Liora Ziv-Ami

The author of the article states that he obtained access to a certain Memorandum (# 4/ 7-S dated November 14, 1989, stamped “Original/Top Secret/No copies”), which made clear that in 1989, the relevant Israeli administrative bodies a) were fully cognizant of the scope of repatriation from the collapsing Soviet Union, the cultural and professional potential of the Russian olim, and the unique features of their mentality; and b) recommended taking measures to neutralize this demographic group in such a way as to ensure that it does not threaten the status of the country’s native population. So that the well-educated and highly qualified Russian olim could not compete with Israelis who may be less qualified in particular areas, the Memorandum recommended using Hebrew as a means toward the desired end. In effect, the goal was to teach the Russian olim Hebrew in such a way as turn them from highly educated into ignorant people, and, in the professional realm, to make them accept the notion that working on a loading dock or at the check-out of the local supermarket is also a job, and that by finding such a job, they can resolve their main problem -- simply how to put food on the table. The Memorandum was illustrated with corresponding graphics and captions. One of them succinctly captures the essence of the entire Memorandum: “An ignorant man is like a blind man; failures and misfortune await him everywhere.”

    Though I myself moved to Israel a couple of years before the Memorandum was written, the level of Hebrew instruction in Israeli ulpans even then threatened to turn into an insurmountable obstacle on the path of many who tried to enter Israeli society.

    I remember my impression of my first Hebrew teacher at the ulpan, who perceived herself not only as a teacher, but also as an “instructor on Israeli life.” As she saw her role, so did she teach. She would chatter endlessly about the latest bargain she scored at the Tel Aviv market, and every so often squeeze in a few grammar or vocabulary exercises. She suggested that we, newcomers, should follow her example. When she did turn to the actual lessons, she quickly scribbled the Hebrew letters on the blackboard, and then . . . how shall I describe it? . . . she explained to us the caveats of pronunciation. And what a coincidence! When my friends and I studied Hebrew on our own, still in the Soviet Union at an underground ulpan, we paid special attention to these pronunciation caveats. We understood that despite the fact that “kamaz” sounds just like “patah,” it is critical not to mix them up for purposes of proper grammar. I noticed that the teacher did mix up “kamaz” and “patach,” or rather that she did not show us the pronunciation caveats quite clearly, I shyly pointed out her mistake, being sure that it was inadvertent. In response, the teacher gave me a wide smile and addressed me in her role of “instructor on Israeli life”: “Ma ze meshane?” -- “what difference does it make?”

     Thus, the existence of a secret document that recommends turning this pre-existing practice of Hebrew education into a political strategy aimed at supplying the market with cheap labor did not strike me as such an absurdity. And yet, something bothered me in this document, something seemed suspicious.

    First of all, I noticed how precisely all of the details were delineated. It was downright odd. There were specific numbers for specialists from every profession, who at this time, had not yet even arrived in the country (14,300 workers from the theatre industry, 11,000 scientists, 30,000 teachers). And the Memorandum described the nuances of the “Russian” soul so knowingly that it seemed as though they saw right through us to our deepest inner selves. The memorandum even predicted that the Russian olim would attend performances by visiting Russian artists and would honor World War II veterans (how could they know all this in 1989?). What kind of crystal ball did they have?

    The Memorandum produced the impression that it was created by experts of the highest caliber, who were able to analyze cultural codes and the unique features of a people’s mentality in order to predict the people’s behavior and to prepare in advance for the situation they are bound to create upon their arrival.

    “But how is that possible?” -- I asked myself -- “We are looking here at the very same experts, who de facto created HAMAS as a counterweight to Fatah, without any understanding of the import of cultural codes based upon religion. These were the same people who instigated the Oslo peace process and who armed Palestinian ‘police,’ having no clue whatsoever that their ‘partners’ would turn these weapons against Israelis. It cannot be that experts who showed such incompetence in this respect when dealing with local Arabs (with whom they had lived side by side their whole lives) suddenly transformed into regular geniuses when it came to Soviet Jews from whom they had been separated for decades by an Iron Curtain. How can it be that the very same people are simultaneously so smart and so idiotic!?”

    And then another detail seemed doubtful to me. Grigoriy Kulchinsky insists that he received the document by e-mail. The author is unknown. It was translated into Russian, and the journalist could not vouch for its faithfulness to the original.

    And could we infer from this text that such a Memorandum does, in fact, exist? What if Grigoriy Kulchinsky made it all up? And why not? What a great ploy. Let’s imagine that a certain journalist attempts to convince us that the Israeli establishment planned the whole situation in such a way as to create in the country a failing “Russian ghetto,” to make sure that the “Russians” themselves would part over time with their ambitious plans and turn into an ignorant people who feel inferior to the locals. And the locals, in turn, would profit from this artificial situation in which they could legitimately claim the status of a cultured and educated people solely because they know Hebrew better. Who would believe this journalist? But now he has a document. Feel free to read and see for yourselves. Here are the bare secret facts.

