Maof

Part 1

Question 2.  Why Is Israel Confronting the Issue of “Brain Drain”? 

1

    The answer to this question appears to be self-obvious.

    “Brain drain” is a universal, not just an Israeli problem. Everywhere around the world people look for places that offer them a more favorable environment and higher pay, and that’s where they move in search of a better future.

    If incomes are higher in the United States, that’s where the brightest scientific minds leave in droves.

    Clear as this issue may seem, such an analysis would be far too superficial in respect to Israel.

    The specific features of the Israeli “brain drain” have no equivalent, since it is born of the same pessimism pervading Israeli society that characterized the traditional Jewish community during the period of its disintegration.

    It is, therefore, essential to understand these specific features. 

2

The tribal “culture of values” versus the individualistic “culture of discoveries” 

    Nobody has ever expressed any doubts that the generally recognized “Jewish brains” are the most important asset of the Jewish state, which does not have abundant natural resources. This thought is repeatedly trumpeted at every opportunity, and as the result, every Jewish person imagines that he, too, is somehow personally endowed with a portion of this shared intellectual capital.

    Incidentally, this conviction was one of the reasons why former Soviet Jews initially felt such great trust toward Israel and its representatives. How could anyone doubt that the Jewish state would protect and take good care of its most important “natural resource” – its “Jewish brains”?

    It would be wrong to assume that Soviet Jews alone imagine the Jewish state as one large university town where the Jewish people live, finally free of malicious anti-Semitic games, and maximize their talents to the fullest. In his day, Theodore Herzl also expected that the Jews, who demonstrated such talent in different areas of knowledge and in various fields of activity during the brief period of emancipation, would be able to build an advanced model state. He even wrote a utopian novel on the subject.

    True enough, European Jews who savored such a notion of Israel failed to pay attention to one major detail due to which all hopes that “Jewish brains” would flourish more than ever in a national state quickly evaporate. Jewish talents blossomed only where their non-Jewish environment created favorable conditions for that to happen. 

      The brilliant Sephardic (Spanish-Andalusian) Jewish community took shape at a time when Islam attracted the best of contemporary intellectual forces during the initial period of its development. As soon as Europe outpaced it, the Ashkenazi (European Jews) began to thrive, predominantly in those areas, which placed Europe at the forefront of all civilization.

    The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that “Jewish brains” alone are not entirely sufficient. There has to be a cultural soil, which is nourishing for these “Jewish brains”, and this soil is, sadly enough, not Jewish. 

    The most solid proof of this is the dependence of the Jewish elite on a foreign cultural environment, which expressed itself most vividly in the replacement of the elites. As soon as the European Christian world surpassed the Muslim world of the East in its development, the secular elite from the West within the Jewish community took the place of the religious elite from the East.  

    This is a serious challenge to the very definition of “Jewish brains”. What kind of mysterious product do they represent?

    There appears to be no doubt that “Jewish brains” have a tremendous potential, considering how many times this manifested itself in real life. But exactly how this potential manifests itself depends on the particular culture, whose “sanctities” determine the direction and degree of its interest, i.e., create the motivation for using “Jewish brains” in this or that manner.   

                                        3

    The perception of “Jewish brains” necessary for the normal functioning of a modern state evolved among European Jews. This requires no proof, because the rebuilding of the Jewish state, its development and prosperity became possible only thanks to the most advanced scientific knowledge and new technologies.

    There seems to be no need to prove that this knowledge and these technologies originally appeared in Europe.

    It is, however, important to emphasize that the religion of the European cultural realm is Christianity, though by bringing this up we instantly touch upon the issue of “sanctities” that determine the direction and degree of people’s interest.

    The troubled relationship between Judaism and Christianity has led us to concentrate all our attention on issues of religion alone. The fact that only the opportunity to use the cultural results of the Christian faith has allowed the Jewish people to rebuild their own state obligates us to shift our attention from religious matters to those very results and focus specifically on them.

    So what affect did Christianity have on man himself, which brought about such dramatic changes in the entire world, as well as the replacement of elites in our Jewish environment and the rebuilding of the Jewish state?

    Christianity transformed the “tribal man” into an “individualistic man”, and, in doing so, it replaced the tribal “culture of values” with an individualistic “culture of discoveries”.

    This process occurred in two stages.

    During the first stage, the idea of personal salvation pulled man out of his tribe and freed him of the necessity to repeat the experience of preceding generations. During the second stage, which began with the Protestant Revolution, man, supposedly fulfilling G-d’s Will, reoriented his efforts toward productive work and demonstrated a passionate desire to understand the world around him.

    When the consequences of these centuries of Christian evolution of man’s personality first became apparent – and this happened approximately three centuries ago – European Jews sensed that something in the world had changed in the most fundamental way, which signaled the end of traditional life.

    That is when Jews began to break away from traditional communities, where the traditional tribal “culture of values” continued to bind them to the enduring tradition of their ancestors. 

      The revolt against their own culture was so powerful that large numbers of Jews converted to Christianity, without even hiding that they were not so much concerned about salvation through Jesus as about the cultural result of the belief in such salvation. In other words, through baptism Jews began to acquire what Heinrich Heine called “the ticket of admission to European culture”.

    Such conversions became a mass-scale phenomenon.

    Renunciation of their own traditional culture and transition to the new European cultural soil produced extraordinary results: Jewish talents blossomed, and the Jewish people’s potential was unlocked.

    This, in turn, changed how the Jews themselves felt about “Jewish brains” and gave birth to the new Jewish elite, which now saw itself as belonging to the Europeans and not to their own tribe dispersed throughout the world.

    There is just one problem here: all of European culture is the product of Christian religious experience, which is why it can only exist within the environment that nurtured it. Taken outside of that environment the cultural result of the Christian faith, i.e., the individualistic “culture of discoveries”, falls apart, which is exactly what happened in Israel.

    Diaspora Jews, the absolute majority of whom moved to Christian countries, do not experience the full tragedy of this situation. The Jews whose personal lives are inseparable from the destiny of the Jewish state fully experienced these tragic consequences when they came face to face with the Israeli education system.  

4 

      Only the laziest person alive does not engage in discussions about the problems within the Israeli national education system. All Israelis can observe the results of the functioning of this system in the catastrophic degradation of the country’s youth.

      That is why even those people who are not in any way involved in education can sense how serious these problems must be. To understand this they do not really need to read scores of international reports evaluating the conditions in the education systems in different countries around the world, which consistently demonstrate the pitiful condition of “Jewish brains” within Israel.

      Despite all this attention, the reasons, which made their own cultural environment so harmful for “Jewish brains”, are being ignored. That is why people fail to recognize that the Israeli “brain drain” has its own specific characteristics and, what is even more dangerous, this tendency will inevitably increase as time goes on.

      It should not be difficult to understand the core of the problem. One should only look at the disdain, even hatred with which the Jewish Orthodox community treats the European cultural borrowings of emancipated Jews. It then becomes clear that these two cultures – the tribal “culture of values” and the individualistic “culture of discoveries” cannot coexist peacefully and are, in fact in a serious conflict. 

5 

      The tribal “culture of values” represents the culture of a traditional society. The distinctive characteristic of such a society is the transfer of relations between parents and their children that are natural within the family onto social life outside the family. Unlike the family, such relations in the social sphere are established artificially.

    Within the social life of traditional society, which its members see as one large family, people start to play the roles typical of the family beyond its boundaries. Thus, “social fathers” place themselves at the top of the social pyramid, while “social co-inhabitants” find themselves at its base.    

    Such social life molds the thinking and actions of both “social fathers” and “social co-inhabitants”.

    “Social co-inhabitants”, just as children in the family, place all responsibility for decision-making on the “adults”, who know everything there is to know and make decisions for everyone. Meantime, the “social fathers” do whatever they can to perpetuate the helplessness of the “social co-inhabitants”, using various tactics to assure that the latter acknowledge their own state of dependence.   

    All this has a direct connection to the education system, because its purpose is to ensure that members of Israeli society have a certain view of the world, which tells them to accept this status quo as something enduring and permanent.

          This goal determines the subject area to be studied – the “sacred tradition” passed down by the tribe’s founding fathers. It also determines the two central ideas, which students must absorb as something objective.

     First, students must accept that the fathers of the tribe who are the founders of the tradition are people of greater merit compared to their descendants. That is why descendants should try to follow the example of their ancestors. Such coaching inevitably results in the stagnation of traditional society, which resents change as a violation of the “sacred tradition”.

    Second, students must accept that the “adults” should resolve all problems on their own, because they alone know what is best for all of society. Obviously, the leader’s personality cult becomes an inescapable component of such “sanctity” 

6 

      The individualistic “culture of discoveries” is a unique culture that took shape in Europe thanks to Christianity. It represents a total repudiation of the tribal “culture of values”, since the latter was based on breaking away from pagan ancestors in the name of personal salvation.

      The mentality and actions of those who created the individualistic “culture of discoveries” were shaped by inhibiting the types of relations characteristic of the family. The founders of this culture chose to live in monasteries where they were able to carry out their mission. Freed from the inevitable pressures of family life, they focused all their attention on the natural world around them.

      This explains why monasteries became centers of European scholarly knowledge. Monks laid the groundwork for the European system of education and became the founders of those European universities, which attract students from all over the world to this day.

      Consequently, the goal they set themselves in promoting the individualistic “culture of discoveries” among the people was from the very start essentially different from the goal pursued by the tribal “culture of values”: the world itself became the object of study, rather than relationships between people.

      During the Protestant phase in the development of Christian individualism, when Europeans also became free of the confessional rule by the monks, they acquired the kind of freedom of the individual, which gave them unrestricted opportunities for great discoveries in every area of knowledge. Modern civilization is inconceivable without these findings and discoveries.

    That is why the education system, which took shape within “the culture of discoveries”, has an entirely different goal. It should instill fundamental knowledge about the surrounding world, which would allow man to learn more about this world and continue to make new and exciting discoveries. 

7 

    Quite obviously, these two cultures – the tribal “culture of values” and the individualistic “culture of discoveries” are incompatible with each other.

    That is why the Jews who wished to gain access to the European individualistic “culture of discoveries” faced a painful dilemma: should they remain faithful to the tradition of their ancestors or should they take a leap into the unknown – into the promising and enticing culture of Europe?

    Efforts by the first maskilim (Jewish enlighteners) to combine these two incompatible cultures ended in failure. Already the children of Moses Mendelssohn, the father of Jewish Enlightenment, who insisted that it should not be a problem to combine European knowledge with the Talmud, rejected their father’s viewpoint. They converted to Christianity and converted their children because, as Mendelssohn’s son put it, Christianity is “a more refined religion and the conviction of most well-bred human beings.”      

    It might seem that contemporary realities of Jewish life refute such a position on these issues. Plenty of Jews presently lead a traditional Jewish way of life and combine it with various types of modern professional activities, which originated in European culture. They prefer not to dwell on the trauma that the Jews experienced when they made the transition from their own tribal “culture of values” to the alien individualistic “culture of discoveries”. It is therefore natural that these present-day Jews do not feel an ounce of gratitude to the generations of Jews, who opened the doors into European culture and gave them access to it.

    Quite to the contrary, these present-day Jews have made themselves comfortable sitting on two chairs at once. They even condemn those who oppose their views calling them “renegades” and hypocritically trying to prove that the problem of the incompatibility of the two cultures does not really exist.  

    Our modernized traditionalists only harmed themselves by ignoring the suffering and torment of the first Jewish enlighteners. This disdainful attitude has made them incapable of understanding the essence of the problems, which the Jewish people confronted upon returning to the land of their ancestors.

    The broad education they received in yeshivas and universities was not sufficient for them to ask themselves the most vital question: what does this unique process called kibbutz galuyot really represent?

