As the years continue, Israel education now necessarily includes the history of Medinat Yisrael as a larger component than it has in the past. Young students have no memories of the major events in the history of the state, and as time passes, more information, stories, and significant events must be learned in order for students to be able to understand deeply what Israel represents and how its past informs its present. Language, culture, and geography are no longer sufficient for a well-crafted Israel education program.

Many of today’s parents did not formally study the history of the State of Israel while in school. Some lived through the seminal events of the state’s early history or heard stories on the laps of their parents or grandparents who lived through those events. But as the years go by and the history of Israel becomes longer and more complex, there is a need to formally and directly teach this content to our students. The language and geography haven’t changed much in 40 years, but the volume of what we would call its history has grown dramatically.

A recent study from the Jewish Education Project on Jewish educators, clergy, and engagement professionals facing the war in Israel entitled Responding to this Historical Moment, noted that many educators feel they do not know enough about Medinat Yisrael to educate their students following the events of the last few months, which even further highlights the acute need to improve Israel education in Jewish schools.

Jewish schools, hard-pressed for time, are finding it hard to meet this challenge, as there appears to be little else in the curriculum that can be cut short or sacrificed in order to learn the history of Israel. As important as Israel education is, one cannot sacrifice Hebrew Language, Bible, or Math hours to add an entirely new subject to the curriculum. Once-a-week electives or one-week seminars only expose students to a small drop in the bucket of the history of Israel, and schools are struggling with what to do next.

One solution, which we adopted 3 years ago, is to dedicate a year of history study to the history of the State of Israel. Let me explain. I can speak for the state in which we are located, Massachusetts, and I suspect that the same may be true in other states as well. Typically, state standards or college admission guidelines require a year-long study of history but do not specify the subject or topic they are to study; students are required to practice the core skills of historical study but can do so through any subject of history. Using Israeli History as the subject for history thrusts Israel education into the center of focus in terms of time spent without jeopardizing other curricular topics.

The Structure of the Study of History

Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner noted in his seminal work, The Process of Education, that teaching and learning must focus on students appreciating the core nature or structure of a discipline or subject, more than on learning the specific details of that year’s curriculum. In Bruner’s view, students understand more, recall more, and generalize and apply information better when they understand the underlying principles of a subject. This matters more, and the ”facts” of the subject matter less.

This means that the primary goal for any Social Studies or History course is primarily for students to master the general skills of history, such as basic research, evaluating source documents, essay writing, note taking, determining bias, etc., while also learning the general themes of history: events follow from a wide range of causes and lead to a large range of effects, economic and social trends impact each other as well as political and military trends, change follows long-range shifts and not seminal events, etc. These core themes and skills are reviewed on an ever-deepening level each year, even as their application changes based on the curriculum or topic of a particular year. According to Bruner, the topics that teachers use to illustrate these skills and themes are interchangeable, and teachers could choose any of a thousand types of histories to illustrate the key structures of the discipline. In our school, for one year, these skills and themes are now illustrated through the subject of Israeli history.

Thus, the general idea of the “great man theory of history” is now illustrated in a lesson evaluating what role Theodore Herzl played in the development of Zionism. A lesson about whether history is “macro” (history is about trends that impact many events) or “micro” (history is about a series of unique, sui generis events disconnected from others) tries to understand Zionism within both the universal context of late 19th-century nationalism and the particular context of Jewish religious aspirations for a return to their homeland. The relationship of political, social, and economic forces in history looks at the changing fortune of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, while a lesson on bias and perspective considers how many different readers would read the Balfour Declaration differently. A lesson on close reading of documents will look at Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Prayer for the Welfare of the State, or its national anthem, and the implicit claims about the nature and values of the state included in each document. And, as a final illustration, a discussion of cause and effect considers the distal and proximate causes of the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit and then further considers the immediate and long-range consequences of the event.

Under this approach, students have learned the major underlying structures of History as a discipline but have done so using the history of Israel. This has the double effect of making the history more immanent for them, as it is their history, and also provides them the opportunity to achieve a richer understanding of the history of Israel.