    My doubts about the authenticity of the Memorandum were exacerbated by the vague feeling that I had already come across a similar document somewhere before. But where? What was that document? And suddenly I understood -- there is such a document. It is called the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” In this notorious document, the authors set before themselves a particular goal: to explain a situation that defies ordinary logic. And really, how is it possible that the very same Jews that were described for centuries by the church as impotent, insignificant, a people that exists only as proof of the ultimate victory of Christianity, could suddenly with the advent of capitalism, turn into all-powerful tycoons, who occupy the most important posts in every state where they were once banned from entering any influential town?

    And this, at the exact same time, when respectable local Christians descended to the ranks of the proletariat where they encountered the myriad joys of mass urbanization. So how did it happen? It must be those Jews who came together, hammered out their devious agenda, banged out a little document, “Original/Top Secret/No Copies,” and went straight to implementing their nefarious plans. And we, morons, never even suspected it. It’s a good thing that some kind people discovered the truth and opened our foolish eyes.

    But really and truly, how did this happen? What are the rules of the game here? No matter how you look at it, documents like the “Protocols” don’t just appear out of nowhere. People somehow want to be able to explain to themselves how it is that they have lost control over the situation. They quite naturally feel the need to find meaning in the facts that they know and to fit them into a bigger plan (which supposedly came to exist in the past) so that they can construe the future.

    It may be that 15 years of life in Israel is sufficient time to amass the necessary number of facts, which come together to create a certain, logical picture. And now one can, like the authors of the “Protocols,” write a Memorandum, in which this whole Israeli reality that we all know so well, is presented to us as the inevitable result of a conspiracy. And why not?

    “But this is just taking things too far!” – I decided. Though, it’s true that the situation is suspiciously far from the norm. Maybe it really is time to start asking questions, so as to understand if the situation that the Russian Aliyah find themselves in was inevitable? Is it possible to surmise that it took shape in this way as the result of a particular language policy?

    And so I would like to offer a few such tough questions, on the subject of the “language issue.” Perhaps some of the journalists might see in them fodder for an article, or perhaps, some readers (given an interested editorial staff) might even wish to transform them into a discussion topic. The way the questions are put to use is up to the people themselves.

    And who, if not us Russian Jews, will initiate the conversation about the language policy of the Jewish state? Do we not know why the former Soviet Union changed the traditional alphabets of the Moldovans and Azeris to the Cyrillic? Didn’t we experience on ourselves the fight the Soviet regime waged against the Jewish nationalists, who were bent on studying the “reactionary” Hebrew language underground?

    Language policy is always formed in pursuit of a particular goal. In Israel, this goal was never a secret – a scattered people, used to speaking many different languages can turn into a unified people under a unified state only on the condition that all Jews – as one – will start speaking a single language, “rak Ivrit” (“Only Hebrew”). Yet the use of “rak Ivrit” as a weapon in the struggle over social status began even before the state of Israel was formed. It certainly did not begin in 1989. A relative of mine who arrived in Israel illegally during the British Mandate used to recount to me the ways of local officials during that period, practically all of whom spoke only Yiddish. When a Jew from an Arab country came to them, they immediately demanded that he speak Yiddish. Yet when my relative – whose mother tongue was Yiddish – sought their assistance, they pretended that they didn’t understand Yiddish at all. This was not intended so much to establish the primacy of “rak Ivrit” as to put each man in his place. He’ll bleat in this manner for a while, struggle to make himself understood, and then get used to the notion that bleating is all he is fit for. And then he’ll see quite clearly who and what he is and what his lot in life is bound to be.

    Thus, it seems that Grigoriy Kulchinsky’s article was merely a symptom of something deeper teeming beneath – the time has come to talk about the peculiarities of the “language issue” in the state of Israel.

    Let’s start with the special status of the Russian language. When I arrived in Israel, I was able to start conversing in Hebrew with local Jews almost right away, thanks to the lessons I had received at the underground ulpan. The people I spoke to shared with me time and again that my Russian accent awoke in them certain unmistakable feelings: “The founding fathers spoke Hebrew with the same accent. We were fortunate enough to know them when we were young, and to remember them. Your accent makes us feel nostalgic.” And truth be told, everyone in Israel knows that those who founded the state, created Israeli culture and politics, all spoke Russian. So how can it be that in Israel of all places, a bitter war has been waged against the language? The words of Michael Vayskoph, a scholar of Slavic languages and literature and critic, shed some light on the issue: in all of Israel, there is only one Slavic studies department, which is itself in dire trouble because the Ministry of Higher Education refuses to open any new departments or to offer positions to young applicants while the old guard continues to retire. By comparison, there are several such departments in Holland, and 26 in Italy, of which 4 are based in Rome alone. And these are countries with practically no Russian-speaking populations, while in Israel, Russian-speakers comprise one sixth of the total population. For Michael Vayskoph, the basis for this policy is obvious: the problem is not with Slavic studies but with the fact that the establishment does not want to strengthen and entrench the cultural status of Russian-speaking Israelis.

