In Israel, Subsidies Not to Learn

By Jon Basil Utley • July 3, 2010, 8:42 AM

At the recent J Street meeting (J Street is the new anti-AIPAC Jewish organization) I heard two speakers, one was a Knesset member, decrying the fact that 27% of Israeli children now go to schools, Yeshivas, without math, history, science or foreign languages. Now I find an LA Times report from 2008 stating that the government had caved in to demands that such schools get state subsidies as well.

I would note that such “schools” are in the same tradition as the Muslim madrassas so often criticized in the Western media. But about Israel most of our media is silent.

Posted in World.

20 Responses to In Israel, Subsidies Not to Learn

MattSwartz says:

July 3, 2010 at 3:42 pm

While I’m not a fan of national-level subsidies for any sort of education, I do think that Mr. Utley is wrong about Yeshivas.

Are students who study nothing but Jewish literature, law, and theology behind in other subjects? Of course they are, but they are also learning more about language, rhetoric, and meaning than their secular-school counterparts. For the vast majority of students, science and history are not vocational education, but are instead means of indoctrination into a certain way of looking at the world. That’s alright, but it, too, can be blinkering and limited in some senses, particularly when questions of meaning and epistemology are raised.

I would also take issue with the idea that Madrassas and Torah school are equivalent. Certainly, they have many things in common (religious focus, ancient language, memorizational emphasis), but there are also many differences. The study of the Torah has always been a series of debates, and the practice of debating and questioning the received text is much more pronounced than under Islam. The rabbinical tradition is a better training ground for critical thinking than anything in funamentalist Islam would be.

I don’t like many of the things that the State of Israel does, either, but I am not angry about their failing to push all students into a one-size-fits-all educational model.
DGreene says:

July 3, 2010 at 11:05 pm

MattSwartz,

Thank you for your interesting comment. I am someone who is relatively ignorant about Yeshiva education but am eager to learn. I think your comment may be assuming a little bit too much background in Jewish education and law among your audience.

For example, I for one was unsure which students you were referring to by this sentence:

“For the vast majority of students, science and history are not vocational education, but are instead means of indoctrination into a certain way of looking at the world. That’s alright, but it, too, can be blinkering and limited in some senses, particularly when questions of meaning and epistemology are raised.”

In addition, are you, by negative implication, saying that science and history are “vocational education” (I am not sure what that means exactly) for Yeshiva students? Could you give some examples where questions of meaning and epistemology might reveal limits in the form of education you refer to? To what extent does Yeshiva education address questions of meaning and epistemology? I would be very interested in some specific examples.

I’m probably asking a lot here, but I would also be very grateful to see some examples of how Torah study is a series of debates and questioning of text.

Thanks, if you have the time!
TomB says:

July 4, 2010 at 4:49 am

MattSwartz wrote:

“I would also take issue with the idea that Madrassas and Torah school are equivalent.”

So … it would be hunky-dory for the U.S. to subsidize Madrassasas just so long as we did it a bit *less* than we do those Torah schools, right?

And …

“The rabbinical tradition is a better training ground for critical thinking than….”

So can you give us your projection for when these Yeshivas will hit on the apparently abstruse critical thought that ethnically cleansing the Palestinians isn’t all that right or smart? I know I expect it from ‘em any day now….
TomT says:

July 4, 2010 at 7:22 am

Thanks MattSwartz for your insights.

I remember how disappointed I was when CNN’s Christiane Amanpour tried to equivalence Christian, Jewish, and Muslim teachings, in “God’s Warriors”, from what seemed an athiest point of view. She tried to make it seem as if Muslim extremists were about the same as Christian and Jewish mainstream.

Don’t we all have to guard against misuse of schools? What about a black (or mexican) neighborhood school that might teach some of it’s students to hate being white?

How disappointing, then, that Mr Utley seems to have no clue on how to differientiate between a school that teaches that Jews are “pigs”, and that it’s “desireable to kill them”, from a Jewish or Christian tradition that says, “This is THE superior form of world view and worshiping God” (however much that latter might be distasteful to you).

(For example, how much do you know about Obama’s upbringing, in Hawaiian schools, when there was a “Kill Haole Day” tradition?)

