The political speeches accompanying the parliamentary discussions over the state budget for the next two years, included the following comment from MK Moshe Gafni, of the United Torah Judaism party and chair of the Knesset’s Finance Committee: “My daughter didn’t learn about Noa Kirel (Israel’s representative to the Eurovision song contest). Is that a reason to deprive her of funding? I would donate a few items of clothing (to Kirel), so she has some…”

While the public’s attention centered on Gafni’s implied criticism of Kirel’s less than modest attire, the question of the curriculum what his daughter was subjected to at school was mostly ignored in the public discourse. Even though the state of Israel funds ultra-Orthodox “exempt institutions” – namely, schools that avoid teaching the core curriculum – the Ministry of Education does not supervise what is actually being taught in them. In other words: the public’s money is handed over, but there’s absolutely no supervision over the teaching materials. Obviously, official scrutiny does not always solve the problems – sometimes it even provides support for “alternative history”. As Shomrim exposed in the first article in this series, history textbooks published by the national-ultra-Orthodox Har Bracha Yeshiva, were approved by the Ministry for use in national-religious schools. However, the inspection process at least provides some kind of filter for the contents that reach students.

The history textbooks designed for the older students in the ultra-Orthodox sector have not been approved by the Ministry of Education. Officials from the ministry are well aware that those textbooks prioritize the ultra-Orthodox identity of the students over – to use a gross understatement – historical accuracy; but they do nothing about it.

Incidentally, it is no coincidence that Gafni mentioned his daughter rather than his son. Girls in the ultra-Orthodox community are the main target audience of these textbooks, since they study for matriculation exams. At the same time, most of the boys only study Jewish religious texts. Gafni’s daughter and her friends were indeed not taught about Noa Kirel and her Eurovision Song Contest exploits, but the taught narrative has a very clear impact on the way these girls view Israeli society – and themselves.

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The history textbooks designed for the older students in the ultra-Orthodox sector have not been approved by the Ministry of Education. Officials from the ministry are well aware that those textbooks prioritize the ultra-Orthodox identity of the students over – to use a gross understatement – historical accuracy; but they do nothing about it.

The Declaration of Independence? No Equality, No Freedom No Holy Sites of Other Religions 

 For this article, Shomrim analyzed two of the key history textbooks used in ultra-Orthodox high schools. One is Chapters on Jewish History in Recent Generations by Rabbi Menachem Hacohen Ostry (Part B, Orr Meir Publishing House), which is taught to 10^th- and 11^th-graders in the cities Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. The introduction to the book, it states that it was written “in accordance to the updated Ministry of Education program for ultra-Orthodox high schools,” but Ministry officials said categorically that they have not approved it for classroom use.

The second book is “A History of Recent Generations” (Yeshurun Publishing House – the Center for Ultra-Orthodox Literature in Israel) by Rabbu Yekutiel Frinder, who is a Holocaust survivor who fled to Switzerland and then immigrated to Israel on a pioneers' ship. His textbook is studied, inter alia, by seventh and eighth grade pupils in Bnei Brak and Ramat-Gan.

The descriptions of historical events in those books focus primarily on the ultra-Orthodox community, even when their involvement in the events mentioned was relatively marginal. Members of the ultra-Orthodox community are portrayed as victims of endless persecution and suffering, but also as the only people who practice morally virtuous lives. Other sectors of Israeli society are either ignored or harshly criticized. Secular Israelis, for example, are always portrayed negatively. Members of the Mizrahi community are portrayed as having descended into a life of crime because of secular Israelis, who manipulated them into rejecting the ultra-Orthodox way of life. Arabs, meanwhile, are invariably depicted through the prism of terror and war.

The same approach can be seen in these books’ depiction of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which is at the center of the current political dispute over the judicial overhaul. In Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations, for example, the only direct quote from the Declaration of Independence is of “our natural and historic right” to “declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”

Whatever happened to equal rights for every citizen of the state, irrespective of religion, race or gender? And how about freedom of religion, conscience, speech, education and culture? And that small matter of safeguarding the holy sites for all religions? Those subjects are absent from the Ultra-Orthodox textbooks, in which religion is central. The parts of the Declaration of Independence relating to general civil rights are obsolete. Unsurprisingly, then, that while safeguarding the values of the Declaration of Independence is the beating heart of the public protest against the judicial coup - most of the ultra-Orthodox community is oblivious to the main issues in question.