    Could it be that the language policy of the state vis-à-vis the Russian language is formed in this way because of the unusual relationship of the Russian Jews to other Israelis? After all, the Russian cultural tradition, which has defined the Russian Jews, makes the thoughts and feelings of the founding fathers resonate with us – their mentality is much closer to our own than that of their descendants. Could it be that the language policy is what it is in order to snuff out any nascent tendencies the Russian Jews might have to see in themselves the lawful heirs of the founding fathers? Now isn’t that a major “language issue?”

    Let’s take a look at yet another aspect of the “language issue.” It is well known, that our children (for whose sake we emigrated to Israel in the first place, though some of us seem to have forgotten it) study Hebrew, English, and one other language at school. Most often, the children have to learn Arabic. I have no qualms about the Arabic language per se, but I have to ask the question: why Arabic? Arabic is recognized as the second language in the state? But how many Israelis speak Arabic to Arabs and how often? Do they read fiction in Arabic or even Arab newspapers and magazines? I was there myself when one professor asked a group of students out of curiosity which of them understood Arabic, and it turned out that no one did. No one knew it despite the fact that everyone had studied Arabic in school and passed the exams.

    So why don’t our children study Russian in school, especially since they are immersed in a Russian-speaking environment at home, and so their efforts and time would not go to waste?

    Moreover, why is the language policy of the state not based on the following logical proposition: children must study in school the language of their country of origin, so as not to break the ties between generations, and to enable parents to raise and educate their children in the language that they know well? For us, Russian Jews, the Russian language is first and foremost the language in which members of the family communicate with one another. It takes no more than to lose this language, patriotically to replace it with Hebrew, and soon enough, the conversations of most people will be reduced to the most basic of subjects: “Did you eat? How was it? Beseder.”

    In Israel, everyone knows that the family and only the family can save its children from an educational system that breeds ignorance. So what will happen to our own children (for whose sake we emigrated to Israel in the first place, though some of us seem to have forgotten it)? They will not get a good education in Hebrew, and their own parents will not be able to help them: even if their family consists of no one but professors in every conceivable field for three generations, they could not impart any knowledge without a common language. How can it be that no one understands this?

    Perhaps that is the very reason why the policy exists – to imprint upon our children (for whose sake we emigrated to Israel in the first place, though some of us seem to have forgotten it) while they are still sitting behind their school desks that a good education is not for them, that they can expect to attend some vocational school, and that it’s useless to dream of anything bigger? Is this kind of language policy limited to addressing the current problem of how to fit new olim into the labor market – the subject of the Memorandum? Hardly. The language policy is aimed at the future, in which the children of the olim will be condemned to follow in the professional footsteps of their parents (holding such jobs as those listed in the Memorandum – construction work, security, nurse’s aid, janitor) while they were once scientists, engineers, linguists, professors, and musicians. Now isn’t that a major “language issue?”

    There is one more aspect of the “language issue” worth noting – the existence of cultural codes that make it possible to determine what segment of society a given person occupies. In Israel, a land whose elite dubs itself the elite of the People of the Book, the very mention of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy signifies that the speaker is culturally sophisticated and belongs to that elite. But didn’t the majority of the Russian olim pack books for shipping before everything else (books including some by these very authors), for which there are now no readers? Did they not bring with them a tradition of reading books that their children have, by and large, lost? Of course, people can give examples of children who have maintained this reading tradition, even a good number of examples. But I doubt that anyone would disagree if I were to assert the following: such children should be grateful exclusively to their parents who, in their own homes, maintain a policy that is the direct opposite of the state policy. It is clear that the state with its methods of life instruction (what is significant here is that this is not education, but life instruction) has done everything in its power to ensure that children do not become interested in reading.

    And who was it that decided that our children are required to study literature in school with teachers who cultivate an aversion to reading, while we Russian Jews have our own teachers who are perfectly capable of perpetuating family traditions rooted in a love of reading? Who decided to put our teachers out of work? This kind of decision radically shapes the future: put into practice, it means that our children are never to become the cultural elite, and will instead rely on menial jobs just like their parents were compelled to do in Israel. They will belong to a marginalized group, aptly personified by Aunt Lyuba, the supermarket cashier. Now isn’t that a major “language issue?”

    The “language issue” I am describing goes far beyond an effort to throw off the competition in the professional realm. This is a combined campaign to teach people Hebrew in such a way that they cannot use it for anything more than communicating their most basic needs and desires, and simultaneously to eliminate the use of the Russian language, which had naturally served as the vehicle for expressing people’s most sophisticated needs and desires.

    This is no more and no less than a cultural pogrom. Let’s call a spade a spade.

    After taking a sober look at the facts, I saw the Memorandum in a whole new light. What if it’s not a fake after all? What if this whole campaign really was designed in advance?