@DGreene, “To what extent does Yeshiva education address questions…?” You seem to want a defense of teaching world view and relationship to God “in place of” science and math. A good parent would invite their children to do their own homework, instead of wanting everything handed to them (but we suspect you want someone else to do the work, while you “debate” by picking apart things you’re unfamiliar with.)

We conservatives are sympathetic to your concerns, as many of us don’t see them (science and religion) as mutually exclusive, but rather alternate forms of expressing truths. Note that Muslims once “ruled the world” in terms of science and math education, and Christians were the first to visit the moon. Many of us don’t think that was “pure accident”.

Note loss of US productivity and affluence (and corresponding coarseness of society, and crime rate) seems to correspond with the success of the secularization movement in America. Wouldn’t it be funny if 50 years from now, it turned out that the subject we are discussing was the cure to these?
Mad Doc MacRae says:

July 4, 2010 at 11:00 am

“Note loss of US productivity and affluence (and corresponding coarseness of society, and crime rate) seems to correspond with the success of the secularization movement in America. Wouldn’t it be funny if 50 years from now, it turned out that the subject we are discussing was the cure to these?”

50 years from now we’re all going to be sending our kids to Yeshivas in Israel? What will mech-Pat Buchanan say?
TomT says:

July 4, 2010 at 6:49 pm

50 years from now? No, we’re all gonna turn into libs, and we’re going to take a snippet of something someone says, use a series of non sequitur “if-then” statements twisting what was said, then draw a caricature from our cleverness, and then use the absurdities to share snark with our buddies, and point out how everyone we don’t like must fit the mold predicted by our caricature.

But then, Pat’s a year older than I am, and we’ll both almost certainly be dead 50 years from now. So all WE have to do, a’la Bush and Obama, et al., is kick the can a bit down the road… Pass me just a bit more of your grandchildren’s Social Security, would you?
MattSwartz says:

July 4, 2010 at 9:47 pm

we’re going to take a snippet of something someone says, use a series of non sequitur “if-then” statements twisting what was said, then draw a caricature from our cleverness, and then use the absurdities to share snark with our buddies, and point out how everyone we don’t like must fit the mold predicted by our caricature.

In the words of the web-slang meisters 40 years younger than TomT, the person above you just got P’wned. Well done.

TomB, I’d like to refer you to the first sentence of my comment, where I expressed my distaste for all sorts of state-funded education, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Secular. If I were to rate these in order of personal distaste and total damage done, I would probably rank them in that descending order.

DGreene, I basically echo TomT’s comments to you.
Charles Benninghoff says:

July 4, 2010 at 10:33 pm

Mr. Utley,

To learn the difference between a Yeshiva and a madrassa simply read the Chumash and the Quran.

To even pose such an observation is to show a wanting in research.

The task of reading these two book can be accomplished in a year, or less, which is what it took me. So, I know it can be done.

You would quickly learn that the first produces learned scholars and the second jihadis.
Mad Doc MacRae says:

July 4, 2010 at 11:05 pm

Don’t make us go all Logan’s Run all over you old people.
TomT says:

July 5, 2010 at 4:10 am

I like to criticize others for lapses in math and logic. But a quick recalculation shows me that PJB is a whole 9 years my senior.

“Don’t make us go all Logan’s Run all over you old people.”

Clever. Picture me in the position of “the thinker”, elbow on knee, chin nestled between thumb and finger, wondering if it’d be more fun to be the gameshow host, or the contestant.

Religious schools… Picture what a fine line there is between the person who says, “I live in a universe that is dead and mechanical, and is so complex that it is unknowable.”, and, the other person who says, “My God is so great and complex, that He’s unknowable.”

Then they both join a chorus of, “So you just have to sort things out the best you can, with finite resources.”

Then they start arguing; one says, “The world is only 4 thousand years old.” The other says, “What about these million-year-old dinosaur bones?” The first replies, “Yeah, I know. God created those 4 thousand years ago.”

Religion 101: God has zero attributes, but the human mind cannot deal with an entity with zero/infinite attributes, therefore we ascribe to God such characteristics as allow us to conceive of “Him” (or Her or It or lack thereof).

Consider the sophistication of a government that tolerates the childish simplicity of pure atheism. Consider the loss, if pure atheism were to take over our government, with it’s intolerance of other religions. This is, in essense, the prism through which a conservative would measure the decline which the US is undergoing.

MattSwartz said, “…distaste for all sorts of state-funded education, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Secular.”

