Tag: jewish-education

Our Jewish and Israel Education has failed

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

The last few days I have seen both a friend of mine and a celebrity who are both very publicly Jewish and pro-Israel take a tremendous amount of abuse online for being Zionists. In both instances, it was clarified that being a Zionist means that you support there being a Jewish state of Israel. In both instances, the antisemites decided to change that to something that fit their narrative instead. Being a Zionist meant you were a baby killer. To them it means you are hateful and discriminatory. They define it meaning that you believe in apartheid and murder of civilians. In their definition, Zionism is not racisim, it is Genocide. While being disgusted by the outpouring of public hate, I have become incredibly sad. Sad because our Jewish and Israel education has failed. We have not educated our own youth (and now young adults) about Israel, antisemitism, and Judaism. They don’t know enough to fight back and for many, this lack of knowledge has resulted in them agreeing with those who hate Jews. We have not bothered to make and build partnerships based on education and knowledge. We have failed and the resulting explosion of antisemitism and antizionism is the result.

The saddest part to me is that our Jewish leaders, for the most part, refuse to admit we have failed. They refuse to understand that what we have done for 50 plus years has not worked. The requirement to truly innovate, to bring both Israel and Jewish education into the 21st century isn’t something they are willing to do. They want to put a band-aid on it. Reduce education from 3 days a week when I grew up to 1 day a week because maybe then, parents will send their children and children will be willing to come. They aren’t willing to examine the reason WHY parents don’t want to send their children or the reason WHY children don’t want to attend. The lack of meaningful content. The lack of being challenged. The boring nature of the experience. In a TikTok world, many of our Israel and Jewish educators are living in dialup world.

I intentionally used the words “for the most part” and “many” because there is real innovation happening on a grass roots level. But it needs to be on an institutional level. It needs the backing of the major funders. It needs to be systemic because we are losing far too many people to the lies being told and to the lack of understanding what being Jewish means.

I grew up in a very Zionistic family. Unlike most American Jews, all four of my grandparents went to Israel. My parents and my in-laws have been to Israel. My wife and I have been to Israel. My sister and her husband have been to Israel. My brother and his wife have been to Israel. My aunt and uncle have been to Israel. A number of my cousins have been to Israel. The connection is strong and deep. Growing up, I didn’t think anything of that. It was normal. I have learned over the years that is not normal, that is not common. Yet it should be. We have failed.

Our Jewish schools, both the day schools and religious schools don’t do real Israel studies. They don’t teach the history of Zionism, the history of the modern state of Israel. Students learn Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel and Leah. They don’t learn about Herzl, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Begin, Sharon or Rabin. They learn about Judah Macabee rebelling against the Hasmonians, but not about how in 1948, a ragtag Israeli army defeated 7 Arab countries who attacked them instead of accepting the partition plan which would have created an Arab state next to the Jewish state of Israel. They learn about Joshua and the walls of Jerico but they don’t learn about Ariel Sharon and the 6 day war or how Israel asked Jordan not to enter the war but they did anyway and lost Judea and Samaria. They teach Torah stories but not Torah learning. Memorizing the stories without understanding how to debate Torah and apply it to their daily lives. The get bored instead of excited. When they get older, they don’t know what it means to be Jewish or have any real information about Israel, other than the Hasbarah talking points they are given.

We don’t teach our children about how Israel left Gaza, removed every Jew from Gaza, relocating entire towns, to give the people of Gaza the opportunity to govern themselves. How the people of Gaza elected Hamas who promptly executed the leaders from Fatah (the PA) and turned Gaza into a terrorist haven. How Hamas took billions of dollars of aid and instead of building a country, built terror tunnels underground to terrorize and attack Israel. They aren’t taught how Hezbollah took over Lebanon from the Christian Lebanese government and turned it from “Paris of the middle east” into a terrorist haven.