    The most astonishing part is that the policy of our own Jewish state, carried out under the banner of “rak Ivrit,” flies in the face of the entire historical experience of the Jewish people. I challenge anyone to name a single period in Jewish history over the past 2,500 years when all Jews spoke a single language. The language history of our people has no parallel in the history of mankind. Our people have preserved their own ancient tongue, have resurrected it after 2,000 years, and have created on the basis of foreign languages, viable Jewish ones! This is a people who have produced a vast number of individuals who fully mastered the languages of their non-Jewish environments, and who wrote and continue to write today in these languages, often manifesting great talent! So how did it happen that in its own state, our people have forgotten how to speak intelligently? Could it be because the Israeli elite, over the course of the country’s short history, has used language as a weapon with which to eliminate any potential contenders for elite status and to entrench its own absolute power?

    And if this is so, why should we be surprised at the results?

    By implementing a policy of Hebrew “lite,” to put it mildly, while at the same time destroying the language that has united the descendants of Jews from different communities with their ancestors, this elite has created the current crisis in Israeli society. On the one hand, we have a waning elite, which has managed over the course of 57 years to concentrate in its own hands all the resources of the society, and which is drunk with its own boundless power. On the other hand, we have masses of destitute, dispossessed, and angry rank and file citizens, who barely know how to string together a sentence. Isn’t it natural for all systems to fall apart in such a state – no system could control a people who have had their cultural foundation destroyed – the language with which parents teach their children and through which they express their love and devotion, the language in which one can reason, dream, create, compose, and not simply get good bargains at the market.

    Is it so surprising then that this large group has become uncontrollable and has begun to steal, go on drinking sprees, do drugs and pull out knives to “explain” to their neighbors their opinions about this subject or the other? No one can contain this group now, not even the elite, which will sooner or later find itself directly and personally threatened by it.

    And how did they benefit in the end? They wanted to be the smartest? But how can people be smart and still have driven society into crisis? Even if we suppose that the Memorandum is real, that in Israel we really do have such exceptionally smart experts, capable of predicting, planning, and implementing all of these ideas so perfectly in order to neutralize the Russian olim, I still have no choice but to exclaim:

    Goodness, what idiots they all are! 

We have long accepted the attitudes of “take-it-easy” typical of most Israelis but we were somehow convinced that things were different in the Israeli army. The last war revealed to the public that the same lackadaisical approach prevails in the army as well. It’s no longer a secret to anyone in Israel that high-level government appointments are not given based on merit but based on nepotism and connections with the “right” people. The war has demonstrated to us that nepotism has already spread to the army leadership. We have long been concerned about the intellectual standards of the Israeli elite. The war has become a stark manifestation of the weaknesses of the political leadership that the elite had nurtured. The pitiful helplessness of this leadership has turned all of us into a laughing stock in the eyes of the world, and is forcing even Israeli allies to revise their relations with our state.

      Alas, no one can blame these sad developments on the Iranian president.

      The near-catastrophic condition of Israeli society, which the war merely brought out into the open, compels us to ask: did some kind of inevitable pattern of development bring about this crisis? 

                                        2 

    We should recall the mid 1990s when the Big Aliyah arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union. It had what could be considered a collective intuition, which allowed it to determine, more or less exactly, the true causes of this predicament that is no longer a secret to anyone in this country. At that time, ordinary Israeli citizens, parents and grandparents, even the children themselves, set up, in an organized effort, a network of “Russian schools”. They had sensed something that those in power, including Israeli “Russian” politicians, fail to understand to this very day – it is childhood years that make people what they are.

          No one is born as a soldier, general, engineer or prime minister. People become what they are with the help of society, and this formative process begins in their early childhood. If lack of discipline is what a person becomes used to from an early age, he will grow into a sloppy soldier and a negligent commander. If a person lacks a high-quality education from early on, he will become, years later, an inadequate prime minister, a dim-witted defense minister and a narrow-minded minister of foreign affairs.

          Society is shaped by its education system, and the Jewish people have proved this to be true, as none other. It turned out that it was even possible to survive without a state if the children’s education became a culture’s foundation.

    The problem is that traditional Jewish schools – heders and yeshivas – for clearly understandable reasons did not set themselves the educational goal of rearing professionals needed by the state. Jews had no state they could call their own.

          We, Israeli Jews, did not realize that this was a significant factor because we fully relied on our highly commended aptitude for learning, and not without reason. We failed, however, to pay attention to one essential circumstance: Jews have realized their abilities to the fullest only in societies that created a facilitating cultural environment.

    Unfortunately, it was not something, which emerged from our own Jewish tradition.

    We had learned everything we needed to rebuild a state from the Europeans, “borrowing” their pedagogic traditions into the bargain. Our own cultural environment has not created such traditions. The truth of this can be seen if we look at those Jewish people who were not bereft of those commended aptitudes at birth but have lead a pitiful existence, only because they were not fortunate enough to be born in an environment where these faculties were being cultivated.  

