Yediat Yisrael: Remembering October 7 and Reflecting on Israel Education

Photo credit, Rabbi Laura Novak Winer, Ed.D., RJE – A table set for 200 remains in “Hostage Square” in Tel Aviv, a reminder that the hostages still have not all been returned home.

This article has been adapted from a speech presented by Laura Winer Novak during the ReCHARGING Reform Judaism conference, May 2024, NYC. Click here to read the full, original version.

Travel with me. Imagine, for a moment, we are standing on the Tayelet – the Haas Promenade – at the south end of Jerusalem. Look north toward the walls of the Old City, with the shimmering views of the structures on the Temple Mount, replete with thousands of years of history.

בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁ֗י וַיִּשָּׂ֨א אַבְרָהָ֧ם אֶת־עֵינָ֛יו וַיַּ֥רְא אֶת־הַמָּק֖וֹם מֵרָחֹֽק׃

On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

(Gen 22:4)

Do you get goosebumps up your arms? I do. I remember that moment when I first made this connection between our ancestors’ experience and my own, standing on that same land. I felt it – the history, the connection across time. I felt that Israel was my home too.

This experience is recreated all over the land of Israel. We can name the places; perhaps you are thinking of a landmark, a historical site, or a corner of Israel that has special meaning for you.

Learning experiences like these are part of an educational approach called yediat ha’aretz, or Land of Israel studies. Historically, the early settlers in the pre-State period developed this approach as a way for new immigrants and sabra children to get to know the land of Israel. The aim was, through content learning and firsthand exposure to the land, through hikes and day trips, to build “an emotional attachment to something greater than a physical place (Benvenisti, 2000, p. 246).” The theory was that in coming to know a place one would come to love and own it (Almog, 2000).

Yediat ha’aretz is still employed today with native Israelis at multiple stages of their education and socialization as well as with pilgrims and tourists.

The wisdom of yediat ha’aretz as a pedagogy is that there is an understanding that before one can love a place, they first have to know it.

When we consider Israel education in North America in the 20th and first decade of the 21st century, most educators could summarize their visions in two words: ahavat Yisrael. They sought to nurture a love of our historic homeland and unconditional loyalty to the State of Israel.  Frankly, I think this focus on ahava is unattainable and misdirected. And, I believe it contributes to the challenges we find ourselves facing right now. Let me say more.

Our current paradigms of Israel education have been hampered by a number of limiting assumptions.  A limiting assumption is a belief that is restrictive, untested, and held as truth. Limiting assumptions prevent us from seeing new opportunities or from seeing how we are missing the mark. Our Israel education efforts have been constrained by several limiting assumptions.

Assumption: Jews need to love Israel before being critical of Israel.

Assumption: Young children do not have the capacity to understand the nuance and complexity of Israel.

Assumption: To be critical of Israel is to not love Israel.

Assumption: It is essential that American Jews love Israel.

Well, as the great educator Alan Alda said, quoting Isaac Asimov, “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” The time is well past for us to examine this focus on ahava as an essential element of connecting to Israel. Even prior to October 7, we were hearing and seeing these rumblings. Now, even more so.

In Jewish tradition, the concept of yada, the word used to describe the relationship between a person and God – translated as “knowing” or “to know” – is about much more than deep intimacy. It means “showing concern for, entering into a covenant with, being familiar with, and understanding the reputation” of another (Brooks, 2023, p. 34). Knowing, in our tradition, is also transcendent. We come to know God and God comes to know us, as we read in Psalm 40:10, Adonai ata yadata. The Mishneh Torah explores the practice of yediat Hashem, coming to know God as an ongoing process of questioning, expressing doubt and uncertainty.

David Brooks describes in his new book How to Know a Person, the process of knowing as illumination and accompaniment, about asking the right questions, having hard conversations, and always holding each other with empathy.

Drawing upon the wisdom of yediat ha’aretz, of our textual tradition, and upon my beliefs about teaching and learning, I believe that our Israel education should aim for learners to know Israel. I call this paradigm Yediat Yisrael.

Yediat Yisrael more accurately reflects the type of knowledge, understandings, and connections our learners need. Yes, it may lead to ahavat Yisrael, but that is not the primary objective. Yediat Yisrael aims for learners to find and navigate their own meanings and connections with Israel, as the historic homeland, as a global, diverse Jewish community, and as the modern State.

Yediat Yisrael aims to build understanding. To accomplish this, we can draw upon educators Jay McTighe and Elliott Seif, who say we need to “help students go beyond learning facts in order to develop deeper understandings of the world around them and the diverse global society in which they live… so that they can flourish in an unpredictable world (McTighe & Seif, n.d.).” This means that yediat Yisrael is both a cognitive and an experiential learning process. It is dialogical, creating space for honest and hard conversations, for hearing different perspectives and narratives.

Yediat Yisrael is grounded in an understanding that all Jews are mishpacha – family. And yet, we are diverse, with different cultures, lived experiences, perspectives and narratives. Twentieth century Israel education focused on mobilizing the Jewish community to advocate and support the nascent and struggling State of Israel. Ahava was deemed necessary to build loyalty and obligation. Israel education can no longer be solely about the diaspora being there to support Israel. We all – Israeli Jews and Jews around the globe – have to see, support, accompany each other. My own experiences in Israel this year revealed to me that Israelis are just as worried about us right now, as we are about them. Yediat Yisrael builds that interdependence and mutual understanding.

Knowing Israel helps us understand the world and our place in it.  As Quaker educator Parker Palmer writes, “the knower, the known and their relationship are formative in the way an educated person not only thinks but acts. The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world (Palmer, 1993, p. 21).” Teaching from a Yediat Yisrael approach aims for learners to act, to produce, in the ways that are meaningful, compelling and transformative for them and those with whom they are in relationship.

When we clear away the assumption that ahavat Yisrael has to be the outcome of our Israel education endeavors, we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about what our learners need today and how best to accomplish that. And within this context, Yediat Yisrael, knowing Israel, is attainable.

About the Author
Rabbi Laura Novak Winer, Ed.D., RJE is a graduate of MTEI Cohort 2. She is the director of the Master of Educational Leadership program and a member of the School of Education Faculty at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She earned her doctorate at the William Davidson Graduate School of Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, focusing on how teachers’ connections to and understandings of Israel impact the decisions they make about what to teach and how to teach it. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, through which she is further developing her thinking about paradigms of Israel Education.