Promoting educational change in religious enclave schools: a comparison of radical and moderate Haredi activists in Israel

ABSTRACT

The vast majority of Haredi schools for boys in Israel focus almost exclusively on religious studies. This study explores Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) activism aimed at promoting secular education in these schools. Data collection drew on semi-structured interviews with 20 Haredi activists. The findings compared two patterns of Haredi activism—radical and moderate—and highlighted their distinguishing features: the activists’ identity, ideology, tactics, and approach towards the state. Whereas these distinctions impeded joint efforts to promote educational change, they enabled the radical activists to use contra-institutional tactics and strengthened the legitimacy of the moderate activists. In the context of religious enclave communities, different patterns of activism, based on different models of religious identity and ideology, may produce effective tailor-made solutions that are congruent with the preferences of different religious subgroups. Understanding the dynamic of Haredi activism may assist in mobilising educational rights in enclave religious communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational activism
• religious education
• Haredi
• educational rights
• religious identity
• religious ideology

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Benny Benjamin for his helpful comments, and for our interviewees for giving us their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We chose the term “tactics” in light of its dominant use in the literature on social movements and activism (Den Hond & De Bakker, 2007; Eesley et al., 2016; Yaziji & Doh, 2013), which we reviewed in the section “Education Activism: Tactics and Typologies”.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [Grant number 1487/19].