Even though the ultra-Orthodox population is an inherent part of the Israeli political establishment, institutions of state (apart from the IDF) are also portrayed in a dubious light. Every contribution made by the ultra-Orthodox is mentioned with the proviso that it was a one-off gesture, just so Israeli society shouldn’t, heavens forefend, get any ideas. A fine example is one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli public discourse – conscriptions of yeshiva students to the Israeli Army. When covering the defense of Jerusalem during the War of Independence, the author of Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations explains that when yeshiva students agreed to dig trenches in area where there were no bomb shelters, it was “an emergency measure approved by the Yeshiva Council due to the intense siege on Jerusalem – and was under no circumstances to be seen as a policy allowing yeshiva students to participate in military campaigns.”

Writing about the Zionist movement, the author of A History of Recent Generations says that, like “every other movement that did not draw its inspiration from the Holy Torah… it’s outcomes were not welcome.” The state institutions which are responsible for education and immigrant absorption are described as immoral. “The Education Ministry has fully admitted that the secular education system has failed,” the book declares, adding that “emissaries from the [Zionist] Federation and the [Jewish] Agency used their authority to drive the immigrants, and especially their children, away from religion.”

And what does the Ministry of Education have to say about all this? “The history textbooks referred to in the article are not approved for teaching,” the ministry’s spokesperson stated. Obviously, it merits bearing in mind that two ministers are currently in charge of the Ministry of Education: one of them, Likud’s Yoav Kisch, is secular; the other, Haim Biton, is an ultra-Orthodox Shas Party MK.

Shomrim asked the Ministry of education whether there are any textbooks for ultra-Orthodox schools that have been approved by the ministry. “None,” was the answer. “The lack of approved textbooks for the ultra-Orthodox community is a problem we are familiar with. The ministry’s professional team is currently working on solutions to this shortage.”

In Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations, for example, the only direct quote from the Declaration of Independence is of “our natural and historic right” to “declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, to be known as the State of Israel." Whatever happened to equal rights for every citizen of the state, irrespective of religion, race or gender?

‘Ultra-Orthodox Writing Creates an Alternative History’

Dr. Tsafrir Goldberg from Haifa University’s Department of Learning and Instructional Sciences, has researched history teaching practices in Israel, and he is not surprised. “The State of Israel does not write textbooks,” he says. “Publishing houses decide if it is economically worthwhile for them to work on a new book, which involves seeking the Ministry of Education’s approval for it and to hoping that schools prefer it to the other books on the market. In addition, when the ultra-Orthodox and religious communities are concerned, you would also need rabbinical approval – and for most of the private publishers it is just not worth the hassle. The old textbooks are still sold, and there is no demand in the ultra-Orthodox sector for revised editions. It is simply not in their interests.”

It was in the interest of the Har Bracha Yeshiva, which published history textbooks for the state-run religious school system?

“The national-religious camp has been fighting hard at the battle of narratives. Writing textbooks is akin to capturing another outpost in the struggle between the elites, just like conquering the media or the judicial system. The ultra-Orthodox community does not have the same aspirations as the national-religious camp in that respect. It is satisfied with the status quo.”

The distortions of history in ultra-Orthodox textbooks are glaring. Is there no sophisticated ideology there, like the one which instructs the national-religious camp?

“Ultra-Orthodox textbooks are extremely crude in their anti-secular and anti-Arab sentiment. Zionism is the greatest enemy and the depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is rather moderate until the 1930s, becomes very nationalistic thereafter. The textbooks are outdated in terms of its description of facts, they are not obligated to historical accuracy and they use language that would not be acceptable today.”

What is the purpose of these textbooks? 

“The ultra-Orthodox world views history as a learning tool,” explains Prof. Kimmy Caplan from Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry. Caplan researched textbooks in the ultra-Orthodox education system. “They reshape the past, erase from history anything that they do not want to appear there, and, based on that sterilized past, they educate here and now. That’s the key to understanding it all.”

So they are rewriting history and creating an alternative memory?

“Ultra-Orthodox writing creates an alternative history, based on their values. Historical discussion is subjugated to the pedagogic ideology, which come above all else.”

