A three-thousand-year-old soldier: history and the Hebrew Bible in Jewish-Israeli public education

ABSTRACT

History education has been instrumental in transmitting collective memories across generations while sustaining national traditions. Many nations use history education to instill national memories in their future citizens. In the current Jewish context, history is arguably a dominant cultural discourse. History education is deemed central to preparing future Jewish citizens of Israel. In particular, Zionist scholars and educators use the Bible as their primary text, providing an infrastructure of history and myths for this national ideology. In order to investigate the relationship between political ideology, education, and national memories, this paper explores the ways in which the Hebrew Bible and Jewish history are being taught interchangeably in Jewish-Israeli schools. Drawing on various source materials (such as political videos, school curricula, and textbooks), the paper retraces the origins of this conflation, critically examines its goals, and suggests possible effects it may have on the formation of children's and adolescents’ collective memories.

KEYWORDS:

• History education
• Bible studies
• Jewish education
• Israel
• historical consciousness

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Over the last 30 years, there has been an archeological debate regarding the Biblical story and its archeological findings in Israel. While the approach which understands the Bible as a text which should be read as ancient history does exist, (e.g., the ‘fundamentalist approach’ to Israeli archeology) it is highly debated and represents only one among a plethora of approaches to Biblical archeological interpretation (see: Levine & Mazar, 2001).

2 In the Jewish-Israeli K-12 education system, people may choose for their children to study in the Mamlachti educational system (Secular – Public) or in a variety of a religious school systems such as Mamlachti-Dati (Religious – Public), Mamlachti – Dati-Torani (Religious – Public – Torani), Charedi Dati-Leumi (Mamlachti-Dati) or Hinuch Atzmai – Haredi (right wing-Orthodox). Each system has a different curriculum and administrative regime.