    Is it just the return of the Jews to the Promised Land? Is it, perhaps, the revival of the land and breeding world record-setting cows? Or is it the revival of the language and creating a literature in that language? But maybe it is laying new roads and building new settlements, or building synagogues and yeshivas, or universities, malls and five-star hotels, and the list goes on and on…

    Then again, is it perhaps the unique process of the ingathering of the Jewish people, those very olim dispersed by G-d to the four corners of the world, who bring to the Promised Land, hidden in the depths of their Jewish self-awareness, the cultural results of diverse and completely incompatible faiths? 

    All this relates directly to the issue of the Israeli education system. It is there that these cultural results of incompatible faiths clashed with each other, particularly the tribal “system of values” and the individualistic “culture of discoveries”.

    Yes, this widely discussed clash of civilizations has become a real-life and daily concern of the Jewish people who returned to the Promised Land after being scattered among the nations for 2,000 years. Not a single person in Israel can stay away from this clash of civilizations, because everybody has children who at a certain age will start school.  

8

    It seems logical to begin to wonder at some point: perhaps, the whole purpose of the Jewish people going into exile was for them to find upon their return that their own internal problem coincides with mankind’s global problem and so that they could find ways to resolve it.

    Obviously, the idea of European Enlightenment in and of itself has exhausted its potential. It is in no way universal and neither are the goals, learning process, teaching methods and strategies, etc., everything originally introduced by austere monks.

    The purely rationalistic attitude to the world, which people develop within the framework of the European education system, has led to a genuine crisis for the above-mentioned reason, i.e., its origins. Moreover, this kind of rationalistic attitude to the world has become dangerous for man who is unable to control his excessive hunger for new discoveries and innovations.

    European Enlightenment shows signs of such grave crisis that even in Europe one can hear people reproaching the Christian faith for its anthropocentrism, which, they claim, has severed man’s ties with Nature.   

    There is, therefore, nothing surprising about the fact that non-Europeans, even those with a good European education, renounce this legacy of the monks because of its definitive disconnection from man. Deep inside, Europeans long for their own tribal “system of values” that would bring them back to Nature, and reestablish genuine family and interpersonal relations.

    Those, who have already figured out that the conflict between the two cultures could not be resolved, set themselves the goal of blowing up the Christian realm. This came as a shocking surprise to all the people who assumed that once the nations of the world become familiarized with European Enlightenment, there would be no more problems.

    It turns out, however, that even greater new challenges come to the surface.  

9 

      This opens up great opportunities for “Jewish brains” to put themselves to work. The list of tasks is formidable – to reintroduce the element of humaneness that has been smothered by the system back into the learning process; to develop new strategies for knowledge transfer, making use of existing relations within the family and the parents’ natural concern for their children’s development and welfare.

      After all, strong family ties have always been a key asset of the Jewish people!

      Why would we believe that only the system that took shape within the framework of European experience, can prepare a person to function in the conditions of modern civilization? 

      If a task of such magnitude were to be formulated, “Jewish brains” would acquire a new mission and a new motivating idea.

      As they try to solve the problem of uniting the cultural results of different faiths into mankind’s joint experience, the Jewish people could become trailblazers in education – the most crucial field of human knowledge and human activity.

      Modern mankind does not need yet another reform of the education system – it needs a “reform” of the presently existing relations between parents and children, which are not consistent with the demands of modern civilization.

    There is no doubt that the Jewish people, whom G-d endowed with “Jewish brains”, should be capable of resolving such a challenge.

    Yes, the Jewish people could do it if … if they looked for ideas within their own experience instead of rushing to imitate other peoples’ experience, replacing Aliyah with immigration and repatriation.        

10 

      When they replaced Aliyah with immigration and repatriation and assigned the role of the “title nation” to true Israelis, the Jewish people made a fateful mistake, because they allowed true Israelis to imagine that they really knew how to unite the tremendous cultural experience that the olim brought to Israel from all over the world.

    This fateful mistake had catastrophic consequences: the education system began to work toward a goal contradicting the very purpose of education.

    If the main goal of any education system is to prepare the younger generation so that it can preserve and strengthen the accomplishments of previous generations, the education system in Israel prepares the younger generation so that it destroys everything that the generation of its fathers and grandfathers made enormous efforts to create.

    It is impossible to avoid his outcome because this education system produces:

a.       disintegration of society;

b.      disorientation of the individual;

c.      an environment which destroys “Jewish brains”.

 

Disintegration of Society 

1 

      Disintegration of society is inevitable since the true Israelis do not have a common concept of the education system. However, such a concept is absolutely necessary for the society to be cognizant of its deep unity. 

    Such a concept has been developed over the centuries in the Jewish traditional culture, which made it possible for Jews scattered all over the world to study the same texts in heders and yeshivas, analyze the same issues, recognize the same religious authorities, and so forth. As the result, the Jewish people who remained in the Diaspora for centuries managed to retain their unity.

    Similarly, the Catholic Church unilaterally controlled the entire education system in Western Europe. As the result, the Catholic Church succeeded in uniting ethnically dissimilar nations in which many generations received an education based on one common concept.

    And, finally, we should not ignore the experience of the former Soviet Union.

    The education system of this country deserves great credit. It is very unlikely that a communist dictatorship alone would have been able to unite so many nations, divided by their ethnicities and faiths, if it were not for the single national education system. Amazingly, all Russian immigrants, wherever they may be, follow the same pattern, organizing hobby groups, math and physics schools, and certain recreational and leisure activities. In other words, they use the positive experience of the single national education system, which has now become their own personal experience.  

    The education system in Israel, on the contrary, is extremely fragmented, with absolutely no connection between its separate sectors. Ultimately, the entire population of Israel since childhood is launched, so to say, into different parallel orbits, which will never meet. The designated orbit shapes their whole life, so these people eventually get used to the idea that different segments of the Israeli society do not have anything in common, and it cannot be otherwise.

    One may initially think that such an education system reflects the pluralistic vision of the true Israelis. It may seem that this is the way they understand the right of different population groups to self-expression: parents get the opportunity to bring up their children according to their views.

    

    However, this is a very simplistic approach to the problem. In fact, the demagogy around their “pluralistic vision” is used only to conceal the weaknesses of the true Israelis. These weaknesses have been pointed out above: they are insufficient civilization development and inadequacy. 

    Western approach to pluralism has nothing in common with the Israeli situation, since the true Israelis do not really accept the concept of pluralism, despite their claim that they are “Europeans” and belong to the “enlightened part of mankind”.

    Western approach to pluralism is the result of the development of the individualistic “culture of discoveries” in Christian Europe. The influence of this culture disappears as soon as Jews arrive to the land of their ancestors.

    Instead, the true Israelis succeed in restoring the tribal “culture of values” in the country. As bearers of this culture, they confront a problem, which is common for all adherents of the tribal “culture of values”: they fail to move beyond their own limited experience in order to propel it to a new higher level – the level of universalism.

    That is how the insufficient civilization development of the true Israelis is revealed. They are not capable of embracing the elements of different cultural results produced by other faiths, which the Jews bring within themselves in the process of kibbutz galuyot.

    The Israeli education system brings out this inadequacy more than any other field.

    Without considering this, it will not be possible to understand the very serious problems in Israel’s education system nor will it be possible to understand its highly destructive impact on the Israeli society, which results in “Jewish brains” leaving the country.  

                                        2 

    Shortly after they returned to the land of their ancestors, the founding fathers of Israel confronted two major groups that vigorously resisted the newcomers. One group represented Arab opposition, while the other one was comprised of Orthodox Jews.

    These two groups have coexisted for centuries, living in different universes, each passing on its own tribal “culture of values” to the next generation. These two groups never had any common goals, so it is only natural that they did not see any need for a universal system of education.  

    Everything changed when the Jewish community began the process of rebuilding the Jewish state because the modern state relies on the interaction between all its citizens and that is why it sets common goals before them.

    The founding fathers had to deal with a situation in which they faced a genuinely complicated problem. In order to resolve it they had to come up with a very special concept that would be understandable and acceptable for all the citizens of the state.

    But such a concept did not exist, and it would have been unfair to expect the founding fathers to suggest such a concept. Firstly, they had to build the state, starting completely from scratch. They were basically dealing with survival issues. Secondly, they did not have the experience, which would allow them to understand the core of the problem, the magnitude of which is not obvious even today.

    For that reason, the founding fathers chose the path of least resistance – they introduced a school system based on sectoral divisions. 

    So what were the consequences?  

                                        3 

    Israel has a developed system of religious education, including an entire network of Orthodox schools. Exactly how these schools are financed is one of the country’s top secrets. So let’s not dwell on that issue.  

    We will concentrate on the impact this network of religious schools has not only on the state but also on its Orthodox population.

    It is no secret that the Israeli education system was developed in an atmosphere of fierce resistance from Rabbinism. There was a reason for this opposition: the Rabbis were convinced that they were the only legitimate authority for the Jews to the end of time, and, as such, they prohibited the study of any “gentile” sciences and trades. It is, however, impossible to build a state without these “gentile” sciences and trades. The founding fathers of Israel had to face a very difficult dilemma – they were forced to choose between the state and Rabbinic tradition.  

     The founding fathers chose the state, and since then they always looked the other way whenever they met a Rabbi.  

    Wouldn’t it be great if we could leave all these disagreements that occurred at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century somewhere in the past? Let bygones be bygones. All the more so, since the Jewish people who are famous for their squabbles and internal disagreements have always dreamed about peace, at least among the Jews themselves.

    It would have been great if we could leave these disagreement behind…

    Alas, it just isn’t possible. The financing of Jewish religious schools is just the tip of the iceberg… The core problem has to do with “values”.  

    The fact that the state subsidizes the system of Orthodox education, which actually rejects the state’s authority, is absurd in itself. It would seem far more logical to apply the tit-for-tat approach– you refuse to recognize the state, therefore, we don’t recognize you.

    But the Jewish state turns down such an approach. Nobody wants to address the ideological objection of Orthodox Jews to the state because the Orthodox in Israel are credited as the true keepers of eternal sanctities of the Jewish people.

    Another fact, which is completely ignored is that the “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” are at best taught as secondary subjects Orthodox schools.

    As the result, the state’s money is spent in order to grow a socially weak population, which constantly needs help and is definitely not ready to meet the demands of modern civilization. However, the ideologists of the Orthodox system place all the blame on the state, saying that the state’s primary duty is to render help to the poorer segments of the population.

    They do have a point. If the state recognizes Orthodox Jews as a regular part of the civil population it is only fair that they enjoy the same rights and liberties as everyone else, right? And in this case the state should assume responsibility for this segment of the population as it does in relation to all its other citizens.

    But the problem is that Orthodox Jews do not merely expect to receive the same kind of state support as other citizens. The Orthodox leaders have taught their congregants to demand special support from the state, though it was these very leaders, whose “values” turned these people into a poor and needy population. In their arguments, the Orthodox leaders bring up the truly eternal sanctities of the Jewish people, such as their readiness to help somebody in need. It is true that Tzedakah has always been a sacred religious obligation. 

    But Tzedakah is not just giving donations or performing charity. Tzedakah originates from the word tzedek, which means justice. Tzedakah epitomizes Justice.

    To help, to share something that belongs to you with someone in need is a moral calling of a human being. It is the only way one can become part of a cohesive group, whether it is family, nation, mankind, or Creation, if you will. People feel it intuitively – no wonder selfish and egotistic people are not welcome anywhere.

    At the same time, our sense of Justice makes us admit that there is no initial equality between people. They differ in their natural inborn gifts and talents, and they have different destinies. We have to admit that some people are luckier than others. Somebody tripped and fell, and now this person can’t get up by himself. To help a person in need and to share what we have is our sacred duty.

    All this is obvious even in secular terms but it becomes our obligation when G-d Himself commands us to give Tzedakah.  

    However, there is a fundamental distinction between those who need help after some unfortunate circumstances, and those who became needy by observing certain “values”. It is wrong to encourage such “values”. In the first place, it isn’t fair to the people themselves who are personally accountable before G-d and other human beings for everything they do.

    People suspect that something isn’t “kosher” with all these “values” but they keep accepting them since they are afraid to question sacred moral values, such as helping the needy and supporting those devoted to study of the Torah.  