In 2004, while I was trying to teach computer science to the 12 yr old neighbor kid, he observed, “The Chinese seem to be trying to take over the internet.” Now, he’s 18, and he is transitioning from being home schooled to going to public university. He will inheret some part of the US, and the dialog between God and Nothingness. Most old people pray to God we don’t find out how the story ends, for our children, or our country…
CM says:

July 5, 2010 at 12:34 pm

TomT:

There is no fine line between your two thinkers: in fact, there’s a universe of difference between them, and most of what we take for granted as modern civilization arises from that distinction.

The scientific view of the world is predictive, and the religious view is not. That is a most fundamental difference, and only the scientific view can deduce those laws (i.e., a priori predictions as to how nature will respond to our entreaties) that give rise to technology and all of its manifestations, including the computer you’re using to read this web page.

The religious view cannot.

This is not to denigrate the value of religion, by the way. It is merely to point out that the value of science is in its ability to predict the natural world, and that no other world view we know of today possesses this objective and predictive frame of reference.

And that’s why I laughed out loud when I read the first commenter’s lumping of science and history education. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read on this web site in a long time, as it demonstrates an inability to distinguish between subjective analyses of the past and objective analyses of the future. That particular distinction is anything but a “fine line”
TomB says:

July 5, 2010 at 2:16 pm

TomT wrote;

“Consider the sophistication of a government that tolerates the childish simplicity of pure atheism.”

Ah, as opposed to the sophistication of your take on atheism here, huh? So “childishly simplistic” not even “tolerable,” apparently. My, how … broad-minded and “adult” of you….)

(… leaving unexplored for the sake of respect for religion its seeming love for if not in fact its absolute founding upon such patently adult, non-childish things as little just-so stories whereby, for instance, two people impose a grievous sin on all future mankind by listening to a snake and biting an apple, another turns bread into fishes and walks on water, others come down from the skies on chariots pulled by horses, and etc. and so forth.)

Just doesn’t get much richer than this…. Except for an aversion to anti-religious bigots who like to make fun of the religious-minded I’d send this one in to Richard Dawkins. One can just hear him crying with laughter.
daveg says:

July 5, 2010 at 2:57 pm

“How disappointing, then, that Mr Utley seems to have no clue on how to differientiate between a school that teaches that Jews are “pigs”, and that it’s “desireable to kill them”, from a Jewish or Christian tradition that says, “This is THE superior form of world view and worshiping God” (however much that latter might be distasteful to you).”

So, if we can finds examples of statement in the Torah that are highly negative against the Goy you would change you opinion on this?

“You would quickly learn that the first produces learned scholars and the second jihadis.”

Again, if we can find examples of religious Jews (or better yet leading Rebbi) acting out in violence against Palestinians and finding support for this in the Torah, you opinion would be changed?
Aaron says:

July 6, 2010 at 5:20 am

I’m surprised that no one has questioned the factual basis of this post. Who were these speakers who claimed that 27 percent of Israeli children go to these schools? Doesn’t that sound a bit hard to believe? And one of the speakers is described as a Knesset member. Isn’t that in itself strong reason to doubt the truth of his claim?

The LA Times article that Utley himself links to here says that the ultra-Orthodox only constitute 7 percent of the population. Their school-age children probably constitute a bigger proportion, but considering that many of them do learn English, science, etc., I’m skeptical about the “27 percent” claim. Maybe it’s true, but I’d like to see the evidence.

Finally, I’m kind of appalled by the liberal, progressive assumption of the speakers and of this blog post. School is about learning “useful” things, things that help you make lots of money when you get older. What could be more important than that? Especially to a conservative?
TomT says:

July 6, 2010 at 7:47 am

Most interesting first.

daveg, the Christian bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” What’s a witch? Somebody who says THEY are, or somebody who WE say is? But how many christian schoolchildren are looking for a witch to kill? You ask, “If we can find examples…” Usually a LIB can’t tell the difference between “examples” and the “average” that we would want to build a society upon. (eg, can’t tell the difference between the US, it’s soldiers, and the abuses at Abu Ghraib.)