And how is it important to educate?

“By ensuring that God is at the center of everything that had taken place in history; Humans are actors in a puppets theater, and God is pulling the strings. That has many implications for teaching history. The reasons for events, for example, are not relevant. Why did something happen? Because that’s what God wanted; It was his plan. All human explanations are irrelevant.”

According to this approach, is the background for Hitler’s rise to power, for instance, simply irrelevant?

“That’s correct; because the agent is not important. Hitler was nothing more than an envoy of God’s, and the background to his rise is unimportant. Occasionally, these textbooks mention opposing versions of history, but only in order to put God into the equation and set the record straight. As far as they are concerned, anyone who does not recognize the metaphysical force driving all of history is presenting a distorted vision which must be rectified.”

As for the Israel Defence Force, in ultra-Orthodox textbooks, Israel’s military victories are clearly overt miracles – so much so that it makes one wonders whether there’s any point in having an army at all. “The Six-Day War was a conflict that was replete with miracle and wonders, and in which it the whole world had witnessed God’s salvation,” boasts Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations.

‘The Walls Between the Communities are Much Higher’

Divine providence appears throughout ultra-Orthodox history textbooks. Baron Rothschild, for example, was “blessed by divine providence to save and promote the settlement enterprise,” according to a textbook written by Rabbi Menachem Hacohen Ostry, himself a member of the Ger Hasidic dynasty and previously the headmaster of the Beis Yaakov ultra-Orthodox girls’ high school in Haifa.

“There are some institutions which teach more and some that teach less,” says Dr. Mali Eisenberg from the Faculty of Jewish Studies of Bar-Ilan University, who is currently working on an essay about Holocaust education in ultra-Orthodox schools. “Much depends on the financial support they get from the state and, in any case, learning is different from the way it is done in general society.” Eisenberg, incidentally, does not believe that “it is possible to create a common infrastructure for the theoretical analysis of the past. The walls between the communities are much higher than they were in the 1950s and 1960s – and even a subject like the Holocaust cannot be taught on the basis of a shared memory. The initial assumptions are very different, so such an attempt is doomed to failure.”

What do you mean by very different initial assumptions? Is it not possible to agree on historical facts?

“The goal of ultra-Orthodox education is to create an experience that will forge an identity, not use scientific tools to study the past. In the state-run secular education system, for example, students are taught about the perpetrators of the genocide, a subject that is not covered in the ultra-Orthodox education system. The question of how normal people become mass murderers is not of interest, because it does not deal with the Jewish victim and the Jewish perspective of events.”

And that’s the whole experience, A sense of victimhood? What’s the point of teaching it?

“They don’t see it that way. They see a spiritual struggle, thanks to which the Jewish people survived the Holocaust, and that is what is important to pass down the generations. The goal is to train students to use the same tools to stave off the next threat to the eternal survival of the Jewish people.”

And what about more proactive tools than studying Torah, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, for example?

“When the state-run education system marked the 80^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the ultra-Orthodox education system emphasized the 80^th anniversary of the destruction of Warsaw. They published a pamphlet that was distributed in synagogues, which had maybe one sentence about the uprising. On the other hand, it is an incredibly powerful pamphlet, which depicts all kinds of spiritual struggle.”

Does that spiritual struggle also address the great crisis of faith – the question of where was God during the Holocaust?

“You would not find stories or anecdotes in the textbooks that might undermine the faith of religious girls. There is no critical education at all. If anything, they learn about people who discovered their Jewish identity, which helped them find strength.  They do not want to challenge; they want continuity. That said, there is some understanding that hiding and ignoring such crises of faith is problematic. I hear people say at conferences that it would be better to teach that the divine plane is complex and that there can be pitfalls of this kind.”

“The ultra-Orthodox world views history as a learning tool,” explains Prof. Kimmy Caplan from Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry. “They reshape the past, erase from history anything that they do not want to appear there, and, based on that sterilized past, they educate here and now. That’s the key to understanding it all.”

Why did the Second Intifada Break? Because of Civil Marriages

While the question of God’s whereabouts during the Holocaust is not asked, the causal connection between God and the wheels of history is widely mentioned – when it serves the agenda, of course. For example, the connection between what the ultra-Orthodox call former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “provocations” toward the religious community and the outbreak of the second intifada. It was not the failure of the Camp David peace talks or Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount that led to a bloody outbreak of terror attacks – but the “civil revolution” that Barak tried to introduce, which included civil marriages and cancelling the marking of nationality on Israeli identity cards.