    Let’s then talk about Torah.

    The Torah teaches us how to live, and it is always alive, current and contemporary. That is how the Jewish people always perceived it. During all the hardships of life in the Diaspora, the Rabbis always found solutions to the challenges Jews had to face. Since Jews lived in a non-Jewish “gentile” environment, it never occurred to the Rabbis to place the responsibility for their own decisions on the state.  

    But it is unfair of the present-day Rabbis to claim that all their regulations and rules which have no connection to the nation’s real problems and for which they bear no responsibility are part of the Torah. The Jewish people themselves arrived at this conclusion. The Jews realized that the Rabbis have lost the ability to find answers to the new challenges posed by emancipation and can no longer be responsible for the destiny of the people. As a result, the Jewish people stopped to perceive the teaching of the Rabbis as beliefs representing the true living Torah. The Jews responded by turning away from the Rabbis.  

    However, in the Jewish state nobody can prevent the Rabbis from including in the Torah whatever they want. It’s not that difficult to do, provided that they are not accountable for the decisions they make because the state has exempted them from these responsibilities.

    So how was the Orthodox segment of the population affected by such a state policy?

    It made a mockery of genuine Jewish values and led to the degradation of Rabbinism and growing bitter animosity between different sectors of Israeli society.

    This inevitably causes deep divisions within society. And the blame for this lies fully with the ideologists of the Israeli system of education.  

4 

    We see a similarly ridiculous situation in the Arab sector as well.

    No doubt, the rebuilding of the Jewish state put the Arabs living in this land in a difficult situation since it destroyed their traditional notion of world order. It wasn’t so much the issue of religion. The religious part of the problem can be solved more or less easily, because religion is based on interpretations. Incidentally, Islam offers certain interpretations, which allow legitimizing the return of the Jews to the land of their ancestors.  

    The real problem is the destruction of the Arab community’s entire way of life. After centuries of being dhimmis and living under the Muslim rule, the Jews were suddenly in charge. This time it was the Arabs who fell under the governance of the Jewish state.  

    This was a dramatic change in the life of the Arabs, and the responsibility for how it happened, lies with those who brought about these life-shattering events. Because the Jews came to the Promised Land along with the European colonialists, the Arabs now claim that this return is part of the imperialistic policy of the West. They connect their own resistance to the Jewish presence with the general struggle of African and Asian peoples against colonialism.

    It is primarily something the Jews have to do themselves – they must find a way to separate their return from European colonialism and distance themselves from the principles of European colonialist policies. There is only one right way to do that: the Jewish people must develop a high-level concept that is much more viable than the one the Arabs used for centuries as the foundation for their notion of a “good” world order.

    This whole idea is not that new. Many people expected this to happen. There are numerous testimonies from Europeans and Arabs where they expressed their hopes that the Jews would bring civilization to the East.  

    The reality turned out to be very different. As far as education was concerned, the education system radically separated the Arab sector from the Jewish one, very much in the spirit of European colonialist policies. But since the Arabs enjoy all the privileges of being Israeli citizens the same way the Orthodox Jews do, the true Israelis, playing by the rules of their so-called “pluralism”, granted them the right to look for their new self-identity and to form their notion of a “good” world order on their own.

    And then the inevitable happened... The Arabs returned to their traditional self-identity and their traditional notion of a “good” world order in which they rejected the Jewish state’s right to exist.  

    That’s how we ended up with absurdities like the Israeli taxpayer’s money being spent in the Arab sector’s schools to teach Arab children that the rebuilding of the Jewish state has been an unadulterated disaster for the “Palestinian people” – a viewpoint the true Israelis consider legitimate.

    The widespread consequences of such an upbringing are disconcerting. The Arab members of the Knesset openly support the most vicious enemies of the Jewish state. Arab university students rally in protest, expressing hostility to the existence of the state of Israel.

    Unfortunately, the resentment the Arabs express toward the Jewish state will get only worse. The point is that the true Israelis have failed to develop a concept based on which the Arabs could define their place in Israeli society. Instead, the Israeli education system is breeding new enemies of the Jewish state.  

                                        5 

    Yet it’s premature to draw the conclusion that it won’t be possible to develop a concept that allows all the sectors of Israeli society to attain the level of universally accepted ideas. The experience of the Jewish people proves that this is possible.

    

    As soon as newly emancipated Jews started to adopt elements of European culture, obviously alien to the Rabbinic vision of the world, Rabbinism stopped playing such a decisive role in uniting the people.

    Instead, it was various organizations, the most prominent of them being the French Alliance (established by emancipated French Jews) that managed to unite Diaspora Jews from different countries by the ideas of European Enlightenment.

    The Jews in the Muslim world enthusiastically welcomed this initiative of the French Jews. The very first olim who returned to Eretz Israel in order to rebuild the land of their ancestors were the first beneficiaries of the new initiative. Only when they came to the land of their ancestors did the olim fully realize that the traditional system of Jewish education was unable to offer knowledge and skills necessary to rebuild the Jewish state.

    Thus, the efforts of the Jewish people who were introduced to the European individualistic “culture of discoveries” made it possible for them to elevate to a new level of civilization those Jews who were deprived of that opportunity in their own environment.  

    

      This proves, first of all, that the way the Jews perceive their unity goes far beyond the narrow boundaries of Rabbinism. Secondly, it emphasizes the uniting role of knowledge obtained by the bearers of the European individualistic “culture of discoveries” for all of mankind. No wonder, different world nations were so inspired to acquire this knowledge.  

    The Orthodox Jews view the so-called “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” as strictly secular.

    On what grounds? Don’t they discover the laws, which the Creator Himself has instituted for His own Creation? Didn’t the Creator equip people with intelligence so that Man is able to understand the world God has created?

    And if the new high technologies based on these scientific discoveries have allowed Man to change life on Earth so completely that he now poses a threat to his own existence, isn’t every person of faith on Earth obliged to protect God’s Creation?

    But that won’t be possible unless he MASTERs all these “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology”.   

    Finally, it is worth remembering that the rapid development of the natural sciences coincided with the development of political thought, which resulted in the creation of a modern state. This process started with the religious revolution in Europe. The Protestant Revolution liberated people from those who claimed that they had power over other men supposedly given to them by G-d.

    So long as these “social fathers” usurped the right to dictate everything in the Name of G-d, people were deprived of all their rights, including the right to express their natural desire to understand the laws of the universe.

    For that reason, we cannot separate the modern state and modern civilization from the natural sciences. Taken together they form the basis of civil society, the only one that guarantees people’s equality before G-d.  

    The “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” are equally important for the culture of family since family starts the process of adapting man to modern civilization. Every child addresses his first questions about the beauty and magnificence of this world created by G-d to members of his family. Whether he preserves this natural curiosity or allows it to vanish depends on the environment in which this person lives.

    These “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” transform woman’s role in society since as a mother she is most actively involved in the early development of the child’s personality. She is the one to whom the child addresses all his first questions. The more educated this mother is the more chances her child has to be ready for the challenges of modern civilization. This is true not only in respect to knowledge, which a person can obtain later. Mainly it is about love for G-d’s Creation, which at the level of modern civilization becomes merely an abstraction unless it is supported by knowledge.

      In fact, the absence of love for G-d’s Creation became the Achilles’ heel of the European education system. It raised leaders who used the achievements of civilization for their own destructive purposes, plunging mankind into numerous disasters, like wars, the destruction of the environment and so on.  

    This issue is particularly urgent because of the problematic nature of modern civilization: its level and its strength can’t be combined with hatred for peace and the human race.

    It is also relevant for the Arab community, which fell behind in its civilization development. The reason for this is the same – women as mothers are not sufficiently educated.

    The European strategy, according to which the modern woman has to be fully “emancipated” and liberated from the pressures of family life contradicts Arab mentality because the family is the foundation of society. Jews share the same view on the importance of family.

    But there is a different path. Civilization can come to each family, and this would create the need for a better-educated woman in her role as mother. That is what Israeli Arabs actually need.  

    In other words, the “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” have an enormous conceptual potential. The question is: why is it not utilized in the Jewish state, which has so many problems that it will not be able to prevent the disintegration of its society without producing a very special concept model.  

                                        6

    

     To answer this question we have to examine the tremendous damage the true Israelis caused to the Great Aliyah from the former Soviet Union.

    Former Soviet Jews were quick to realize that the Israeli education system has serious problems and they reacted accordingly. It did not take them long to organize schools with a special emphasis on math and physics which emerged practically everywhere in Israel. What they were trying to do was just to preserve the educational traditions of the country of their origin – the Soviet Union.

    What an uproar it caused! The true Israelis were so outraged that they immediately labeled these “Russian schools” –“Ghetto schools”.  

    If the rebuilding of the Jewish state involved the process of kibbutz galuyot this Russian initiative would be perceived as absolutely normal

    It is quite obvious that the reunification of the Jewish people which does not have educational traditions of its own is very different from the way immigrants and repatriates become introduced to the education system of those nations that have established their systems of education and developed their pedagogical traditions independently. It would also be a mistake to ignore the fact that the olim arriving in Israel already have a vision of what and how their child should study. That vision varies depending on the country of origin.

    This is especially true about former Soviet Jews who have completely lost any connection to the traditional Jewish culture and the system of traditional Jewish education. Yes, the Bolsheviks were forcing them to disavow their heritage but that was not the main reason. The main reason was that the Jews themselves were eager to renounce it. They ran away from their own tribal “culture of values”, and, consequently, they established their own Jewish self-identity based on the individualistic “culture of discoveries”.

    Paradoxically, the fact is that it worked for the benefit of the Jewish state. The number of arriving professionals who received their knowledge and skills from the Soviet education system was so high that it could compare only to the manna falling from the skies. It’s not difficult to imagine what would happen to this state if a million Jews brought up in the system of Orthodox education would have landed at Ben-Gurion airport instead of those Soviet Jews.

    Of course, it is not politically correct to draw these parallels, but the answer is obvious. 

    Precisely because of the artificial nature of the situation created behind the Iron Curtain, these new educational traditions of the Soviet Jewry not known to the rest of the Jews should have been thoroughly preserved. It may well be that at the very beginning it was necessary to recreate the Soviet school system given how many highly qualified teachers arrived to Israel along with their children. These were actually the teachers who raised those who were part of the Great Aliyah.  
 

      Now let us think what would have happened if the children of this Great Aliyah continued to study most of the subjects included in the school curriculum of country of their origin after their arrival to the land of their ancestors? And if the teachers, the olim, would use the efficient methods of Soviet pedagogy.  The Jewish state would benefit from this in many ways. The children would easily assimilate in the new environment, whereas the teachers would be able to use their expertise, instead of losing it. In this case, a cultural exchange between the true Israelis and the olim would be useful to both sides: the olim would learn something new and so would the true Israelis.

    Now, let’s suppose that children would continue to study the language of the country of their origin which made it so easy for them to communicate with their parents and teachers. As for other languages, and Hebrew in the first place, it would be a very good idea to introduce an advanced program with the best teachers who are native speakers. Don’t forget that thanks to kibbutz galuyot Jews from all over the world have moved to Israel.  

    Again, everybody would only benefit from that, especially children. Not only would they preserve the level of communication in their mother tongue but they would apply these communication skills in other languages, including Hebrew. They would also preserve their love of reading and their familiar recreational and leisure activities.

    While gradually integrating into their new environment they would decide for themselves what they want to keep and what to reject.

    The concept of kibbutz galuyot, which would help to finalize the complicated process of the ingathering of Jews in one state after 2,000 thousand years would also make it possible to generate new scenarios according to real life requirements. These scenarios could be very different if the basic principle of kibbutz galuyot was observed: all members of the Israeli society are olim, and as olim they are absolutely EQUAL.  

                                        7 

    However, something entirely different took place in reality.