3 

      This explains why Israeli education professionals do not have the required cultural roots. What is remarkable, is that the Israeli people have so far failed to recognize that pedagogic science is unable to develop in the absence of such cultural roots, and educational professionals are unable to fulfill their role – that of educating citizens for participation in a developed modern state.

      The founding fathers of the State of Israel were born and received their education in Europe, in the traditions of its pedagogic science, and they were able “to borrow” this education system from Europe. But this does not at all mean that their Israeli-born children and grandchildren who have “inherited” from them command positions in Israel’s pedagogic sphere are able to understand what these European traditions are, or to continue building what the founding fathers had begun.

      The experience of the Israeli state allows to draw a definite conclusion regarding the consequences of this situation: whereas the first two generations were still capable of copying other peoples’ experience and use “borrowed” practices, theses abilities are lost in the third generation of “hereditary” country leaders. They can no longer imitate this experience or use its ready-made recipes.

      The saddest thing is that Israeli society seems to be oblivious to this problem, even though it is the true cause of the strategic threat to Israel’s existence.

      The logical result – deterioration of the Israeli education system – testifies to this problem. Instead of growing and developing, Israeli society and, consequently, the Israeli state, are failing. This decline is taking place despite the fact that the Jewish state experiences a constant influx of Diaspora Jews who bring with them the practical and immediately usable results of their education. 

4 

      Here is the inconceivable situation that the Big Aliyah has faced upon arrival to Israel.

      While Israeli society was eagerly consuming the readily available fruit of the education system in the Diaspora country, which the Aliyah brought with it to Israel, the children of this Aliyah were doomed to “lumpenization” caused by Israel’s own system of education. And the adults who were struggling to put their families on their feet in the most difficult conditions, created, once again, by Israeli society, could do nothing but observe the Aliyah children fall back in their age-appropriate development, and lose their skills, diligence, and their motivation to learn.

      Sadly enough, the fate of the Big Aliyah children, which is now the cause of much alarm, was decided long beforehand. This had to happen because the Israeli education system stands on a certain ideological foundation.

      Even if people were merely to accept as the norm that younger children in elementary school should learn very little, this alone was bound to lead to the kind of social disparity, which we can witness in developing third-world countries. The reason for this is apparent – only children belonging to the cultural elite are able to cope with the sharp increase in study requirements that occurs in high school. These students were brought up in an environment that this elite has established for “all Israelis”; they have received as their inheritance a system of cultural codes which the elite has implemented in society; their parents are able financially to hire private tutors, etc. All the rest, particularly, the children of the new Olim, fall through the cracks of the education system and are never able to rise.

    It is enough to destroy the language of family communication, while not having taught the children of the Olim the language of their new environment, for the children to find themselves in a vacuum, without opportunities for personal growth. It is only when these young people begin to cause society problems – to run away from home, become addicted to drugs or break the law that society finally notices their existence.

    Where have we all been before? Didn’t we realize that the careless attitude to children, which has become the norm in Israel, would eventually lead to such dire consequences? 

5 

    As a counter argument, we are often given examples of those who have managed to cope with all the difficulties and, against all odds, “make something of themselves”. Even when that is true, a person needs more than personal accomplishment. A person would like to live in a cultured and healthy environment. And it’s the overall cultural standards of the population which shape this environment. In those areas where these standards are the lowest, those who have managed “to make something of themselves”, frequently decide to pack their luggage and leave, seeking a more satisfactory environment for themselves and their families.

    There is statistics to support these findings. Information, which testifies to the problematic situation in Israel, has more recently been reaching us from every direction. None of this inspires optimism.

    Studies conducted by Dr. Amnon Frenkel from the Technion in Haifa (Israel Institute of Technology, – Translator’s note) have allowed the well-known scientist to conclude that Israel’s economy and high-tech presently rely on accomplishments  that are 20 years old. The number of Israeli students who have chosen to engage in technical disciplines has risen by 160% over the past 25 years, whereas it has risen by 700-900% over the same period in industrially developed countries. All hope is being placed on the new Olim and on temporary workers, particularly in high-tech, since young Israelis are not interested in studying.

    Mind you, this is taking place after the relatively recent arrival of the Big Aliyah, which has given Israel a very large influx of educated professionals precisely in these technologically advanced fields!

    The rating of Israeli universities is plummeting, which is not surprising if we consider the fact that the number of scientists and scholars who have left the country is the same as the total academic staff of all of Israel’s institutions of higher learning. Sadly, 50% of scholars and scientists with a post-graduate degree do not return to Israel. 

    No doubt, another special commission will be set up in order to analyze the current state of affairs and draw relevant conclusions. We can’t be so naïve, though, to expect anything good to come of this undertaking. This commission will include the very same people who have doomed Israeli education to decline and Israeli society – to the “brain drain”. Why would they want to change the status quo? They won’t work on improving the situation both because they have no reason to be interested in that and because they consider the arbitrary rule, which they have introduced, to be the norm.