In the textbook A History of Recent Generations, Rabbi Frinder wrote: “[Barak] wanted to introduce complete equality for all residents of the state, which would no longer be a ‘Jewish state’ but a state of all its citizens: Arabs, Druze, Christians, Russians, Thai and - lest we compare - Jews. His punishment came swiftly: He was assailed by a revolt of the Arabs of the Land of Israel against the Jewish regime, which threatened to reach the proportions of an all-out war. It was an expression of ‘an eye for an eye,’ with the Blessed Lord Almighty personally guiding his people. In the elections that followed the failure of the negotiations with the Arabs, Barak suffered a massive defeat. Sabbath avenged its insult.”

As noted, secular people are seen as the enemy. Another paragraph in the book says “in 1962 an Israel-hating organization was set up, by the name of the League for Battling against Religious Coercion. This organization incitement in every opportunity against the religious community and against everything that is holy to the Jewish people. Writing about the Yossele Schumacher affair which gripped the country at the time – Schumacher was abducted as a child by his ultra-Orthodox grandparents to prevent him from being raised as a secular Jew by his parents – Frinder writes that “the secular [community] grabbed onto that family affair in order to attack the ultra-Orthodox community. It used their propaganda machines to present the ultra-Orthodox as a gang of child kidnappers.”

One of the main focuses of the ultra-Orthodox curriculum is the “hollowness of secular education,” which, by their reckoning, caused the kibbutzim “to wonder whether that had not gone too far in rejecting the values of the state, and to approach the Religious Services Ministry asking for a cantor to be sent to them and request some religious paraphernalia for the High Holidays. In academic circles, too, the failure of the secular education system was apparent, and many who failed to reach the economic standards of the ‘plentiful society’ have left for overseas.”

Secular education, it is argued in this literature, is “guilty of the sin of driving new immigrants away from their religion.” In his textbook for seventh and eighth graders, Frinder had written: “The immigrants were exposed almost exclusively to the influence of secular representatives, who tried to convince them to leave the path of our forefathers and engage in the defective way of life offered by modern European society. They have also cut off the sideburns of Yemenite children, claiming that they had fleas; they refused to give their parents work shifts if they refused to send their children to secular schools; and they discriminated against them in every respect, like food and housing allocation and sanitary conditions. The secular leaders drove out the ultra-Orthodox representatives by force.

“At the center of every new community for immigrants, they erected a new building for secular cultural activity, but synagogues were placed in pathetic huts at the edge of the community, attracting only the elderly and the sick. As a result, the young generation quickly adopted all of the abominations of modern society. Many went down the slippery slope of corruption and crime.”

The Six-Day Way was ‘Full of Miracles and Wonders’

The association between secularism, being Mizrachi origin and criminality is apparant also in Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations, which is taught to 10^th and 11^th graders. “Secular parties,” the book asserts, “set up youth clubs in immigration camps, which spread a defective culture of abandon and self-gratification… The negative results were quick to come, and many of those youths lost all sense of moral restraint and descended into crime.”

The crudest and most racist linkage between Mizrachi Israelis and lameness and poverty was made by Frinder: “The absorption of immigrants from Islamic countries was even harder. They were slow to learn the language of the land and have taken a long time to get used to the way of life here. Their offspring consistently lagged behind in their schoolwork. Many children dropped out of school early to help their parents earn a living. They were engaged in manual labor and, even after they reached adulthood, they continued to work in these jobs as manual laborers.

“The hardship in making a living made them bitter, and that is why they had no time to educate their children. Therefore, there was a danger that this situation would be perpetuated and that, their children and their children’s children would remain forever the poorest members of the nation, a stratum of society that was to become known as ‘Second Israel’.”

As for the Israel Defence Force, in ultra-Orthodox textbooks, Israel’s military victories are clearly overt miracles – so much so that it makes one wonders whether there’s any point in having an army at all. “The Six-Day War was a conflict that was replete with miracle and wonders, and in which it the whole world had witnessed God’s salvation,” boasts Chapters of Jewish History in Recent Generations. “The result of the war led to a massive spiritual awakening among all parts of the Jewish public in Israel and the Diaspora. Soldiers who returned from the front, who had seen miracles with their own two eyes, decided to change their entire way of life and to embrace religion. Even those who did not have the courage to change their way of life suddenly discovered the Jewish corner concealed in their hearts when, for the first time, they approached the Western Wall.”