    The true Israelis claiming to be the “title nation” imposed their rules on the immigrants-repatriates. According to these rules, highly qualified professional teachers among the olim were placed in the category of unskilled workers while their children-olim were sent to schools where many of the teachers didn’t even have a proper education. Eventually, and not without deliberate efforts, these children lost their native language, while their new teachers didn’t try hard enough to teach them Hebrew. This resulted in the weakening of family ties. All the parents could do was helplessly watch their children lose any interest in school and eventually drop out altogether.  
 

    How did it become possible? Why did these cruel educational policies target specifically the “Russians”? Why was the school system, which actually existed in Jewish ghettos legitimized, while “Russian schools” were labeled “ghettos” and denied any legitimacy?

    Why did the “pluralism” of the true Israelis, so clearly manifested in respect to the Orthodox Jews and the Arabs acquire the form of a strict dictatorship in the case of the Russians?  

    Those are not the only questions to ask.

    It is well known that the Jewish state has benefited tremendously from the Great Aliyah. This is true about society as a whole and each individual Israeli.

    This is not surprising since high-quality education of its citizens is a very important issue in modern society, which requires the biggest investments. Thus, Israel received professionals-olim thanks to the investment made by the Soviet Union. So there was no need for the Israeli state to invest anything in their education.

    After suppressing the initiative of the “Russian” olim, the true Israelis in accordance with their self-proclaimed status of “state builders” have arrogated to themselves everything the Soviet Jews achieved behind the Iron Curtain. The “Tree of Knowledge”, representing the combined efforts of at least three generations, was then barbarically uprooted by the true Israelis.

    How can they continue to believe that this society has high moral standards after all the damage they have done to the Great Aliyah? This, unfortunately, proves that Israeli society is immoral – both collectively and individually.

    That is a typical example of the inadequacy of the true Israelis.

    The problem is that they were assured that a totally new model society with a new population, i.e. the true Israelis will emerge in the land of their ancestors. Supposedly, they will embody all the best qualities of the Jewish people, leaving all the worst ones behind. They continue to believe in this myth without noticing how in reality their own pseudo-morality makes a mockery of such basic human values as decency and honesty.

    What they have done to the Great Aliyah can be compared only to what a well-known character from the Bible had done – he not only killed his brother but also inherited something that he did not deserve. The true Israelis did the same in the reverse order – they inherited and then they killed.  

      The problem goes far beyond morality alone.

      The true Israelis have destroyed the educational traditions, which enabled professionals from the Diaspora to transform Israel into an advanced modern state.

      The math and science scores of Israeli students are constantly going down but the true Israelis refuse to admit that this directly resulted from the damage the Great Aliyah suffered from the Israeli education system.

    Ironically, the Iranians found nothing wrong with using Soviet textbooks in teaching math to the children from their Islamic Republic. In the ancient times, the Iranians (then called Persians) proved their self-sufficiency on many occasions. Today, they also demonstrate how wisely and effectively they can use the positive experience of another nation. No wonder, the scores they get at various international math contests are much higher than those of Israeli participants.

    Well, the scores in math are perhaps not our biggest problem. It is frightening to think that one day these low rankings in math and science might endanger Israel’s ability to defend herself.

    But the true Israelis don’t see the danger. They continue to imagine themselves as “state builders” even though they get whatever they need for their work ready-made. Clearly, it would never occur to them to connect education to the Israeli state’s defense capabilities.

     

    Due to their own inadequacy the true Israelis are not able to foresee the destructive impact of their actions. Their resistance to the organization of schools, which would have prepared a well-educated, strong population and their continued favoring of schools that will prepare an insufficiently educated, weak population, is bound to have grave consequences for the country.  

    This entire situation is a real nightmare.

    There seems to be no reason or logic to all these ideas and actions of the true Israelis.  

                                        8 

    It would be wrong to think that way, however. There is a certain logic, which one can only understand after taking into consideration the civilization inadequacy of the true Israelis.  

    We apply the following definitions – state, state interests, ministry, parliament, education system, efficiency – to Israel, as if, in fact, it was an already established state. When using all these definitions we interpret them the way the Europeans do.

    The only thing we keep forgetting is that this European interpretation developed as the cultural result of a non-Jewish faith. In other words, the concept of these institutions took shape within the Christian individualistic “culture of discoveries”.

    But the true Israelis are the bearers of a totally different culture, i.e., the tribal “culture of values”. Their actions and mentality are very different. The only thing they care about is who will be assigned the role of “social fathers” of the state and who will be “social co-inhabitants”.  

    Replacing the term olim with the terms immigrants and repatriates already indicates that these immigrants and repatriates are placed into the category of “social co-inhabitants” from the very start.

      The true Israelis never doubted this for a moment. They try to cover up their arrogant attitude toward the olim by playfully calling it “paternalism”. It doesn’t occur to them that their conceit has nothing to do with paternalism. It has everything to do with the fundamental element of their tribal “culture of values” – their world vision as “social fathers”.  

     Precisely because the olim were demoted to the status of immigrants and repatriates and were, consequently, assigned the role of “social co-inhabitants” in the social hierarchy, their cultural heritage continues to be destroyed no matter how invaluable it could be for the state and the society. If the true Israelis acknowledge the fact that the olim do indeed possess a unique cultural capital that the true Israelis do not have, it will be impossible to downgrade the “social co-inhabitants” to their current position in the society. And this is where the true Israelis want them to stay.

    It only proves that there is a direct connection between persistently replacing the term olim with the terms immigrants and repatriates, on the one hand, and the equally persistent destruction of the cultural capital, which the Soviet Jews brought along with them, on the other. Once this cultural capital of the Soviet Jews was destroyed, the true Israelis imposed on them their own cultural codes.  

    Based on that, society perceives it as normal when a former “Russian” teacher is sweeping the streets with a broom or wearing the uniform of a security guard next to the offices of some important Israeli official, of which there are so many. That’s their rightful place in the social hierarchy.

    This phenomenon has to do not only with the Great Aliyah. The true Israelis, as the bearers of the tribal “culture of values”, incompatible with the modern state, demonstrated a similar attitude toward other olim, not necessarily coming from Russia.

      Their fathers and grandfathers acted the same way in the 1930-ies when the olim from Germany arrived in Israel. They experienced the same kind of attitude: former shtetl Jews from the Russian Pale of Settlement already engaged in building “a model society” assumed the role of “social fathers”. Not only did they use these representatives of the most elite European Jewry for the elementary needs of state building, but they also fully controlled and even made fun of them. Even now the true Israelis recall these days with a great sense of satisfaction.

      All the olim in one way or another experienced the flawed nature of the tribal “culture of values” restored in the land of their ancestors. The Jewish elite from Muslim countries suffered from the dictatorship of the “social fathers” more than any other group. Probably, this was the main reason why so many of these Jews left for Europe and the United States.  

    Bearing in mind the nature of this phenomenon it will not be that difficult to understand why the true Israelis legitimized the sectoral Orthodox schools and opposed the “Russian” schools so vigorously.

    It’s really quite simple. The true Israelis are actually on the same level in terms of their civilization development as the traditional society. That is why they readily understand and approve the nurturing goals of education in the traditional schools.

    As far as the goals of the “Russians”, i.e., learning all these “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology” – they are unclear and foreign to them. They don’t see the big picture. The only explanation true Israelis have as to why the Russians are so obsessed with these math and physics schools is that the Russians are snobbish and prideful, that they wish to demonstrate that they are far more intelligent than other Israelis.

    Thus, the problem that should be approached on a state level becomes a problem of human relationships, which is yet another proof that the true Israelis are the bearers of the tribal “culture of values”.  

    Here are some revealing pronouncements made by true Israelis (some of them high-ranking officials): “In the Soviet Union everyone was compelled to study math and physics, because the Communist dictatorship did not leave people any choice in this matter.” Another asked incredulously: “Why are all the Russians so eager to study physics? Do all of them intend to become physicists?”  

    That speaks volumes, confirming the true Israelis’ failure to move forward. They dashed the hopes of the Israeli people: instead of moving forward, they went backwards even if compared to the heights that the European Jews reached thanks to emancipation.

     This explains why there are no hopes left that the true Israelis will be able to develop a viable concept for a national education system intended to unite society.

    Once again, the reason is quite simple. The true Israelis never attained the level of civilization development necessary to understand what the notion of a state really means.  

Disorientation of the Individual 

                                        1 

    The role the Israeli education system plays in destroying the state and society is not limited to a flawed concept.

    The disorientation of the Israeli citizen’s individuality because of the system of education probably causes even more damage.  

    Israeli citizens observe the first sign of this disorientation on September 1 when the new school year begins.

    The day before, on August 31, all the parents and children start playing guessing games: will the new school year begin on time or not? The reason is well known: the Israel Teachers Union threatens to go on strike if teachers the don’t get a raise. As a rule, both sides compromise late in the evening on August 31, when all schoolchildren are already fast asleep.

    So year after year, an Israeli child starts the morning of the first day of school with the same question: “Do you know if we have classes today?”  

    Jews from the former Soviet Union have a particularly hard time getting used to this situation since they keep in their memory the festivities around the beginning of the new school year everywhere in Russia. They still remember the children dressed in festive uniforms, rallies with school officials making welcome speeches and the smiling faces of the passers-by. In other words, September 1 was, as the Russians used to call it, the Day of Knowledge. Everybody saw it that way, even the worst of the students who already on the next day could barely wait until the next summer break.

    Quite frequently, these recollections are attributed to nostalgic feelings about one’s childhood and youth. As to the overly zealous Israeli “super-patriots”, they absolutely cannot stand it when the former Russians share any positive memories about their life in the past. They vigorously defend the Israeli education system and try to prove its clear advantages over Soviet education if for no other reason then because the Soviet system was fundamentally flawed.  

    Here are some common counter arguments. The goal of the intensive study of math and the natural sciences at Soviet schools was to satisfy the needs of the military-industrial complex. The main aim of Soviet schools was to raise the so-called “Homo Sovieticus”, which is why the education system mostly focused on capturing the children’s minds through brainwashing. The behavior code and discipline policy at Soviet schools was so strict because the whole country was run as a huge camp where the military and top politicians were in full control. Teachers got next to nothing for their work but they had to accept these terms since nobody in the former Soviet Union had any choice.

    All these comments and many others were purely negative.  

      This assessment reflects Soviet reality, but the problem is that it is only partially true. And a partial piece of truth can be even more dangerous than an open lie.

    The Israeli “super-patriots” keep forgetting that the Bolsheviks, unlike the founding fathers of Israel, didn’t have to build the education system from scratch.  The Bolsheviks adopted the educational traditions shaped by many generations of the Russian empire’s spiritual and intellectual elite. These traditions represented the cultural result of something the Bolsheviks hated more than anything else –religion, in its Russian Orthodox version.  

    Those trying to diminish the significance of religion as the non-rational foundation of any culture argue that the Russian Academy of Sciences, for instance, was established by the Germans who came to Russia in great numbers after Peter the Great “cut a window through to Europe”. Not to diminish the input of these educated foreigners into Russian science it is necessary to point out that besides concrete knowledge, it is the attitude to knowledge in the general context of life that determines a person’s ability to orient himself in his environment.

     This context is based on culture as the concept of existence, which takes shape within the matrix of religious faith. It is true about all cultures without any exceptions.

    The Russian Orthodox Church has inherited and adopted the attitude to Knowledge from the Greeks. The Greeks used a special word to emphasize their love of knowledge – “pandeya”. “Pandeya” refers to broad knowledge as something that purifies a person and the cult of the personality’s harmony and perfection. The Greeks thought “pandeya” to be the most valuable asset of a human being, which brings him closer to his ideal self.

    This very special element of Hellenistic spirituality had a significant influence on everybody who, in one way or another, became acquainted with Russian culture. And this refers to the true Israelis more than to anybody else.

    Jews from Russia were the ones who built the basis of Israeli culture but that is not all. Most importantly, they gave a sense of orientation to one’s personality. This sense of orientation of the Russian Jews was greatly influenced by the Spirit of the Russian culture. It gave the founding fathers of Israel faith in that the people would be able to restore the language of their ancestors on their own and to build a new model society. Every member of this society would be ready to sacrifice his or her wellbeing for national and even universal ideals. The founding fathers became legends thanks to their vision with whom nobody can compare.

