It is related that Chaim Nachman Bialik, the so called
"national poet" of the State of Israel, who in his youth
spent some time in Volozhin yeshiva, asked to meet HaRav
Boruch Ber Lebowitz, whom he knew from his time in the
yeshiva.
At first HaRav Boruch Ber refused to meet with him. In the
end though, he agreed, on condition that Bialik would remain
silent during the encounter, and only he--HaRav Boruch Ber
would speak.
"Look at the difference between us," HaRav Boruch Ber told
him. "We were both together in the same yeshiva. What I say
and write, is studied by the finest bnei Torah, the
best minds in the world deliberate on every word, probe every
idea, while what you wrote is quoted by little girls in the
kindergarten who play in the mud."
Now, during the days of the new Education Commissar, even
this meager privilege is to be denied the "national poet."
His poems will no longer be quoted even in the
kindergartens.
In the new curriculum of the Education Commissar, the poems
and stories of that poet have been deleted, and replaced by
the poems of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national
poet.
Generations of Palestinian youngsters grow up on his poems,
which express longings for the stolen homeland, and call for
getting rid of the "conqueror."
"Leave our land, /our continent, our sea/ our salt, our
wound/ everything," he writes in one of his poems. In the
continuation of that poem Darwish calls on the Jews to remove
the dead from the cemeteries.
Alongside Darwish's poems, the students of the State of
Israel will study those of the Lebanese poetess, Siham Daoud,
as well as those of the poet and author Erez Biton, a
representative of the most extreme left. In addition, the
book Ahavat Zion, written by one of the pioneers of
the Second Aliya, and whose name reflects its content, has
been taken out of the curriculum, along with the poems of the
great Jewish poets of medieval Spain, who expressed longing
for Eretz Yisroel.
Yossi Sarid is implementing the Leftist vision of gaining
control of the content of the schools' curriculum in order to
prepare the younger generation for its future in the renewed
Leftist state.
In the songs of Darwish and Daoud, Israeli youth can feel the
terrible injustice which his Zionist forebears committed
against the veteran residents of the place.
The weeding out of Zionistic poems and stories which are
supposed to educate the youth for love of the homeland
underscore the intention of the energetic Commissar to raise
a new generation which will know how to choose the worthy
party when it reaches voting age.
"If there are no kids there are no goats," the minister has
learned from Jewish tradition, and he seeks to exploit his
senior position in order to advance the purpose.
It is interesting that even the Leftist Ha'aretz
related negatively to this curriculum, not so much due to its
content, but because of the fear that the Israeli political
wheel might turn over, and a right wing Education Minister
might learn from the precedent set by Sarid and adapt the
curriculum of the schools to his political outlook.
"A few years ago Meretz attacked Zevulun Hammer's plans to
add more Jewish and Zionist studies to the curriculum. They
claimed that he was using the educational system as a
political instrument. Sarid is now repeating Hammer's
mistake, but the damage which his sonorous declaration will
make is liable to be even greater from a political
outlook.
"Sarid explained the presentation of his new program by
saying: `This is democracy's way, and this is the reason for
the change in the educational system. I am the Education
Minister, and the minister drafts policies.' "
"Sarid errs and misleads," the article argued. "The Education
Minister is permitted to draft policies in his office with
respect to decisions about a long school day and the
cancellation of the nutrition plan or the far- reaching
changes in the administrative policy of the educational
institutions, or in the professional demands of the
teachers.
"However, the crass intervention in the content of the
studies is not part of his job. Worse than that, such
intervention creates an additional political breach in the
educational system, which is liable to transform the school
into an arena of contention between various ideological
streams and regimes in Israel."