The War of Independence, known as the War of 1948, is described in the book as “repelling the enemy [by means] that cannot be explained through nature.” For example, “five enemy tanks which were miraculously hit one after another.”

Regarding the enemies’ decision to attack Israel on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in 1973, Chapters on Jewish History in Recent Generations explains how the Arabs assumes that “on that day Israel’s readiness would not be effective. But Israel’s enemies erred. The holy prayers of the Jewish people on that holy day worked to save the people and the land. The fact that the people were gathered in synagogues and the roads were quiet, allowed a rapid call-up of the security forces.”

The antagonism toward the media is evident in the depiction of the ‘Bus no 300 Affar’ is described. The affair involved the violent killing of two Palestinian youths who attempted to hijack a civilian Israeli bus. “People wanted the heads of the security services because they ‘dared’ to kill terrorists without a formal trial,” Frinder asserts. “The state paid a dearly for the dubious right of the media to publish anything that serves the interest of newspapers.”

‘Only God decides What the Weather will be’

An examination of material taught to younger children in ultra-Orthodox primary schools, reveals that God does not dictate only every flock of the wings of history, but also the weather. Students in the fourth and fifth grades in ultra-Orthodox education, for example, read a textbook called The Land and Its Inhabitants, which informs them that “only God decides what the weather will be … so the weather forecasters sometimes get it wrong. If we obey God’s laws, then we will enjoy the blessed rains at the right time of year. If, God forbid, we neglect the holy Torah, the Creator will halt the rains.”

The book allows plenty of room for commercial material. It has nothing but praise, for example, for the mighty Israeli pharmaceutical conglomerate Teva, it described in detail the “many advantages of (toll road) Route 6” and lauds the Egged and Dan bus companies.

The Land and Its Inhabitants also dedicated much space to the advantages of ultra-Orthodox hospitals. “Regular hospitals present the commandment-abiding Jew with many spiritual obstacles, which cause a great deal of mental anguish… Whether or not to sign a document on Shabbat or to undergo a procedure that is banned by Jewish law. A patient may be hungry, but the food is not kosher,” argue the anonymous authors of the book. “Laniado Hospital (in central Israel) adheres strictly to Jewish law. They are sticklers for the Halacha and, at the same time, they provide the most advanced medical services in the world.”

The book does not recognize the workers’ right to strike. “Laniado,” the book says, “never strikes because the Sanz Rabbi said that ‘the profession of medicine is a holy one, so it is inconceivable that the medical staff would ever go on strike.’ Ultra-Orthodox patients are charmed by the pious atmosphere and move even closer to the light of the Torah.”

The book also claims that the hospitals Sieff in Safed and Sha’arei Tzedek in Jerusalem were established “in response to the missionary hospitals” that operated in the early days of the Zionist settlement. “The missionaries used every imaginable trick and offered free medical treatment. Jews who innocently went there to be healed were cured physically, but their souls were poisoned by their incitement and their preaching.” The Ministry of education denies approving this book for use in schools.

One book that has been approved by the Ministry’s Pedagogical Center for Independent Education is “Derekh Eretz,” (Sneh Publishing House) which is intended for second graders. That book presents a series of pictures under the headline “You Can Feel that Jews Live Here,” and students are supposed to connect the relevant commandments to the images.

One might be able to ignore the praise for Behrman Bakery and the promotion given to the Badatz kosher certificate; or even the question whether someone who does not obey an obscure commandment is no longer Jewish. However, in one of the photos there is a picture of divided street: one side for men, the other for women. This really does beg the question: why does the Ministry of Education condone the segregation of a public space, which violates the law barring discrimination in public places?

The Education Ministry said in response that “the argument will be examined and, if we see fit, we will made changes before the next edition is printed.”

A representative for the Sneh Publishing House refused to comment.

The Orr Meir Publishing House did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

No comment was made by the Yeshurun Publishing House.

Shomrim will publish any response it may receive from the above.