In Israel, we are used to everything being political, from how we dress to where we live to what newspaper we read and which one we would never be caught dead reading. For many years, the classroom has been no exception and schools are accordingly divided according to a system that is comprised of several tracks suited to different religious and cultural (translation: political) orientations.
Of course as the joke goes, for every two Jews there are three opinions, so it is not enough for the Religious Zionist camp, for example, to have it's own track. For a number of years there has been a growing fissure in the ranks, such as we are on the verge of having two Religious Zionist camps; one ultra-nationalist, focused on Torah study, looking to their rabbis and institutions for guidance and messianic in its vision of the Jewish state and its future; and the other moderate and urbane, more integrated with general Israeli society but less hopeful of that society's return to Judaism, committed to both a modern democratic worldview and its specifically Jewish commitments. To the initiated this split can be summarized as the difference between Beit El and Kiryat Moshe on the one hand and Katamon and Givat Shumuel on the other.
There have always been different streams in Religious Zionism but never have the differences been so pronounced and more volatile.
It is either ironic or entirely fitting that the main theater of this simmering war is the Bible itself. Or more accurately how to study and teach the Bible. The most recent flare-up has occurred as the result of a new Bible Instruction Program put forward by the newly appointed Head Supervisor of Tankah Instruction for the Religious Zionist Schools, Miri Schlissel.
But more specifically, what is it that they are fighting about? The "old school" which ironically often points to the mother of Modern Traditional Bible Study, Nechama Leibowitz as their guiding light (ironic since she was only traditional in certain ways, while highly untraditional in others), insists on the centrality of the rabbinic interpretations of the Biblical text, which is often based on what is called "charitable readings". What the protoganists of this approach themselves may not realize is that these readings flow out of an interpretive tradition. In other words, one cannot argue how to interpret a text across traditions. There are simply different rules of the game. This is the point Alisdair MacIntyre makes so forcefully in his famous After Virtue – two people cannot even argue if the don't first agree on the definition of the terms (e.g. virtue) that they are arguing about.
Schlissel's group looks up to Rabbi Yoel ben Nun, who many years ago had locked horns with Nechama Leibowitz about how to study the Biblical text. Ben Nun is an outstanding teacher who found and gave inspiration by spending more time looking at the raw materials of the text: etymology, archeology and language structure. While highly knowledgeable of rabbinic interpretations, he feels free to look at the text from a new perspective. Essentially what he tries to do is to synthesize the traditional Jewish interpretive tradition with the tools of modern secular Biblical scholarship. When successful, this synthesis can be very powerful. That being said, it is a difficult task to accomplish, especially if the rabbinic reading was intentionally ahistorical and unconcerned with the types of information that Ben Nun is trying to integrate. This essentially was what Nechama Leibowitz, was arguing.
Herself a great admirer of Meir Weiss, who together with her, was very influenced by the "New Criticism", she argued that a text had a life independent of its cultural context. Indeed, Weiss gives the example of the contemporary readers of Don Quioxte missing the point by getting overly caught up in the actual events that served as the background for Cervantes's magnum opus. It is true that Weiss also points out that ignorance in this context is not bliss and if studying Near Eastern languages will shed light on the meaning of a word, such study should not be ignored.
At the same time, however, it would be difficult to say that Jewish commentaries have ever tried to reconstruct the historical Abraham or David. Rather, they are textual figures that are meant to have different meanings at different times. So I understand Nachmonides famous notion of ma'asei avot, siman lebanim, that the actions of the [Biblical] father are a sign for their progeny. He is saying that later commentaries will understand the life of Avraham differently from their ancestors and will thus derive new lessons from him.
Shlissel is from the Katamon wing of Religious Zionism. In fact, she lives in that cosmopolitan, yet quaint neighborhood of Jerusalem. As a teacher and administrator, she has worked for institutions that look to Yeshivat Har Etzion and the associated Herzog Teacher's College for their leadership. She completes the sterotype by being in the middle of her doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University. From what I can tell, she also appears to be an excellent educator. But that is not the point. Really!
The point is that there are two worldviews in the religious Zionist camp. Shlissel's worldview should not determine what should be taught in Beit El. But then again, the chief rabbi of Beit El, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner's worldview should not determine what is taught in Katamon either.
In fact, the problem lies in the centralization of the Israeli school system. Both groups should care deeply about how the Bible is taught – that is a good sign. And both sides in the fight are right – for their respective publics.
At the same time, for some of us this politico- religious educational reality is also quite sad. Those who view themselves torn between the two worldviews, loyal to what we see as the best in both, are sorry to see a withering of a "center which cannot hold." We are saddened by the split between those that understand deference to authority, nay understand authority and those that are open to the outside world.