    To this day, the true Israelis are trying to figure out what kind of mentality motivated their fathers and grandfathers to recite Pushkin’s poetry while they were working in the fields and building roads. To this day, these people, who were not born in Russia, experience the magnetism of the Great Spirit of Russian culture. It influences everybody, even those who resent it and try to avoid it.  

    The Bolsheviks certainly resented it. They resisted this Great Spirit and, in their helpless rage, they did whatever they could to destroy it. But the point is that the non-rational Sprit of culture cannot be controlled by any rational ideology. Its nature is very different and thus more powerful. It has the unique ability to penetrate into the hidden depths of the human Ego, which no ideological mantras are able to reach.

    It is certainly true that the Bolsheviks used education for brainwashing. However, the ideals of the Hellenistic “pandeya” found their way into Soviet schools against the will of the Bolsheviks. This explains why many Russians loved school. A large number of songs were written about school, and many movies were made, which were extremely popular. A schoolteacher, when taking her class to a field trip, would bring them to a museum rather than an ice-cream parlor. She made this choice not because she had an exceptionally good education but because the Spirit of culture guided her in the right direction.

      Regardless of the Communist Party’s ideology, September 1 became a holiday that symbolically introduced children into civilization. The solemnity of that moment explains why so many people have preserved it in their memory for the rest of their life.

      Society guided and oriented every ordinary human being. “Today you are entering the Temple which was built by the greatest minds and talents in history. Under its dome, there are geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Mendeleyev, Reserford, Socrates, Lock, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Cromwell, Napoleon, Shakespeare and Pushkin. View them as a model and make high achievements your life’s goal. Work hard. That’s the only way to become part of everything that was created by the united efforts of mankind.”  

                                        2 

    Children in Israel are guided and oriented very differently. At a glance, the Israeli system looks quite appealing. One may think that it is most effective way of cultivating “Jewish brains”.

    To begin with, an Israeli child enters school in the status of a Person for whom the teachers have great respect and whose opinion always matters.

    The teachers encourage his independence and self-sufficiency. They give multiple assignments in which the student has to reveal himself personally in the best way he can, or so it seems.

    Before he even knows how to read the Bible, he is already encouraged to share his own ideas, which he came up with while listening to the teacher’s description of the plot in the story. He cannot even write the word “Shalom”, and yet everybody is interested to know his opinion about peace and friendship among nations.

    There is a very comfortable atmosphere in Israeli schools. The idea of the Israeli educational ideologists was that every child should feel the same warmth in school that he feels at home. The desks and chairs are placed randomly around the room in sharp contrast with the strict rows of desks in a European school. There are many pictures on the walls of Israeli schools. As for textbooks, they have a large number of colorful pictures as well, many of them looking more like comics.

    Teachers and schoolchildren are supposed to have excellent relations. There are many toys in the classrooms of the new first-graders. According to the educational ideologists, children should get used to the idea that school is fun. In fact, the relations between the teachers and the children are very informal, as if this communication process is taking place at home, not at school.

    The system is based on treating the child with patience, warmth and caring. Not only the teacher is doing her job but each school also has a psychologist always ready to help with professional advice. At parent-teacher conferences, the only issues discussed are how to create the best possible nurturing environment for the child, how to reduce stress, how to notice the child’s problem areas in a timely manner, and how to unite the efforts of everyone concerned about the child’s wellbeing.  

          Well, that sounds very good. Then why are the ultimate results so poor?

      How does it happen that all these “highly respected” students do not have the most basic knowledge in math by the time they attend middle school? When somebody knows the multiplication table, it is perceived as a great achievement. How does it happen that Jewish children, the children of “the People of the Book” still have problems understanding texts by the time they reach the age of Bar-Mitzvah? How does it happen that they enter school as “respected human beings” but during their years at school they become transformed into narrow-minded individuals, who are not familiar with major events in world history and don’t know the states along Israel’s borders, to say nothing of the rest of the world?

      Is it true that the “Jewish brains” have disappeared?

      Not really, the “Jewish brains” are still there. Unfortunately, everything that is happening to Israeli schoolchildren is caused by the Israeli education system’s inability to guide and orient teachers, children, parents and the entire society in the right direction. The intellectual elite of the true Israelis developed the ideology of the education system, and now it has to take responsibility for all its failures.  

                                        3 

          If the true Israelis, in fact, were “building the state” independently, they would not get away with imposing their outrageous ideas on the Israeli society, while claiming them to be great achievements of Israeli pedagogic science. Life itself would make them think about the catastrophic consequences of what they are doing. The loss of highly qualified professionals is inevitable since the society’s education system reproduces the quality level of this particular society.

    The society gets the product it produces.

    However, because the true Israelis have been milking the Diaspora, with new trained professionals regularly arriving in Israel, the connection between ideology and the destructive consequences of its implementation is not so apparent.

    One can say: well, in this case, we have nothing to worry about, everything is under control. We have plenty of professionals so we are on track.

    The problem is that these artificial conditions created thanks to the influx of olim prevent society from detecting the lack of guidance and disorientation at once. Not being able to detect it “at once” does not mean that this process is undetectable. It’s just a matter of time. Eventually, the result will be fully revealed. Alas, this result will be opposite to the one the elite of the true Israelis promises to society.  

    Let’s think about the high price the Israeli child pays for the “humanistic” notion of praising him as an outstanding individual. As a result, the child loses the energy he needs so badly to storm the heights, which the greatest minds in the history of mankind always aspired to reach. In fact, why should he? His teachers already placed him there by default. Now he can look down at all these so-called “geniuses” like Faraday or Michelangelo.

    How dare one compare somebody by the name of Leonardo da Vinci to our precious Kobi, or put side by side Maria Curie-Skladovskaya and our darling Rivkele? 

    This kind of disorientation results in the deterioration of “Jewish brains” even where they originally existed – and most children have them. The “individual” gradually degenerates.  

    This so actively advocated idea about child being independent is no less counter-productive. This idea is based on the false assumption that a child is capable to obtain knowledge even without school because there is plenty of information he can obtain elsewhere. So the only thing the teacher has to do is to teach him how to use this information.

    Words like freedom, individuality and creative work always sound very appealing.

    But reality has nothing to do with this empty talk.

    In real life, children grow up in different environments. Therefore, a child brought up in the cultural atmosphere of the true Israelis of European descent has clear advantages compared to those with backgrounds not connected to European culture. Children coming from Russia are also at a disadvantage because their cultural environment was intentionally destroyed.  

    Sooner or later, the result will become apparent: what was supposed to represent freedom and equality in reality expresses itself in extreme forms of inequality.

    By the time they are in middle school, many children with excellent “Jewish brains” but without a stimulating cultural environment get used to the idea that no matter how hard they try, they will never succeed. This low self-esteem predisposes young people to abuse alcohol and drugs. It is a well-known fact that Jews were never inclined to substance abuse when they lived in the countries of their origin.

    Regretfully, in the process of state building, the true Israelis created such an education system that disorients people at a very early stage of their lives, and today alcohol and drug abuse are enormous problems plaguing the Israeli state.  

    The true Israelis, as principal ideologists of this education system, have set themselves an entirely different goal – that of placing people into different categories already in early childhood. One group is to be prepared to play the role of “social fathers”, whereas the other must be taught to function as “social co-inhabitants”, for which purpose they will be constantly reminded of their insufficient development and inferiority.

    This approach is quite strange, because every education system should have a completely different goal, i.e. to create such conditions in which all the children have equal access to civilization regardless of their own environment. Only this situation will provide opportunities for each individual to reveal his or her talent and abilities, which will define this individual’s place in society.

    It is not just about the number of geniuses in society. It is about creating such an environment, which shapes the overall societal level required for generating geniuses.

    One has to admit that the former Soviet Union pursued exactly such a policy. Otherwise, the Jews from the Pale of Settlement would never get the access to modern civilization even despite all the negative aspects of a totalitarian dictatorship.

    Naturally, a very high level of pedagogic culture is required in order to achieve such goals. Since such a level has not been attained, Israeli ideologists keep talking about the school’s mission to fulfill the modest task of supporting the “individual”.  

    The children are the ones who suffer from this lack of guidance and disorientation.

    They start losing any interest in learning and motivation since they don’t understand what exactly they are doing at school, or what is the point of the teacher’s assignments. They begin to accept the idea that school is just a “grade-producing factory” where they can get a certificate, which will help them secure an appropriate position in life. Therefore, those who do not expect to land such a position, decide to drop out of school.

    We can easily guess how this decision will affect their future lives, what will become of them and what they will do for living. This is something that has been taking place in real life – it is expressed in the lower level of professionalism in every area and in the increasing incidents of criminal behavior from fraud to misdemeanors and felony.

    As for the schoolchildren, they are so angry at the system that they rebel. The situation is so grave that it is becoming unsafe to be a teacher in Israel.

    Who could ever imagine children and their parents physically assaulting a teacher? Who could imagine that some day drugs and crime might become routine? Who could imagine that children’s recreation and leisure would become boring and meaningless? Welcome to the Jewish state.

    The situation in the education system is so alarming that even optimists are raising the alarm. Recently, even the Ethiopian Jews, who obviously have not come from the most developed country in the world, joined the ranks of those deeply dissatisfied with the system. Like many others, they are unhappy about Israeli schools and cannot study in such an atmosphere. They could study in Ethiopian schools but not in the ones in Israel. How sad and shameful!  

    How does it happen that something that sounds so appealing turns into something ugly? How does it happen that a child who has been listening to all these sweet stories about flowers and butterflies grows into a spoiled brat from the elite of the true Israelis who yells from the podium: “We are a f-cked up generation!”

    This is the inevitable result of the disorientation caused by the intellectual elite of the true Israelis, who have imposed their educational ideology on society.  

                                        4 

    How did it reach this degree of absurdity? Where do all these ideas of the elite of the true Israelis come from? What is the foundation for these ideas?

    The whole point is that only inadequate people who imagine themselves to be “builders of the state” could come forward with such totally unsubstantiated ideas. Not a single self-sufficient society would ever embrace these types of ideas.  

    This is equally true about the traditional Jewish community in the Diaspora, which created its own education system whose goal was to prepare Jews to be at least relatively self-sufficient.

    In the traditional society, Jewish children started to study early and they took the learning process seriously. Not only did they have a wealth of knowledge by age of 13 but they also managed to develop the analytical skills necessary for any fruitful thinking. Thanks to this national system of training, “Jewish brains” have become a distinct reality.

    The attitude to the value of knowledge encouraged in the system of Orthodox education is entirely different from the attitude encouraged by the true Israelis. Every student understood that his main goal was to learn everything created, discovered or achieved before his time. His teachers taught him that great respect for Knowledge should be at the heart of his attitude to learning. They explained to him that this Knowledge became a national treasure thanks to the creative work of many generations of people with great talents.

    From an early age, a Jewish child was taught that Knowledge is essential for every individual. A Jew should study the Torah every spare moment of his day and night since it is said that ignorant people are not afraid of G-d.

    Nobody ever asked questions like, “Why would you study the Talmud? Are all of you planning to become Rabbis?”  

    Strangely enough, Soviet Jews isolated from world Jewry behind the Iron Curtain, developed an attitude to Knowledge similar to that of Orthodox Jews. Their approach was very different from the one the intellectual elite of the true Israelis is trying to impose on society.

    Soviet Jews and traditional Orthodox Jews shared the same basic attitude toward Knowledge. They differed in their understanding of the content of Knowledge. Isolated behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet Jews shifted from studying the Talmud to “gentile physics, chemistry, biology, poetry and music”, which represented the cultural results of the Christian faith of Europeans.

    Given that the cultural result of Christianity is derived not only from the Hebrew G-d but also from the Hellenistic pandeya, in such an atheistic country as the Soviet Union most people did not associate this cultural result with Christianity. Soviet Jews also perceived it as the achievement of all of mankind.

