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May 10, 2002/Iyar 28, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 34
Teaching Israel to kids
JULIE WIENER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sarah Harris, left, and Samantha Quen celebrate Israeli Independence Day at a communitywide event April 17 in Scottsdale.
Photo by Leisah Namm
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At Temple Kol Ami in suburban Detroit, Hebrew school students marked Israel's Independence Day by sending e-mail messages of support to Israeli soldiers and climbing on an enormous map of Israel to learn about the Jewish state's history and geography.
And in Denver, where most congregations usually skip the community Israel event and do their own thing, there has been a groundswell of support for the communitywide parade to show solidarity with Israel.
With Israel's Independence Day, which was celebrated on April 17, coming on the heels of seemingly nonstop suicide bombings and a major military offensive, American religious schools found themselves scrambling to figure out the appropriate way to observe the holiday.
But Independence Day hasn't been the only challenge Israel has presented.
All year, but particularly in recent weeks, congregational schools have struggled to figure out how best to teach about the embattled Jewish state.
While Israel and Zionism have long been staples of most supplemental school curricula, these institutions only have a few hours a week to teach a multitude of subjects, ranging from Hebrew to Bible.
For some, the history and politics of modern Israel fell on the back burner until recently.
Israel-related sessions at last summer's Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education conference were far outnumbered by sessions on such topics as Torah, pedagogy and Jewish environmental education.
Steven Glickman, principal of the Community High School for Jewish Studies in Denver, says that many of his students start high school not knowing basic information about Israel, such as where the West Bank is or what the 1948 War of Independence was all about.
Most educators say Israel is on their curriculum, but that Israel's complicated history can be difficult to explain to young children.
Elissa Berg, education and youth director of Adat Shalom Synagogue in suburban Detroit, says her school offers an elective on the Israeli-Arab conflict to teens, and all seventh graders study modern Israeli history.
"But to be perfectly honest, I don't think we do it justice," she says.
This spring Baltimore Hebrew University for the first time offered a professional development course for teachers on how to bring Israel into the classroom.
Taught by an education professor and a political science professor, the course combines content with brainstorming sessions on how to make the content accessible to children of different ages.
In teaching about the current situation, one teacher showed students a film clip profiling a teenage girl in Jerusalem talking about how her day-to-day life has been affected by the fear of terrorism.
Another designed a board game in which players move around a map of Israel and answer questions about life there.
Hana Bor, the education professor co-teaching the course, says the course is not just focused on the current crisis, but about teaching about Israel in general.
Without fostering a student connection to Israel, students "wouldn't care less about the crisis," she says. "We don't want to teach only the negative."
Both the Jewish Education Service of North America, working with the federation system's United Jewish Communities, and CAJE have circulated curricular materials with suggestions on teaching about Israel, terrorism and the current situation.
The Jewish Education Center of Cleveland put together "Israel Now: A Solidarity Response Curriculum," which has been circulated nationally through JESNA and the UJC and focuses on several key ideas.
Among them: that Israel is a "special place" for Jews worldwide, that Jews need to stand by it in crisis and that it is "important to be 'critical consumers' of the media, carefully evaluating the veracity and slant of the news about Israel."
Educators report that students, still reeling from the sudden lack of security from Sept. 11, are worried about Israel and terrorism, and want to know if criticisms of Israel they hear from classmates or from talking heads on CNN are true.
Adat Shalom's Berg says her teachers tell the students "if someone challenges them in school with something that throws them, instead of getting thrown, it's OK to say, 'I don't know, I'm not expert on this issue but I'll go home and ask my parents or my religious school teacher or rabbi and come back with an answer.' "
Students seem to vary a lot in their knowledge and interest in Israel.
Carol Morris, a teacher at Congregation Emanuel, a Reform temple in Denver, says she has noticed an increased level of awareness about Israel in recent years.
When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, "the kids were shocked and all that, but it took them a while to get a sense of who he was because they didn't remember what they learned" about Israeli politics and history in previous grades, Morris says.
"Now, you mention the names - Arafat, Sharon - they seem to be more aware of what's going on. They're aware of the news. They listen to it more. I think Sept. 11 did a lot of that."
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