    All the above, refers in equal measure to the Israeli “Russian” politicians who have not moved a finger in all those years to protect the future of the children of the Big Aliyah. Many of these young people had to leave their parents behind in Israel and go back to their Diaspora “homeland” for a better education that would give them a chance to succeed in life.  

6 

    It seems that only a broad public initiative can have any impact on this distressing situation. The Big Aliyah, which was once called “a blessing” in Israel, should initiate a broad-based campaign to change the current education system, whose ideologists have created a long-term strategic threat that may be no less dangerous than the one from Iran. They are fully responsible for the catastrophic condition of Israeli society and its state.

    A wide public debate on what is currently happening within the Israeli system of education is necessary – it should encompass its ideology, methods, textbooks and educational curriculums used in teaching Israeli children. Society urgently needs such a discussion, and it is my belief that only the Big Aliyah can organize it.

    We must analyze the reasons, which have prompted the Israeli elite to suppress “Russian” schools, even though all the Big Aliyah wanted was to preserve the fruitful educational traditions of the Diaspora country they came from. How could this happen in a state, which provides generous subsidies to entire educational bodies that are known to raise a population, which will cause social problems?

    It is time to understand the futility of investing in a state, where all investments vanish as in a black hole because of Israeli society’s botched ideology, expressed, first and foremost, in the system of education where society reproduces itself and builds its future.

    We should strongly condemn the established practices of shameless and irresponsible exploitation of the accomplishments of the Jewish Diaspora. Israeli society should learn to value, preserve and develop these accomplishments.

    We, Israelis of the Big Aliyah, have a direct obligation to improve the present state of affairs, if we truly consider ourselves Israelis and responsible citizens of this country.

    As parents, we are, of course, concerned about the future of our children. But for those young citizens of this land whom the Israeli education system deprived of opportunities for a better future, our civic position could be the only chance, allowing them to recover their human dignity and come out of abject poverty, and a state of utter hopelessness.

    If we don’t do anything about it, at some point in the not so distant future we won’t have grounds to object to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s newly presented allegations that the “Zionist regime” is falling apart from within.

    We just won’t be able to deny the truth… 
 
 

Both scientists, who are unquestionably patriots of their country, can’t conceal their pessimism. They see the reason for their shared distress not so much in the threats coming from the enemies of the Jewish state but in the deterioration of the people and its elite. 

      The pessimism about Israel’s future expressed by the distinguished professors is in stark contrast with the optimism of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Prime Minister believes that what Israeli society wants is to live in “an awesomely cool country”, and he was quick to announce that this is an attainable goal. Only the future will tell which of these three men is right. Still, even today, there are clear indications that the pessimistic forecasts may be correct. 

      This sounds like a paradox: it is, perhaps, the Israeli’s notorious inclination “to enjoy life” that has led to the decline Professors Aumann and Ciechanover spoke about.

      The Israeli people are tired. But they are not worn out by the war, as the Prime Minister of Israel tries to convince us. Israeli society is getting tired of itself and its self-destructive tendencies that manifest themselves at every step of the way.  

      Ordinary Israeli citizens have become increasingly more aware of the dangers of this situation. It is at this point impossible to provide any official statistics that would rate the thoughts and disillusionments of these Israeli citizens. They express profound concern for the most part in the narrow circle of friends and family. Then again, so far nobody seems to be interested in the opinions of these people: nobody is asking them for interviews, since they don’t have the same celebrity status as Professors Aumann and Ciechanover. Frankly, these Israeli citizens are not that anxious for publicity.

      They vote with their feet. Without further ado, they pack their suitcases and leave. 

2 

    We could continue to ignore what is happening to the Jewish state, bombarding the voice of conscience with patriotic mottos and slogans to silence it. However, eventually we will have to open our eyes – the moment of truth will ultimately arrive.

    War is always such a moment of truth, and the recent war with Lebanon was no exception. This war has compelled Israeli society to see things more clearly and to discover the true state of affairs in the country.

    It is no secret that this discovery has shocked Israeli society.

    It wasn’t merely the helplessness of the country’s leaders, which was so obvious during the military campaign.

    The problem is far greater than that.

    The war with Lebanon proved that the entire state system has left the country unprepared for serious trials: there are not enough bomb shelters, no organized support structure for rear operations or services, to say nothing about the low level of preparedness in the army. Such a sad state of affairs, in spite of the fact that Hezbollah’s plans were no secret to anyone, and nor was its level of preparedness.

    It suddenly turned out that the government could just as well be “shut down” completely, and not a lot would change. The bloated government bureaucracy consumes taxpayer’s money like a swarm of locusts, but it has left those very taxpayers to their own devices and collapsed as soon as “Katyusha” rockets started falling in the country’s north. The only thing the people could now do was rely on the age-old Jewish tradition of mutual support, giving up on their government. 