    That is why Soviet Jews cultivated their “Jewish brains” based on the ideals of the pandeya. Scientists and artists replaced the Rabbis, and bright Jewish boys, brilliant in different areas of science and art, replaced the former Talmedei chochamim – scholars of Torah.       

5 

    It is worth mentioning that such change in the orientation of the Soviet Jews as the shift from the Talmud to “pandeya”, could occur only because the totalitarian regime built a wall between religion and education.

    It is not surprising that Jews from the former Soviet Union found themselves in the position of outcasts in Israel. They represented something alien both to the Orthodox Jews who vehemently opposed replacing the Talmud with any other Knowledge, and to the true Israelis who resented the fact that the Soviet Jews treated “those gentile physics, chemistry, biology, poetry and music” as if they were the Torah which a Jew should study every spare moment of his day and night.

    A number of particular mantras reflected the resentment of the true Israelis.  

    “Don’t deprive children of their childhood.”

    That was probably the most common counter-argument the true Israelis used when they saw the Russians engaging their children in various activities like sports, dancing, music and so forth – all of this being done not just for fun but in order to introduce the child to civilization. The true Israelis also perceived “Russian” evening schools specializing in math and physics as an abnormality. Russians are accustomed to putting too much pressure on the child, a habit developed through years of life in a totalitarian regime, they thought.  

    “True, it was necessary to strive for knowledge while living in the Diaspora. For Jews this was the only way to survive in an anti-Semitic environment. There is no such need here, in Israel.”

    This mantra shows how the true Israelis reacted to the way Russians set their priorities, making their children’s education a matter of paramount importance. Interestingly, the so-called vatikim (old-timers), the Soviet Jews who came to Israel in the 1970s, also tried to impose this mantra on the Great Aliyah. The vatikim position themselves as people who have been accepted as true Israelis and share their point of view. Just as the true Israelis, they strongly opposed the desire of the Jews from the Great Aliyah to preserve the Russian language and the traditions of their country of origin. They argument was that the Jewish people have plenty of other means to assert themselves.  

    This unanimous resentment of the Great Aliyah becomes understandable once we grasp the essence of what is happening to Israeli society. The point is that the actual return of Jews to the land of their ancestors entails their spiritual return to the tribal “culture of values”. This creates the preconditions for the dictatorship of “social fathers” who assume that they have the right to set the rules for those to be placed in the category of “social co-inhabitants”.

    In fact, the entire history of rebuilding the Jewish state consists of power shifts among the “social fathers”, and the struggle between the “social fathers” and social co-inhabitants”.

    As early as the beginning of the 19^th century the Orthodox Jews were extremely unfriendly, if not hostile, toward the first olim who came to the land of their ancestors not just to settle there but to restore life in all its richness, color and vitality. That was when the Orthodox Jews assumed the role of “social fathers” who claimed to know everything about the way the Jews are supposed to live in the Promised Land – they must study the Torah and to obey the “adults”.

    All that changed when the socialists settled in the land of their ancestors. They, too, usurped the role of “social fathers” placing the rest of the Jewish people in the category of “social co-inhabitants”. Now the socialists dictated the rules: A Jew should work the land and… obey the “adults”.  

    The Great Aliyah was so alien to the Israeli society mainly because the Soviet Jews, isolated behind the Iron Curtain, were not exposed in any way to the tribal “culture of values”. The same Israeli society, which claims ownership of the high-tech capital that the Soviet Jews were able to accumulate mainly because they completely abandoned traditional Jewish culture, now demands that the Russian olim should … obey the “adults” as all the other olim do.

    This extreme intolerance toward anything different, this eagerness to dictate their own will and control the way mature people think and act are clear signs of the tribal “culture of values”. Israeli society dictates its will to mature professionals who proved that they are able and willing to take responsibility. However, the true Israelis placed these olim in the category of “social co-inhabitants” who need guidance and “metapeling” (from the Hebrew word “letapel” – to take care of, to treat).  

    The true Israelis proved once again that they are bearers of the tribal “culture of values” which determines their civilization inadequacy. The mantras quoted above can be seen as yet another valid argument to this effect.  

    What do they exactly mean by “not depriving children of their childhood”? Do they mean that a child cannot enjoy obtaining knowledge and skills? Who said that watching TV for hours on end makes a child happier than doing anything else?

    These aren’t really issued that can be debated. The bottom line is that such mantras merely conceal the irrational resentment of the “sanctities” defining the individualistic “culture of discoveries” that is completely alien to the true Israelis. This resentment of alien and, therefore, unacceptable “sanctities” is irrational and expressed at a subconscious level. Nothing makes them change their negative attitude, not even the fact that the Jewish state was rebuilt exclusively thanks to these “sanctities”.

    This rejection of the “sanctities” of the alien individualistic “culture of discoveries”, which manifested itself even before the Great Aliyah, is the main reason for erosion of Israeli society which leads to the fading of “Jewish brains”.  The Great Aliyah merely brought this resentment out into the open.  

    What do the true Israelis mean by saying that “it was necessary to strive for knowledge while living in the Diaspora. For Jews this was the only way to survive in an anti-Semitic environment?”  This vision once again shows how the tribal “culture of values” typically reduces every single phenomenon to the level of human relationships. It also indicates that the tribal “culture of values” does not manifest any interest in the surrounding world.  

                                        6 

    The disorientation, imposed by the Israeli education system is often explained by the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This French enlightener advocated in favor of the child’s right to be respected as an individual.

    However, Rousseau came forward with his ideas when the Europeans rebelled against the Christian austerity of the monks. Therefore, one should assess Rousseau’s ideas specifically within the context of the Christian faith. That was how the Europeans resisted the Church doctrine of original sin. This struggle continues to be intense to this day; in fact, it has becoming even more passionate.

    However, all these issues have nothing to do with the true Israelis. The true Israelis do not have any common problems with the Europeans. They share the same problems with other non-Europeans, who are also adherents of the tribal “culture of values”, vigorously attacking European culture. 

    The bearers of the tribal “culture of values” attack European culture in two mutually exclusive directions:

    1. They try to prove that European culture is vile;

    2. They try to prove that they are just as good as the Europeans, and that non-Europeans have the same high level of achievements – only they are expressed in a different form.

    (Here is some anecdotal evidence. Some “scientists” advanced a theory about the existence of “ethnic math”, supporting it by the fact that the method African women use when braiding hair indicates a certain algorithm. This brings them to the conclusion that not only Europeans are mathematicians.) 

    Such a perception of the individualistic “culture of discoveries” makes people inadequate. Therefore, the true Israelis are not the only ones dealing with the problem of inadequacy.

    The non-Europeans express their inadequacy in the following paradox: on the one hand, they would like to live in Europe, on the other, they are very critical of Europe for its “flawed” culture. 

    Incidentally, this kind of inadequacy, characteristic of all non-Europeans, is very typical of the Jewish environment.

    Probably the most outrageous example is the attitude toward Germany. The Jews levied harsh criticism against the vileness of German culture after Hitler came to power. Yet there are remarkably many Jews, who would love to live in Germany.

    Another good example has to do with the religious Zionists who insist that the Europeans borrowed the ideas of their statehood from the Scriptures. And since the Scriptures is the Holy Book of the Jewish people it is legitimate to say that the Europeans copied Jewish political ideas and not the other way around. The religious Zionists completely ignore the fact that the Jews have been borrowing ideas from the Scriptures for centuries but they managed to rebuild their own state only when the Europeans did the necessary work.

    Finally, here is an example referring to the Jews from former Soviet Union. Upon their return to the land of their ancestors, some of them became “super-patriots” which gave them, in their mind, the right to disparage the Soviet education system. Simultaneously, these “super-patriots” are constantly upset with the true Israelis who don’t appreciate the cultural capital of the Great Aliyah. The question is, how else could the Soviet Jews accumulate this cultural capital if not for the Soviet education system which continued the tradition of Russian education, though, truth be told, these traditions were used to support a totalitarian regime? 

    Such an arrogant attitude toward the Soviet education system is considerably stronger among those who chose to return to their roots, i.e., to traditional religion.

    They insist that Jewish sources give a more profound and sophisticated interpretation of the phenomena they studied at Soviet universities. They completely neglect to mention a well-known fact: their fathers and grandfathers abandoned their own traditional culture because they were so eager to win the right to study at these universities. Obviously, their fathers and grandfathers did not count on getting the kind of knowledge they were so eager to obtain, from Jewish Orthodox sources. That is why they did whatever they could to make sure that their children and grandchildren get a higher education at these very universities.  

    This obvious inadequacy of the bearers of the tribal “culture of value” toward the European individualistic “culture of discoveries” has an explanation.

    The leap in the development of civilization occurred in Europe thanks to the religious revolution that changed the path of world history. This religious revolution made it possible for Europeans to revise Man’s relations with G-d. This great event allowed them to liberate themselves from a vile social order based on the absolute authority the “social fathers” had over the “social co-inhabitants”.

    It took bloody wars and revolutions before the Europeans were able to reaffirm that all men were created equal in the eyes of G-d. Man’s godliness, which allowed him to generate great ideas and make amazing discoveries, was expressed only when the Europeans internalized this awareness their sacred equality before G-d.  

    As for the bearers of the tribal “culture of values”, they never developed this sense of inner freedom. They suffer from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Europeans because, as adherents of the tribal “culture of values”, they can never match the high standards required from man by the European level of civilization development.

    This inferiority complex is one of the main reasons why the non-Europeans feel such an irrational resentment toward European culture. In the best-case scenario, they try to prove that their own culture is superior to European culture; in the worst scenario, they are prepared to destroy European culture. The means of achieving these goals might vary quite dramatically. Some non-Europeans impose their own culture claiming that it is more advanced, while others detonate explosives in the very places where they got access to European culture. Finally, there is this group of non-Europeans who come up with different mantras, like “don’t deprive children of their childhood”, “it was necessary to strive for knowledge while living in the Diaspora. For Jews this was the only way to survive in an anti-Semitic environment,” and so forth.  

    Thus, the true Israelis revealed their own civilization insufficiency and inadequacy in the way they treated the Great Aliyah.  

    Civilization insufficiency and inadequacy are precisely the reasons why these completely disorienting ideas are imposed on the Israeli schoolchildren (and, consequently, on the whole society, since everybody was at some point a child).

    The true Israelis cannot help but impose these ideas because when they return to the land of their ancestors the Jewish people also return to the level of civilization development, which makes it impossible for them to understand what modern civilization really means and what a high price the Europeans had to pay before they could build such a civilization.  

An Environment which Contributes to the “Jewish Brain Drain” 

1 

      All that occurred with the true Israelis and those who accepted their rules of the game did not have to happen. It happened because the Jewish people made the mistake of assuming that it would be easy to transplant to the Promised Land everything the people succeeded in cultivating on foreign soil – knowledge, skills, abilities and customs. 

      It proved not to be that easy for the simple reason that for many centuries the Jews cultivated all this not in their own land but on the different soils of different peoples.  

      If the gathering of the Jewish people was indeed kibbutz galyuot, Jews coming from different countries of the Diaspora would have tried to preserve the cultural capital that was accumulated by many generations and perceived by them in the Diaspora as Jewish. This, in turn, would have restrained the arbitrary rule of the true Israelis, who routinely use this cultural capital the way they see fit. They decide on their own which parts of this capital should be preserved as having value for the state and which parts should be destroyed intentionally as “the shameful legacy of the galut (exile)”, which hinders the integration of repatriates.   

    It is impossible to dispute the truth. The differences in the traditions of Jews coming from different countries hinders their integration, if one understands integration as efforts to fit flesh-and-blood people inside the dry framework of “absorption”. This is the name of the process through which the olim, whom true Israelis have transformed into immigrants and repatriates, are being united within the Jewish state.

    Such integration has made it possible to rebuild the Jewish state within a short time. The problem is that such integration has also made it possible, within a short time, to destroy the people, both the olim and the true Israelis because destruction of the cultural tradition became the cornerstone of the Jewish state’s ideology.