CM – nice intelligent try. A wrench is usually poor at driving a screw, whereas a screwdriver would work SO MUCH BETTER. Pity the poor mechanic who would work for some intellectual bigot who would only allow him to have one tool available to him. Only in a cartoon world would you think that it is a pure accident that Christians got to the moon first…

TomB – like a rock on the beach, the water of reason will only have a gentle effect upon you. Yes, I did give up the religion of atheism in my late 20′s, after I left the military. After about 5 years of university study of science and philosophy and religion, I settled upon Christianity as the personal tool that I would use, which later refined itself into Catholicism. Over the next 30 years I taught intro to that to young adults. When people say Christianity is “simplistic”, it doesn’t make me mad. I can “explain”, but I will not “debate” (against anyone I judge to not willing to be totally honest, rather than being motivated by an anger or an agenda).
TomT says:

July 6, 2010 at 8:08 am

“Complexity is THE problem that any theory of biology has to solve. And you can’t solve it, by postulating an agent that is even more complex, thereby simply compounding the problem.” Richard Dawkins, 2002

This is an example of his intellectually bankrupt “circular reasoning”. Ie, “There is no god, so you can’t say that god is an agent at work, when talking about scientific theories.” This simply leads back to his principal “a priori”, that “there must be no god, because I find no evidence of that, and anyone who has attempted to present evidence, I have thoroughly debunked, and I have faith that I will be able to do so in the future”.

Childishly simple. And to someone who has had personal experience of a religious nature, any scientist can find a “non religious” explanation for why that person may “think” they experienced such.

So is the atheist scientist’s “faith” superior to the religious person’s “faith”? In America, we TOLERATE BOTH. We will not let EITHER SIDE take over our government to the exclusion of the other, in our society.

If you find an atheist who loves you and your religion, is not in the words of Richard Dawkins “militant and at war with religion”, and is thoughtful and honest, then they are WORTH listening to with great attention.
TomT says:

July 6, 2010 at 8:38 am

Can not ALL of us, religious and atheist alike, denounce dishonest practitioners of ANY school of thought?

My example of this would be the religious person who so loves their “group”, that they are willing to adopt atheist methodology. I believe this includes MOST of those who would espouse the perversion of “intelligent design” that we hear so often in the news.

NO WONDER that so many honest and thoughtful people, both religious and non-religious, are up in arms at this “anti-intellectual” movement.

The simplistic, cartoon version of “intelligent design” is that if a rain drop falls, we can show that mathmatically there are an infinite number of things that could have fallen an infinite number of other places, therefore the reason we see the rain drop is infinitely improbable, unless we postulate a divine organization to the universe. The corollary is that humans mathematically could not have evolved unless Jesus said so.

It’s not so much we get mad at dishonest people, but rather, we must prevent people from using government to LIMIT OUR OPTIONS as to the tools available to us to use.

This is the essence of our discussion of “who will run the schools”.
tbraton says:

July 6, 2010 at 10:03 am

Tom B., as I recall, Tom T is the same poster who responded to me on another blog that he couldn’t comment on WWI, WWII or the Korean War since they all occurred “before his time.” See comments to PJB’s blog “A Failed President (or Two)” http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/06/24/a-failed-president-or-two/#comments And, of course, he made this damning admission after earlier proclaiming that “all through history” rightists started wars but leftists made a mash of them. So he was able to construct his sweeping generalization about history based simply on his “knowledge” of events that occurred during his lifetime. He also seemed to be under the impression that Vietnam was Nixon’s war. I always find it interesting that so much smug certainty can rest on so much igorance.
TomB says:

July 6, 2010 at 10:25 am

In response to my post TomT wrote:

“TomB – like a rock on the beach, the water of reason will only have a gentle effect upon you.”

Well I appreciate the gentleness of your response, Tom, the beautiful analogy, and hasten to say that I regret and apologize for any insult.
daveg says:

July 6, 2010 at 11:34 am

TomT, you evade the question because you obviously have no response.

You hold Islam to a literal standard, but not Judiasm, and in particular Othodox Judiasm which essentially claims the Torah should be followed word for word. Not good faith argument.

Then when I try to check you on it, you merely try to hold Christianity to a literal standard, which is not only poor logic but also not consistent with any major christian sect at this point.

Orthodox Jews are the most likely to follow negative commands in the Torah, and they do so often – when the think they can get away with it.

Ask any Christian in Jurselsm who gets spit on by the Orthodox Jews just how literally they follow the Torah. Then lets look as what else is contained therein before we discuss government funding of Orthodox schools and just how different these schools are from madrassas.