    It is, of course, possible to set up an investigation commission, which will play down all the problems uncovered by the last war and conclude that certain mistakes need to be corrected and certain public officials punished for their misjudgments. It is even possible to bring in new leadership after the country holds another meaningless election.

    Will anything good really come of it? Do we really have anyone who would do better than those who did so poorly? The problem isn’t this war as such or the many details which, during the month of military operations, exposed to the Israeli citizens some things about which they had previously no idea.

    The problem lies in the crisis of the entire system. This means that failures will occur in any part of this system, and that is apt to happen in the nearest future.

    The symptoms are already there.

    The Israeli people have suddenly learned from the comptroller’s report that their army was doomed to fail from the very start. According to the report, the majority of senior army officers are poorly prepared. High-ranking officers don’t have the required training, and there is “no clear and accepted professional communication” between them. Based on data available for 2005, 82% of major generals, 68% of brigadier generals and 76% of colonels don’t have diplomas from the National Security College. Frankly speaking, it isn’t entirely clear how valuable such diplomas would have been, considering that most of the teaching staff have no academic titles or sufficient experience in teaching the various subjects related to defense. 

The public suddenly discovered that in the field of high technologies, which until now has guaranteed to Israel the strategic and economic advantages of a highly developed country, we can also expect to fail. Research conducted by Dr. Amnon Frenkel from the Technion in Haifa (Israel Institute of Technology, – Translator’s note) openly admitted that Israel’s economy and high-tech presently rely on accomplishments  that are 20 years old. In his address to the US Congress in May 2006 Ehud Olmert said: “Israel has impressive credentials in the realm of science, technology, high-tech … and many Israelis are Nobel Prize laureates in various fields.” This may not be true for long, however.

Most native-born Israelis exhibit no interest in these areas of knowledge. The state, therefore, can pin its hopes entirely on the influx of trained professionals from other countries – Olim (immigrants – Translator’s note) and foreign workers.

    It suddenly emerges that the Israeli society can expect its position to deteriorate not only in the high-tech field. The rating of Israeli universities has plummeted so drastically that not even one of them presently belongs to the first hundred of best schools worldwide. It appears that Israel can anticipate its intellectual elite to disappear altogether in the not so distant future. The brain drain has already begun, and this is apparent from the numbers of professionals and intellectuals who have left Israel.

    Suddenly, the “open secret” is disclosed publicly (it had long been no mystery to many Israelis): the people at the helm of the state don’t know where they should direct the country and how to take it there. Professor Ciechanover’s crushing criticism of the Israeli political elite deserves a direct quote: “They’re pitiful. It’s truly pitiful that there is not one among them who instills in the public a sense of inspiration. There is no one with whom you would like to speak, whose ideas you would want to hear. To tell the truth, the members of the Israeli elite in general do not voice ideas. They lack direction or discourse, they don’t even have an agend! They use all kinds of words – ‘realignment’, ‘dismantlement’ – that are unclear and lack meaning. They are devoid of content...”  

3 

    It shouldn’t be surprising that in their quest for the reasons behind the state’s decline both professors singled out the Israeli system of education, since it is through its education system that society reproduces itself. Geniuses and simply talented people can only appear when society creates an auspicious environment for them.

    Professor Ciechanover says: “I fear for the very existence of the State of Israel. Everything here seems lacking in values, temporary, one patch on top of another, a thin patch cover that can be torn off with any breeze.” He emphasizes that it should be the role of the government to create a different environment – to engage the widest segments of the population in the education process. “What Israel needs is a broad educational system, a critical mass of researchers, and philosophers, and ethicists, and men of letters who will lead her.”

    Sadly, as it has become customary in Israel, the distinguished professors and Nobel prize-winners, Aumann and Ciechanover, have not examined the developments in the early 1990s, during the arrival of the Big Aliyah from the former Soviet Union. The point is that the Big Aliyah actually brought Israel that very critical mass of well-educated people, which supplied the country with the professionals it needed.

    One would assume that somebody should have been curious about how this critical mass was created. Yet nobody showed the slightest interest.

    Nonetheless, the critical mass was created because the former Soviet Union cultivated the ideals of the kind of engagement of the widest segments of the population in the education process suggested by Professor Ciechanover.

    It is, therefore, not the least surprising that in an effort to preserve these ideals the Big Aliyah organized evening schools for the study of physics and mathematics in every small town where the “Russians” settled with their families. The goal was to preserve their own ideals and pass them on to the children. What indeed causes surprise is that the public officials responsible for Israel’s education system, the Israeli elite – those very pitiful people the professor referred to – opposed the “Russian schools” with utmost vigor.  

    The consequences are starkly obvious. Those “Russian” children whose parents brought them to Israel so they could become scientists, researchers, engineers and physicians become school dropouts instead. Many of these young people without even a high-school diploma also find themselves unable to fit into well-adjusted and successful society. 

