{"id":31407,"date":"2024-01-11T15:38:28","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T15:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/?page_id=31407"},"modified":"2024-01-11T15:40:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T15:40:04","slug":"unit-9-jewish-education","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/unit-9-jewish-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Unit 9: JEWISH EDUCATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

MY FAMILY<\/span><\/a>
\nTHE BETA ISRAEL CURRICULUM<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

JEWISH EDUCATION<\/u><\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Teachers should now explain:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>As noted, Israel\u2019s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was by now a minority in recognizing the Beta Israel\u2019s Jewish status. Religious leaders in Israel took it upon themselves to \u201cnormalize\u201d members of the Beta Israel and train them in rabbinic halakha <\/em>\u2013 another step toward \u201cauthenticating\u201d their Judaism. For Beta Israel youth, this meant they had no choice but to attend state religious schools.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Professor Fred A. Lazin explains: \u201cIn the early 1980s, Zevulun Hammer, Minister of Education in the Likud Government, and head of the National Religious Party, met with the Chief Rabbis, in light of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef\u2019s earlier ruling that the Ethiopians were to be considered Jews for the purpose of immigration and education. Thereafter, he informed the Executive Committee of the Ministry that Ethiopians would attend state religious schools during their first year in Israel. They would not be allowed to exercise their legal right to choose either the state secular or religious system. While neither enacting legislation nor passing a formal resolution, the Knesset (parliament), Government and the Jewish Agency supported this policy.152<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hammer and his supporters believed that a religious education was necessary for Ethiopian Jews who had been cut off from Rabbinical Judaism for centuries. [Significantly], no similar policy was deemed\u00a0necessary for the overwhelmingly assimilated Soviet Jewish immigrants arriving after 1989 who had lived in a Communist system for several generations [of whom] almost one-third were estimated to be non-Jews.\u201d153<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

The decision to send the Beta Israel youth to religious schools without choice was made for other reasons too. \u201cThe religious school system adopted a policy of assimilation. It wanted the immigrants to adopt\u2026 mannerism, language, traditions, cultural mores, and values of the host society\u2026. Successful integration meant\u2026 their abandoning \u2018old ways\u2019 and becoming models of veteran Israelis.\u201d 154<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every educator shared this approach: most notably the renowned educator Dr. Chaim Peri, founder of the Yemin Orde children\u2019s village. Dr. Peri\u2019s method, \u201cthe village way,\u201d helped young Ethiopians become more Israeli while embracing and celebrating their Ethiopian Jewish heritage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

152\u00a0 As Professor Fred A. Lazin observes, Opposition leaders within Israel\u2019s Labor Party leaders supported this policy because they wanted to avoid the \u201cerrors\u201d of the 1950s, when the Labor government forced observant religious Jews to send their children to secular schools.<\/p>\n

153\u00a0 Fred A. Lazin, \u201cThe absorption of Ethiopian Jews into the Israeli Education System during the Years 1984-1992,\u201d The 10th NISPAC Annual Conference: Delivering Public Services in CEE Countries: Trends and Developments<\/em>, Krakow, Poland, April 25-27, 2002 https:\/\/www.nispa.org\/news\/papers\/wg4\/Lazin-p.rtf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

154\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MY FAMILY THE BETA ISRAEL CURRICULUM JEWISH EDUCATION \u00a0Teachers should now explain: \u00a0As noted, Israel\u2019s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was by now a minority in recognizing the Beta Israel\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":30932,"parent":0,"menu_order":70,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31407","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ono.ac.il\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}