It’s time for our legacy organizations to take the lead in changing this. The Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movement can invest in an engaging curriculum that teaches how to engage with Torah and what it means to be Jewish in a fun and interesting manner. They can ensure there is real Israel content in this curriculum. The Day School movement can ensure that they are including real Israel education in their curriculum and challenging their students to learn how to debate Torah and make sure it is a living lesson, not a dusty scroll.

The TikTok generation gets all their news on social media. Unfortunately, the pro-Israel messages get lost because they aren’t creative, they share too much information to a generation that wants to watch a 30 second video. The piece below is amazing and I hope you read it. It is filled with details and information that most people don’t know. Yet it’s too long and too much reading for the TikTok generation. Until we invest in creative ways to engage them on their terms, we will lose. I can’t imagine my children spending the time to read this post. I wish they would but unless I pushed it, they wouldn’t. They’d watch a series of videos that engaged them though. These type of posts speak to my generation. We have nothing that speaks to the TikTok generation and we are losing them to the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, antisemetic groups because they are more creative and are reaching them, even with lies and distortions.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing all sorts of organizations doing amazing work in bringing Judaism and arguing with Torah to life. Those who teach real Israel education in a compelling manner. The major institutional support isn’t behind them. They are more invested in continuing the status quo than truly innovating and solving the problem. Perhaps the first step is admitting we (and they) have a problem. Fighting antisemitism, Jew hatred, has to start at home. I hope our Jewish legacy organizations wake up before it is too late. The clock is ticking

History is back. What are you going to do?

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Two weeks ago I attended the General Assembly (GA) of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). Bari Weiss, one of my favorite journalists, spoke there. Bari’s publication, The Free Press, is amazing and I am proudly a paid subscriber. It’s some of the best money I have spent as the content is balanced, fair, interesting, compelling, and diverse.

Bari talked about a number of things that resonated with me and that I have spoken and written about at length. Here are a few of them

“If you see what just happened in the Netherlands and think, That can never happen here, I urge you to take a very hard look at our history.

We need to get serious about who our allies really are. And to be able to say that some of the best defenders of our community, like New York Rep. Ritchie Torres and Free Press columnist Douglas Murray, are not Jews. And some of the biggest sellouts are.”

In my last blog I took to task Bernie Sanders, Jon Ossoff, and Chuck Schumer – three Jews who have sold out the Jewish people. I highlighted John Fetterman, President Biden, and Marco Rubio – three non-Jews who defend the Jewish people. I’ve written about Douglas Murray and Ritchie Torres, more non-Jews, who actively defend the Jewish people. I couldn’t agree with Bari more – we need to recognize our allies and realize that they are often not Jewish while the Jewish ones are often not our allies. As Bernie Sanders tried this week to both limit weapon sales to Israel and to have the U.S. begin funding UNRWA, tied closely to Hamas, once again, we need to realize that being Jewish doesn’t make you an ally.

“We need to talk about a legacy press that our community still reads religiously, but which lies about the things we know to be true. The mainstream press would have you believe that the hunt in Amsterdam was a scuffle between football hooligans. It is no less a lie than insisting Sieg heil! merely means Hail Victory!”

The legacy press continues to spread lies. They continue to tell the story they want to tell rather than the truth. Watch any mainstream media (MSM) news program. It’s not news, it’s their narrative. There is a reason these are no longer in the news department and are now in the entertainment department. It’s about getting viewers, not telling the truth. It is about telling the story that they think the most people will want to see and hear, not the facts. When I watched Senator Jon Ossoff’s statement about why he voted to limit military aid to Israel, the amount of lies and falsehoods he presented as facts was astonishing. He is a smart man, well educated, and as a U.S. Senator, you would think he is knowledgable. Yet he presented the lies of Hamas, told through the MSM. He reiterated the lies of Bernie Sanders. As long as we continue to allow the MSM to outright lie to us, not only will they lie, the Jewish people and Israel will be at risk.