    Those of them who failed to become engineers or computer programmers can be found in great numbers all over Israel working as sales people. As one looks at the faces of these young “Russian” men and women, it isn’t hard to imagine that they could have showed a good aptitude for learning when they were children. Perhaps some of them were entirely capable of being part of Israel’s “critical mass of researchers, and philosophers, and ethicists, and men of letters who will lead her”. If they fell through the cracks of Israel’s education system, what is there to say about that part of the Israeli youth whose parents and grandparents had never lived in a society that cultivated the ideals of engagement of the widest segments of the population in the education process?

    Israeli society should take full responsibility for taking young “Russians” back to the trade occupations of their great grandparents who lived in the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement. Dr. Amnon Frenkel from the Technion in Haifa sounds the alarm: according to him, Israel’s only hope now is a new influx of trained high-tech professionals from abroad.

    What has happened to Israel’s own professionals? Why has the Israeli education system consistently engaged in what Professor Ciechanover calls “choking of brainpower”?  

4 

    The blame for the decimation of “the great source of pride Israel has bestowed on Jewish communities around the world” (Professor Ciechanover), and the pitiful circumstances in which the country has found itself as the result lies entirely on Israel’s system of education.

    Yet the situation that allows the education system to play such a destructive role in the Israeli state and society does not change for the better.

    Moreover, it actually changes for the worse. 

    This is happening for a number of reasons. 

    The first is that the Jewish people don’t have their own pedagogical traditions in those fields of knowledge which are indispensable for the state’s existence. Professors Aumann and Ciechanover speak about the Jewish heritage as the foundation essential for Jewish learning. But the areas of knowledge which they indicate: “physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine … ethics, philosophy, literature, history” have never been taught in traditional Jewish schools.

      It is, therefore, quite natural that Israeli teachers don’t know exactly how these subjects should be taught. It isn’t their fault but that of the educational ideologists who don’t fully comprehend the place of tradition in teaching.

      Instead of contemplating this issue, the school system is further damaged by never-ending reforms. What’s more, these reforms come from random political appointees, who may temporarily find themselves in the position of Minister of Education.

      The second  reason is born of the very process of unification of the Jewish people after 2,000 in the Diaspora.

      The cultural heritage of each wave of immigration has always been the province of Israeli public officials who selected from that heritage only those elements, which they saw as needed by the state at that particular moment in time.

      This had a destructive effect on the new Olim’s potential, and was particularly harmful to the children, whose fate was immediately placed into the hands of officials from the Ministry of Education.

      The destiny of the Big Aliyah was no exception. “Russians” have experienced this “truncation” of their traditions to the level of the public official just as all the others before them.

      That is why it isn’t surprising that “Russian” children are no longer studying physics, which was considered one of the core subjects in the curriculum of Soviet schools. It is enough for the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education to decide that only those children who intend to use physics in their future careers should take physics classes for the education tradition that was shaped over several generations in the Diaspora to be completely destroyed in a matter of a few years. And physics is not the only victim.

      This near-sighted “pragmatism” has led to the decimation of the elite.

       The future doesn’t hold any promise of improvement, because we continue to hear increasingly more frequent discussions to the effect that schoolchildren are studying too many unnecessary “extra” things, which, the ideologists insist, they won’t need in their future lives.

      It means that the process of decimation of the elite is bound to deepen.

      The third reason is that the school system has always been used in Israel for purposes other that its original intent – teaching has been largely replaced by brainwashing.

       Israelis recently saw a vivid example of what has been, in fact, the norm for the education system as a whole. Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, one of the organizers of the ultra-left movement “Peace Now”, has made an arbitrary decision to change the borders of Israel on the maps children use in their geography classes. The borders are drawn in a way, which reflects the Minister’s personal political opinion, effectively turning geography classes into political indoctrination sessions. This is the kind of school “reform” the Education Minister thought it necessary to implement – and that at a time when children finish school without the most basic knowledge of physical and political geography. Shamefully, some of them don’t even know the neighboring countries along Israel’s borders!

      How can anyone expect philosophers and strategists to appear in a society where people are taught to accept that politicians may interfere in the learning process?  

5 

    Professors Aumann and Ciechanover are right – there is little ground for optimism. And the situation won’t improve if the process of shaping society’s future remains the same.

          However, true change will give the Jewish people grounds for optimism. Of course, it won’t be the optimism of the kind suggested by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with his “awesomely cool country”. A nation that has displayed such remarkable talent and idealism is surely capable of creating a state in which all its citizens will want to live and bring up their children.

          But for this to happen it is absolutely essential for Israel to create “a critical mass of researchers, and philosophers, and ethicists, and men of letters who will lead her”. If it doesn’t emerge, the State of Israel is doomed.

    What should be done for this “critical mass” to emerge? It is my hope that this essay will be the beginning of a wide discussion among all interested parties who would like to see Israel regain its balance – a healthy, successful and developing country.

    Then each and every Jew would say: “This is the kind of state our ancestors dreamed about for 2,000 years, and for just such a country our people have endured their difficult fate of a nation in exile.”