    Cultural tradition is an incredibly delicate matter. It takes a long time to build but can be destroyed very quickly. Everything valuable in it is the fruit cultivated by many generations and tested through trial and error. That is why this fruit of their efforts requires special care. Without such care, it shrivels almost instantly.

    Traditional behavioral stereotypes, on the contrary, grow on their own, like weeds, and take on the most hideous forms when they are deprived of a shared cultural context.

    Virtually all immigrant societies demonstrate this quite visibly.

    But Israel is a special case, because for all nations who accept immigrants-repatriates this becomes primarily a problem of the immigrants-repatriates themselves, not that of the title nation. In Israel, it is a challenge for the “title nation” as well, whose role has been usurped by the true Israelis.  

    “We should start our new life in the land of our ancestors from scratch” – the true Israelis received this ideological legacy from the founding fathers, who detested traditional Jewish culture.

    As the result, it did not take the true Israelis long to lose everything of value in traditional Jewish culture, everything that many generations of their ancestors had thoroughly selected and polished in the Diaspora. Yet the stereotypes of people’s mentality and behavior, typical of traditional Jewish culture, remain unchanged. Moreover, they have expanded and developed the most hideous forms, taking over the entire state.  

2 

      The cohesion of the Jewish community in the Diaspora was undoubtedly a great achievement by the creators of traditional Jewish culture. The fact that “family and school” nurtured the younger generation in close alliance with each other was the main guarantee of such cohesion.

      The Jewish community would have ceased to exist, if every new generation of Jews was not taught what it meant to be Jewish in the abnormal conditions of the Diaspora.

      The content of Jewish education cemented the community. It brought together both family members and other members of the community. Everything that a young Jew learned at the traditional heder and yeshiva, he also found in his parents’ home. This coordination guaranteed stable and lasting “values”, thanks to which a young Jew could not learn anything outside his family’s home that his father and grandfather would not know.

      Thus, all members of the community in every generation lived according to the same cultural codes, creating the special lifestyle known as “Yiddishkeit”.

          In our days, too, traditional Jewish communities carefully preserve the close alliance of “family and school”. The traditional school insists that the families of the children who study there live according to the same set of “values” these children are being taught in school.  

    Efforts to adapt traditional society to the individualistic “culture of discoveries” undermine the community’s cohesion. Children now acquire knowledge in areas completely unfamiliar to their fathers and grandfathers. It is only natural that this decreases the authority of fathers and grandfathers, and increases the authority of those people who are proficient in these areas and can help the children to acquire knowledge about them.

    The alliance between “family and school” is put to the test. Still, in societies where family values continue to be core values, the knowledge which the younger generation acquires in school blends with this core. In other words, society essentially remains traditional.

    This is what happened in Muslim countries when the French Alliance launched its activities. The traditional respect that Jewish children and their parents showed toward Rabbis was now expressed toward the “secular” teachers of the Alliance’s gymnasiums where these Jewish children studied various sciences and languages.

    Within the Muslim environment, the children’s home and family continued to be more important than anything else. Even if a certain teacher was against the traditional way of life, his influence on the child was limited, since society was united in its support of the family.  

    The situation in Israel is entirely different.

    The founding fathers’ view of the world was based on rejecting the experience of the fathers and grandfathers. This means that the conflict between “family and school” was entrenched in the very foundations of the Jewish state’s ideology.

    During the arrival of the first olim, who were teachers and parents at the same time, this problem did not manifest its destructive potential fully.

    Its destructiveness demonstrated itself after the formation of the core of true Israelis, who already perceived all new olim as repatriates. They saw their own mission as true Israelis in teaching these newcomers all they needed to know about the norms of life in the land of their ancestors. In so doing, the true Israelis used images from the Scripture, comparing the newly arrived families to the generation wandering in the desert, which should die to the last man so that the new generation can become a free people in the Promised Land.

      Virtually all the olim were victims of this policy, which set the children against their parents who did not correspond to the founding fathers’ socialist ideal. This early trauma left the olim scarred for life. In the eyes of the child, his parents and grandparents suddenly seemed morons who embarrassed him in front of his more fortunate peers whose families were true Israelis.

      Admittedly, this policy was most damaging for those who came from non-European countries and therefore received a double blow from the true Israelis.

      As if it was not enough that the olim from non-European countries were expected to adapt to the individualistic “culture of discoveries”, which objectively weakened the ties between generations. The true Israelis, being militant atheists, made deliberate efforts to eradicate all the values of traditional society, which Jews from the East cherished and safeguarded throughout their history.

      The conflict between society and family was elevated as the ideal of the Zionist revolution. Renouncing and mocking ones ancestors became synonymous with being a true Israeli.

      It was not just about deliberate efforts to discredit parents in their children’s eyes and actually setting them against their parents. In effect, children were urged not to follow parental guidance. Such an antagonistic attitude toward the home and family also had a paralyzing effect on the parents, who could no longer bring up their children “the old way” and did not know how to do it “the new way”.

    This paralysis of parental will made it impossible to bring up children, because this process involves imitation, which presupposes that parents are confident in themselves and children trust them. It is a never-ending process of the most intimate interaction between people, which no instructions from a suggested ideological code can possibly replace. Yet the true Israelis imposed such a code as the basis for the upbringing of a new populace that was supposed to replace the Jewish people in the land of their ancestors.

    The Jewish people paid a high price for these activities of the true Israelis: the younger generation grew up to be wild and uncontrollable, which it is already impossible to hide. 

3 

      Prior to the arrival of the Great Aliyah there were efforts to justify the anti-family policy of the Israeli education system by bringing up the fact that a significant group entering Israel came from non-European countries and this population was not prepared for modern civilization.

      The way the education system dealt with the children of the Great Aliyah completely destroyed this myth.

      The Great Aliyah arrived to Israel better prepared for modern civilization than many of the teachers within the Israeli system of education. Still, the situation repeated itself: the family proved helpless in its confrontation with the established system.

    In this case, the teachers acted as instruments of the true Israelis’ anti-family ideology, which has become the norm. By then even those teachers who were bearers of the tribal “culture of values” acted on behalf of the system. Originating from non-European countries, these teachers preserved traditional Jewish culture before they came to Israel. Though the true Israelis had actually lost their ties to European culture, it was they who introduced these teachers to European civilization.

      At the same time, many parents of the children from the Great Aliyah are bearers of the individualistic “culture of discoveries”, because they, unlike Jews from non-European countries, had lost all their ties to traditional Jewish culture, being severed from their roots behind the Iron Curtain.

      The dialogue between these two providers involved in the child’s upbringing represents a genuine conflict of civilizations – it is like a blind man having a conversation with a deaf man.

      A mother who acts as the bearer of the individualistic “culture of discoveries” is positive that her son, a six-grader, should already have a certain amount of knowledge and certain age-appropriate skills, without which he will not correspond to the requirements of modern civilization. It is only natural that when she discovers that her son does not meet her grade-level expectations, she expresses her concern to the teacher.

      The teacher as the bearer of the tribal “culture of values” swiftly changes the subject to discuss the sphere of relationships, focusing in her dialogue with the mother on the boy’s human qualities, on the interaction between the school and the family, and so on. The teacher perceives every attempt that the mother makes to bring across her viewpoint as … a deficiency of the “desert generation”. According to the teacher, all “Russians” have a common flaw: they push their children too hard to succeed and they prevent the children from developing freely.  

    All of society’s systems and infrastructures – the school, public institutions and the media, which promote ideals that are in stark contrast to those espoused by the Great Aliyah – are mobilized against the lone parent. It is noteworthy that specially trained “Russian” psychologists and social workers have now become a part of this mobilized “task force”. Their mission is to teach “Russian parents” to behave themselves in a way, which would satisfy the demands of the true Israelis. 

    Due to this conflict of civilizations, the children of the Great Aliyah found themselves in a situation that is even worse than that of the children of the Aliyah from Muslim countries. Jews from the East have preserved traditional Jewish family values and a close-knit community, which they brought with them from their countries of origin. Soviet Jews did not have this good fortune: the Bolsheviks, throughout the lives of three generations, annihilated their traditional Jewish family values and close-knit community life. The true Israelis are now busy destroying whatever is left of these family values, since the true Israelis were brought up to believe in the same socialist ideals as those professed by the Bolsheviks.

      The consequences of this situation are self-obvious.

      The government has given the family two choices. The first choice is to succumb to the demands of the system, in which case the younger generation will eventually turn the Jewish state into a third-world country. The second choice, stemming from a deep understanding of the consequences of such surrender, is for the family to oppose the position taken by society and implement its own independent policy in the children’s upbringing and education. 

    The latter position, however, makes any efforts to forge a sense of solidarity with the society meaningless. Keenly aware of the situation, the children respond accordingly. 

    We must bear in mind that the sense of solidarity cultivated within the Jewish community for centuries is the foundation of patriotism. This sense of solidarity continued to exist even behind the Iron Curtain, where any remaining vestiges of Jewish community life were destroyed. Without such a sense of solidarity, a person is no longer prepared to risk losing his comfortable life-style or, if necessary, sacrificing his own life for the wellbeing and future of his people.

    It was this sense of solidarity that made it possible to rebuild the Jewish state. The conflict between the family and society triggered by the ideology of the true Israelis results in an evident decline in the sense of solidarity, with all the foreseeable consequences.

    How could the founding fathers of the Jewish state imagine that even their own progeny would completely lose this sentiment? It is impossible to dispute the facts, however – the descendants of Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Itzhak Rabin and many others have left Israel under various pretexts. The son of a long-time government minister for the National Religious Party Avrum Burg, a leading figure in Israeli politics who was appointed Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, and later elected Speaker of the Knesset not only left, “slamming the door behind him”, but urged others not to procrastinate and start packing their suitcases immediately.

    What can one expect from all the rest of the people in such an environment? 

    Large numbers of true Israelis roam the world today. They are filled with hatred against the Jewish state and are trying to fume the fires of hatred in others. This intense hatred is the result of the trauma that the true Israelis have received from the ideology, which perpetuates conflict between family and society – the ideological foundation of Jewish state.  

4 

    The situation where the family and society are in conflict with each other may seem at first no different from the one all immigrants encounter in a new country.

    But it appears that way only after a cursory glance.

    In fact, the circumstances involving immigrants are entirely different.

    When an immigrant arrives to a new country, he is almost immediately subjected to the influence of the title nation, which created the state independently and is therefore the bearer of related cultural codes. Even when immigrant children renounce the cultural codes of their families, they receive them from the title nation and begin to imitate it. This is part of the process of assimilation that anyone can observe in immigrant populations.

    In the Jewish state, the true Israelis are merely playing the role of the “title nation” and claiming that the entire Jewish people should follow its example.

    In actual fact, the situation is entirely different.

    First, the cultural codes of the true Israelis are only a version of a host of cultural codes, on which contemporary Jews build their own unique self-identity. Many of these codes are not associated with the Jewish state at all. A number of Diaspora Jews feel no connection to the Jewish state or the cultural codes of the true Israelis.

    Second, the cultural codes of the true Israelis are so tenuous and unsubstantiated that all they have to offer is a few ideological maxims. It is not surprising that the true Israelis themselves are actually a population without a fully developed identity. Many of them do not find their own cultural codes entirely convincing any more.

    Naturally, they could never serve as a model for the entire Jewish world. That is why any desire to emulate them, which virtually all the olim expressed in the past, has currently disappeared. Moreover, an opposite tendency has manifested itself, that of Israeli people setting themselves apart from the true Israelis as Jews.  

    This is happening because the true Israelis discarded everything of significance that the bearers of the two cultures – the tribal “culture of values” and the individualistic “culture of discoveries” – have brought with them to the land of their ancestors. And having lost these valuable elements of the two cultures, the true Israelis recreated traditional stereotypes of behavior characteristic of the shtetl but thoroughly distorted, firstly, by the absence of this traditional environment and, secondly, by the complexities of statehood.

    Once we understand all this we will stop wondering why Israel has created an environment that contributes to the “Jewish brain drain”.  

