

IPC believes that an important response to the decline of public morale is encouraging Israelis to view their Jewish identity as the basis of their Israeli citizenship and Jewish ethics, particularly the Jewish conception of the ethical obligations of individuals to each other and to society at large, as the foundation of a functioning society. This approach implies viewing the State of Israel as the public expression of a Jewish political community.

One object of the IPC-Efrata program is to attract students in Hesder rabbinical seminaries (yeshivot) to the program. Hesder yeshivot are the flagship institutions of national-religious education in Israel. Hesder students study for 20 months, serve in the IDF for 16 months, and then return to the yeshiva for a lengthy period. Many of

the most intelligent and intellectually ambitious attain both rabbinical ordination and teaching degrees, and go on to teach in high schools, where they naturally become the intellectual and spiritual leaders of many young students.

Since the disengagement of 2005 IPC has noted a worrisome phenomenon of “counter-disengagement;” disillusionment by the rising intellectual elite of the national religious community with Israeli society and democracy, which seems to them hypocritical and hollow. At the same time there is a rising thirst to understand Israeli, and postmodern, society, politics and philosophy. The IPC-Efrata program is meant to provide these ambitious young scholars with the knowledge they seek and a forum for “critical engagement” with Israeli public life rather than disengagement and distance.