“History is back. The Old World is not coming back. It is on us to build the new one—and to ensure that it is free.“

I have been talking about this for a decade. The rise of antisemitism. When I was in Seattle we began getting swastikas painted on buildings. It was excused by many in the Jewish community and most of the non-Jewish community as outliers. One offs. Not a systemic problem. We now see that isn’t true. As Bari says, History is back. The question is what are we going to do about it? Are we going to stand up and fight? Are we going to defend ourselves or hide? Are we going to fall into the old trap of history and try to just ‘go along to get along’, which we know doesn’t work? I choose to fight. I choose to build a new one. What will you choose.

Watch and listen to Bari’s full talk below. It is outstanding and worth your time.

In May, I went to Israel with a bunch of guys on a Momentum trip. It was a small group of about 25 guys and we bonded both because of the intimacy of the group size as well as being in Israel during the war, seeing Kfar Aza and the Nova site together, listening to parents of hostages and those who were attacked on October 7th.

One of the guys on our trip, Mikey, does a video on Instagram and it’s always outstanding. Yesterday, he talked about how 37% of Jewish kids sympathize with Hamas. Not with the Palestinians. Not with the people of Gaza. But with the terrorist group Hamas. He addresses, in a different way, what I have been talking about for a while. We have failed with our youth and with our leadership. We have not taught them what they need to know. We have not ensured they understand what it means to be Jewish, the value of being Jewish, or what it means to be a Jewish leader. They don’t understand the importance of Israel to the Jewish people nor do they understand that Israel is 3,000 years old, not only since 1948.

If we choose to do nothing, we will continue to fade away. It’s up to us to make different choices. It’s up to us to decide that real leadership training and development is worth the investment. It’s up to use to decide that real Jewish education is something we value and will invest our time and money into. Listen to Mikey and hear his passion and the power of his words. I hope they inspire you like they inspired me.

My friend Ari Shabat just returned from Israel. It was his first time back since October 7th and he got to see, feel, and experience the devastation of Kfar Aza, Nova, and visit Kibbut Alumim. As I have written, it is a powerful experience and something that cannot be adequately explained. It must be experienced and felt individually. Before I went for the first time, I was told that it would be like going to Auschwitz a few months after it was liberated. I didn’t really understand that analogy until I experienced it. Nova felt like visiting a memorial to my children and their friends. Standing in a circle, singing Jewish songs, at the Nova site, was incredibly healing. It is why I urge people to go to Israel and truly see and feel what it is like. To understand how the Israelis are coping with life after October 7th, 13 months into a brutal war.

Ari also does a weekly video and this week he talks about how as Jews, we experience loss and sadness. How we push forward while we process grief. We know there is life to live and missions to accomplish and we can’t let our grief stop us. Israelis have been doing that for 13+ months. The families of the hostages have been doing that for 414 days. We as Jews in the United States can’t afford not to be doing this as well. One of the things I love about Ari is how he ties life today to the Torah. In this week’s video, he uses the Torah portion and Abraham as the inspiration. It’s well worth the 3+ minute watch. If you like it, you can subscribe to the WhatsApp group.

Then there is New York and Montreal. This video was in Times Square. The mob is chanting Gaza, supporting Hamas, Iran, and terrorism. This is what we face in America today. Think about what Bari Weiss. Think about ‘it can’t happen here’. It is happening here.

This is Montreal last night. This isn’t Gaza. This isn’t Europe. This is Montreal. This is today’s Canada. We can choose to pretend that the world is safe for Jews or we can open our eyes and see what is happening around us. I have friends who were just a few blocks away as this was happening. Do we really want to put our heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening? Do we want to be like Senator Jon Ossoff and defend those that want to murder us because we think it isn’t happening? Do we want to be like Senator Bernie Sanders and take our personal dislike for a single person, in his case Prime Minister Netanyahu, to risk the safety of Jews everywhere?

As Bari Weiss said, history is back. We have seen pogroms. We have have seen genocidal attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. What will it take to open your eyes? When will you realize that we are facing an existential threat because we are Jews? Will it take one of your loved ones being harmed, kidnapped, or murdered? Will it take you being attacked personally? Or will you wait until the very end? I hope today is the day you wake up. I hope today is the day you take action. Don’t wait until it is too late.