One hundred and forty years after the first Aliyah, one-hundred and thirty years after the Dreyfus affair, one hundred and twenty years after the Kishinev pogrom, the history of Israel and Zionism can no longer be covered in a short number of classes or a weekly seminar. The one-hundred-plus meetings of a standard year-long History course seem more appropriate.

Complexity and Nuance

Learning about Israel in History class instead of in Hebrew class or as part of the religious classes in the Jewish school can also change the way students learn about Israel. Learning about Israel through history doesn’t just function as a time-saver, it also transforms the course of study by using the tools of history to analyze the story of Israel in all its complexity. These recurring skills and themes, which are central to the discipline of History, enable students to process and learn about the past with greater complexity and nuance. They all serve to change history from a story of events and a litany of dates and biographies into a sophisticated analysis of the myriad background causes, the numerous interpretations and narratives of what actually happened, and the many implications of the history of the past.

The events of the past few months have highlighted the importance of making sure Jewish students understand how there are numerous topics in the history of Israel with no clear, single explanations and where students and teachers would benefit from a longer conversation and exposure to different perspectives. The tension inherent in a Jewish and democratic state, the quandary of Jewish settlement in their ancestral homelands that happen to be occupied territories, the treatment of Ethiopian Jews, and challenging moments like the Altalena Affair or Sabra and Shatila should be studied carefully and slowly, with teachers and students considering multiple perspectives, sides, and viewpoints, as is typical in History class.

Increasingly, alumni of Jewish day schools are reporting that as they reach college campuses, they feel exposed in their lack of knowledge about some of the events of the history of Israel, and the various range of views about them. Yet, good History teaching excels in considering the various viewpoints and evaluating the pros and cons for each side, and a History course on Israel naturally ensures these issues are covered in all their complexity. Basic Israel literacy today, especially when students will need to justify Israel’s conduct across its vast history, demands that students learn each part of the story from many perspectives. Students need a background in the early days of the state and its evolution in order to understand current Israeli politics or to be able to advocate and explain Israel’s ongoing conflict with its neighbor states. History is built for understanding multiple viewpoints on one event, better than the discipline of language or cultural studies is.

Building Connection

Deep study of the history of Israel can also bring a deepening connection with the land and its people. Students will only build a deep affective relationship with Israel if they understand its history. A relationship that is not grounded in knowledge is a superficial one. Passion for Israel can be fleeting if it is only based on the smell of falafel on the streets of Tel Aviv, hiking trips through the Judean desert, or rafting down the Jordan River. But by reaching a deep understanding, students deepen their connections.

Israel exists because of the tremendous sacrifice of its many residents over decades, and Israel in turn has provided enormous protection for all of worldwide Jewry—details that aren’t always explored in a cursory run-through of the story. Religion, national identity, and Western morality have always played a complex role in the state, and these values have always existed in balance. Students can build a deep understanding of these core themes by seeing how they are applied at various stops along the way of the story of Israel, and this type of deep understanding builds further connection.

Concerns and Concluding Thoughts

Detractors might argue that “hijacking” a full year of a secular studies course into a Judaic studies one is a bad choice, further cloistering Jewish students within their own tradition at the expense of having a broader viewpoint or set of experiences. Indeed, with schools needing time to teach US History, Classical History, World Cultures and History, Modern History, and perhaps European History, something will be lost when primacy is given to the history of Israel. School leadership is about tradeoffs and high stakes decision-making, but the hope is that leaders will consider the benefits of this approach to outweigh the costs. As sad as it is for students to not fully grasp every detail of world history, it is sadder if they don’t appreciate their own history.

I am somewhat ambivalent about what grade is the ideal time for this topic. Our school has taught “Israel as history” in the eighth grade, when the students are sophisticated enough to benefit from the study, while still insulated from the high-stakes considerations of high school transcripts and standardized tests. One could argue that students should wait even longer, until their thinking has matured further, and tackle these topics later in high school. For students preparing for college or a year of study in Israel post-senior year, waiting for 12^th grade might be ideal.

Though this idea is grounded in the research and has been tested and piloted in at least one school, it may still be out-of-the-box for many Jewish educators. At the same time, the events of the past year have led many to realize that something should be done at this critical time to chart a better trajectory forward for our students on the topic of Israel education. This is but one small idea, but we believe that it will pay greater dividends in the end.