Unifying Flexibility

Today, many Jews around the world are observing the fast of Tisha B'Av. In Jewish tradition, this day commemorates the destruction of the two ancient Jewish national Temples — the First Temple, from the biblical era, was destroyed in 586 BCE, while the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. According to tradition, these Temples were destroyed because of moral corruption, internal strife, and conflict with the regional powers. Sadly, it seems that today history is repeating itself. In recent years, many of us have wondered with astonishment: how did we lose our way? How is it possible that extremism has raised its head once again?

Yet it is precisely on this day that we should remember that the Jewish story is eternal. Our hope is not yet lost. Israeli society can come to its senses, unite, and reject extremism. To do so, we must re-examine our foundational civic ideas and adapt them to the unique circumstances that have emerged in this country over the past few decades.

Jewish nationhood is a unique phenomenon among the peoples of the world: unlike most peoples, who grow gradually on their own land, the Jewish nation always marches toward its land. It first takes shape in the diaspora, and only afterward organizes itself to return home to the Land of Israel. For this reason, the impulse that brings masses of Jews to return — whether ideology or flight from antisemitism — is not the same as the skills required to build a thriving, cohesive society. The return to Zion does not end with immigration to the Land of Israel; it only begins there. And so, in every generation in which we have regathered in the Land of Israel, a fierce tension has flared between nationhood and tribalism.

Francesco Hayez, The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (1867), Venice. Photo: Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons. licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Our instinctive response to this tension is to suppress it: to create a "Melting Pot" — a strong national center that overshadows tribal identity. This is the purpose behind the call for "one education for all," which has been widely discussed over the past year. But the result of this illusory call is not cohesion, only forced unity, which blurs differences instead of resolving them — until they erupt again, with even greater force.

The state education system is a clear example of this failure. The State Education Law of 1953 formulated, briefly and clearly, a single value-based goal: "To found education on the values of Israeli culture and the achievements of science, on love of the homeland and loyalty to the state and the Jewish people... and on the aspiration for a society built on liberty, equality, tolerance, mutual assistance, and love of one's fellow". But beginning in the 1980s, the various tribes within Israeli society rejected this goal. Traditional Jews, for example, wanted to strengthen the religious component of state education; Arab society wanted to strengthen its Palestinian identity; and many secular Jews wanted to strengthen universal values or recognition of Judaism as a culture rather than solely as a religion. By the year 2000, the law had been expanded into lengthy clauses attempting to contain these many contradictions.

As a result, in recent decades state education has been forced to exercise constant caution: principals and teachers are wary of touching controversial issues, lest they provoke the anger of some parents. Education researchers have noted that, unlike the state-religious and ultra-Orthodox streams, the state stream has no political address fighting on its behalf. The national-religious public has a clear, homogeneous track — accompanied, funded, and autonomous. State education, which has tried to bridge many contradictions, has no such thing [1]. It is required to simultaneously serve secular families seeking freedom from religion and traditional families seeking a stronger connection to heritage. Under these conditions, educational leadership is forced to square the circle and tread carefully between the raindrops. This is survival, not education.

The extremism we have experienced in Israeli society in recent years is a result of these processes. As long as we aspire to concentrate Israeli society under a single education system, we create ideal conditions for extremist groups. All they have to do is stir up trouble and threaten to walk away — and educational leadership is then forced to mute its moderate message so as not to provoke the extremists' anger.

This exposes the illusion: in an Israeli society full of contradictions, the aspiration to establish "one education for all" is simply not possible. Our goal should not be to educate everyone uniformly, but to create a shared curriculum for the majority of Israelis.

The practical implication of this idea is a shift in how decisions are made: on every contested educational issue, the system should aim for a clear majority, rather than the sweeping agreement of the entire public. A minority that cannot accept the majority's curriculum will not be forced to compromise its identity — but neither will it be able to block the majority's decision.

Illustration. Alex Eidelman / Shutterstock.com.

To this end, our movement proposes a new vision, and this is its essence: establishing equal educational autonomies for all Jewish and Arab groups in Israeli society. Any group that constitutes a certain percentage of the population will be able to establish its own educational autonomy in matters of religion, culture, and values, and receive a state budget in proportion to its relative size. At the same time, the National Ministry of Education in Jerusalem will continue to lead a shared curriculum for Israeli society as a whole. When the Ministry of Education proposes a plan on a contested issue, it will be brought to a majority decision: if a majority of the public approves it, it will be implemented. Minorities who oppose it will not be able to block the decision, but neither will they be required to relinquish their views. They will make do with the education offered by their own autonomy, which will likewise be funded fairly.

This approach turns every dispute from a sweeping obstacle into a purely local matter. Instead of the extremists in each camp setting the boundaries of public discourse for everyone, the moderate majority will be able to decide and shape a shared curriculum for itself, while the minority keeps to its own autonomous space. This is the flexibility that will lead to cohesion.

Our unique Jewish story is a story of a journey. In biblical times, our forefathers and foremothers walked from the desert to the Land of Israel; in the modern era, masses of Jews immigrated from the diaspora and integrated into Israeli society. We have therefore always been — and will always be — a diverse nation of many tribes. But as long as we continue trying to suppress this tribalism, we do not create cohesion; we feed the division and unchecked extremism we seek to prevent.

The fast of Tisha B'Av reminds us where the old path leads. This time, let us choose to walk a different path: not to suppress the diversity within us, but to allow the Israeli majority to unite without harming the unique identity of minority groups.

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[1] Chen Artzi-Srur and Amichai Danino, Tribal Trap: The Battle for Israel's Soul and How to Win It (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Books, 2025), 114–128.