5 

      Here are the reasons why this has happened.

      The first reason is the incredibly low regard for the so-called “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology”, which are fundamental to modern civilization. The low status of science and technology is determined by the traditional codes of the Jewish community. When Jews lived within traditional communities, they did not need to have any knowledge in these areas, because community life made it possible for them to avoid becoming involved in finding independent solutions to society’s fundamental problems. It was their non-Jewish host state that was responsible for finding these solutions.

      The emancipation of Jews in Europe allowed them to join non-Jews in resolving the challenges of modern civilization. Jews responded to this momentous task with great enthusiasm, which expressed itself, among other things, in their eagerness to master the exact and natural sciences.

      It turned out, however, that this eagerness dissipates quickly when Jews return to the land of their ancestors. The reason for this is obvious: the tremendous scientific achievements of Europeans in these areas are the cultural results of the development of Christian societies.

      In order to understand the extent to which the religious matrix determines cultural codes, let us for a moment imagine yeshiva teachers going on strike. This could never happen because a Jew will never stop studying the Torah. 

          As for stopping to study those “gentile sciences – physics, chemistry and biology”, society does not see anything wrong about that. A teachers’ strike paralyzed the Israeli education system for two whole months. Society showed little concern. On the contrary, many people considered the strike justified because a teacher’s salary in Israel is shameful by any criterion.

          Israel’s attitude toward the work of its teachers also has its reasons. These reasons are hidden in the traditional codes of the Jewish community, associated with … the role of women.  

    In the traditional Jewish community, the role of women is limited to the home and raising children. Men are in charge and make all the decisions beyond the household. Women have a supplementary role in the community, caring for the sick and helping the poor and destitute.

    In the conditions of the Jewish state, these two codes – the insignificant role of women in society and the low status of “gentile sciences” – coincide with one another. The Israeli people view the education system as a social occupation specifically meant for women. Affluent families do not really need to rely on this “social occupation” because they are able to educate their children through a parallel system of private tutoring. That is why the elite does not worry about the quality of the education system.

     It should not surprise anyone that math teachers have poor qualifications. Many of them have failed to pass the verification test in the subject they are teaching. But why should anyone really care? It is a woman’s job, you see, and it fulfills a supplementary function, not the main one, like for instance, the role of a banker or the owner of a grocery chain. Teachers are paid accordingly, since their work fulfills an auxiliary role and is viewed as a second income – merely an addition to the family budget.

    This explains society’s indifferent response to the teachers’ strike.

    Those who are in control of the situation can easily do without the system of education: they have the financial resources, connections, etc., to choose other options. Those who have to rely on the education system because they have no other options do not control the situation and are powerless to change anything.

    This large group of people without rights and with very little education makes up the general environment of the “advanced” state. 

    The second reason lies in the fact that within the tribal “culture of values” the education system is meant to play a nurturing role.

    The post of Minister of Education is always a coveted position in Israel at the coalition bargaining table. Regretfully, the politicians do not seek this position out of any strong desire to improve the quality of school education. They are motivated by an entirely different objective: they would like to instill in society the “values” espoused by the Minister and the circle to which he or she belongs.

    That is why as soon as the Minister “ascends to power” he or she starts to re-educate the people in accordance with his or her “values”. When a leftist Minister is appointed, schoolchildren are urged to sympathize with the “Palestinian tragedy” caused by the return of the Jews to the land of their ancestors. If the Minister tilts toward the right, there is a fundamental change in the schoolchildren’s orientation: they are now encouraged to be good patriots.

    Every Minister sees himself/herself as the “principal” parent, who knows how, where and when to spend the family’s income. Incidentally, when we refer to the state, this money comes out of the state budget. The current Minister of Education would like Israeli children not to be concerned if they are gay or lesbian. Without much ado, she decided to spend one million shekels on a special campaign to bring across her point. She used public funds to support her own “values”.

    Despite all the distinctions they may have, all Ministers of Education have one similar characteristic: they think and act as community leaders who do not understand the basic differences between the education system within the state and the system of education within the traditional community. That is why, though they might think that they belong to “enlightened mankind”, they do not really represent it, because they have replaced education with nurturing and thereby demonstrated that they are bearers of the tribal “culture of values”.  (It is indicative that the Ministry of Education in Israel is called Misrad Hachinuch, i.e., “ministry of nurturing”.)

    In this situation, a full professor has no advantage over someone with an incomplete education as a kindergarten teacher, both of whom had the good fortune to be appointed as Ministers of Education. Whatever their background, they make every effort to play the same role that the people’s spiritual leaders had within traditional Jewish culture.

    The people’s traditional spiritual leaders actually had a huge advantage over Israel’s Ministers of Education. They relied on tradition which was not altered every couple of years as it is happening in the Jewish state, where every election decides, among other things, what kind of “values” schoolchildren should uphold until the next election cycle.  

    The third reason is the political function fulfilled by the education system, a function, which was natural for the tribal “culture of values”.

    This function is characteristic of every traditional culture, including the Jewish one. On the one hand, the most authoritative Rabbis had a large number of good students who increased their teacher’s authority by repeated references to his opinion. On the other hand, the teacher’s authority helped his students to obtain higher-status positions in society and with it, greater power.

    This doesn’t by any means occur only among Rabbis. Heads of different schools of scientific thought also frequently use science to gain power when they fight against each other not so much in their quest for the truth, as in an effort to increase their influence.

    Nevertheless, there is a difference. Science deals with the objective world, which creates a natural obstacle to entirely unsubstantiated theories, if for no other reason because the validity of scientific truths can be verified by production technologies.

    Religion allows completely arbitrary interpretations of G-d’s Image and G-d’s Will, that is, the things that G-d supposedly prescribes man to do.

    Since in actual reality it is the religious authority that acts in G-d’s Name, this person of authority acquires human power over his followers.

    The struggle of religious authorities for power (within the framework of a single confession), then becomes the main content of these activities, regardless of what is being proclaimed. 

    This relates directly to the discussion about the system of education.

     Every modern state must prepare its population for professional occupations that require knowledge of the laws of the objective world, since it needs the technologies indispensable for the existence of contemporary society. That is why people study the same exact and natural sciences all over the world, irrespective of their religious confession or ethnicity. This universality of “secular” education unites people and is a counterbalance to the power-seeking aspirations of scientific authorities.

    Religious education has a divisive effect on people. It actually enhances the power-seeking aspirations of established authorities, because it permits the use of religious education to secure political power.

    Absolute separation of religion and state is only way to protect G-d from manipulations with His Name. People vote with their feet for this truth by moving to those countries, mostly Protestant ones, which implement such separation.

    Israel, which positions itself as a modern state, does not maintain the separation of religion and state. One of the consequences of this is state funding of religion, i.e., subsidies for a large network of different religious schools.

    Why do all Israeli governments continue this practice? Could it be that those who hold positions at the top levels of government remain loyal to the Jewish religious tradition?

    Not at all.

    The Israeli political establishment is well aware of the political power of religious authorities, and it understands that as soon these authorities receive government funding for the sectoral school network under their control, they will approve, supposedly in G-d’s name, any government decree, so long as it does not jeopardize their interests.

    Their interests are entirely obvious: an independent network allows them to nurture their own followers without any outside interference.

    These interests have such absolute priority over any other considerations that religious authorities do not challenge the government’s policy even though it directly contradicts the Torah. The Rabbis never have a problem proving that their position is correct, because religion is based on interpretations.

    It is sufficient to announce that Israel is a “gentile state” so religious Jews have no obligations associated with this state and to proclaim simultaneously that Israel is a “Jewish state” whose wellbeing depends on its support of Orthodox Jews, and such “juggling” with words will provide endless opportunities for manipulation. 

    The elite of the true Israelis has firsthand information about all this, and it uses in its own interests the willingness of the Orthodox to manipulate faith. This creates a vicious circle of mutual interest between the religious and secular establishments.

    The larger the amount of the government funding that the religious authority receives for his own needs, which he declared to be the needs of the Torah, the greater this authority’s political power. This religious authority can then use this money to increase student enrollment in his network of schools and can consequently influence their parents, who constitute a segment of the electorate. He can also create specific new jobs and obtain a number of other privileges for “his own” people.

      Naturally, the greater the number of interested individuals who receive favors from this religious authority and therefore support him during the elections, the greater the influence of this authority in society. All these interested individuals represent a segment of the population, and in this capacity they elect someone to represent the Jewish people. The former students and protégés of the religious authority then become “representatives of the people”. Why not? Is this not part of “democracy”?

    However, the greater the political power the religious authority obtains in this way, the more dependent he becomes on the secular elite, which can threaten him at any moment, saying that they intend to stop the flow of public funding into his coffers. The religious authority fears such an outcome and is ready to enter into any agreement with the secular elite. He shows support for the elite’s utterly godless plans, claiming them to pursue a sacred goal – that of religious education. In turn, this education … allows the religious authority to cultivate an electorate, which routinely follows his instructions and backs his views. 

    Such use of the education system for political purposes results in a totally abnormal situation.

    The religious authority who is not involved in building the state in any way and who rejects the very principles of a modern state as “alien to our faith”, suddenly becomes an important figure. He imagines himself to be the “father of the nation” responsible for most vital decisions affecting the state and individual people. He gives instructions to “his electorate” on exactly how they should vote. Those in charge of the country’s defense come running to him with maps in their hands, asking for his opinion. Major political figures and even future Prime Ministers and Presidents come to his office seeking his approval, because their entire political careers may well depend on it.

     This disgusting spectacle is in such flagrant contradiction with the very foundations of the modern state that Avrum Burg’s outbursts are not really necessary. Everyone with “Jewish brains” understands even without Burg’s advice – it is time to start packing their suitcases.  

          The fourth reason lies in the specific motivation typical of the tribal “system of values”.

 Motivation plays an important role in any undertaking. This is true of motivation to learn as well. It may be different for different people: some have a thirst for knowledge; others are motivated by ambition or by a craving for power, because everybody understands that knowledge empowers an individual.  

      Society tries to take a broad view of different people’s interests and elevate them to a higher level where it becomes possible to identify what is in the interest of the entire society. If the interest of society lies in ensuring that the new generation is capable of preserving and expanding the cultural capital amassed by previous generations, in producing new ideas and creating a better cultural environment, then it sets a super-goal for the system of education. This goal elicits the same response and creates a super-strong motivation, which brings people together irrespective of their individual differences.

    The mandatory curriculum requirement in the European school system shows that European society saw the goal of education not only in the accumulation of the necessary body of knowledge and development of necessary skills. The school system in Europe was also meant to ensure that the students acquire a broad view of the world, which allows them to perceive modern civilization as the world to which they belong naturally.  

    At the personal level, the true Israelis exhibit every type of motivation: a thirst for knowledge, ambitiousness and even craving for power.

    But society itself imposes the only motivation which is meaningful to bearers of the tribal “culture of values” – the desire to acquire “a strong position” in society.

    It is as if the children are purposefully taught to scoff at knowledge. The prevalent conviction is that a person who would like to acquire “a strong position” in society will learn everything necessary to achieve his goal, gaining all the knowledge he needs to succeed. That is why the education process is geared not toward acquiring knowledge but toward implementing numerous tests and exams, the purpose of which is to separate the strong from the weak.

    Knowledge itself does not have any independent value. That is why teachers throw out large portions of study material if the Ministry of Education arbitrarily decides not to include these particular sections in this years’ exam.

    It might appear that schoolchildren are intentionally oriented toward nothing more than passing a test. That’s the main goal, and once the test is over, it’s okay if they instantly forget everything they had just learned.

    There is absolutely no effort to ensure that students acquire a broad view of the world. So any information that is not included in an exam is considered “extra” and totally unnecessary work. 

    Such deliberate efforts to decrease the material in the curriculum to the bare minimum have led to an unexpected result: there are no more intellectuals left in Israeli society.

    It is not entirely obvious in each separate field. A gifted and efficient professional in a narrow field, who has the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from other countries, can undoubtedly be successful in his area of expertise.

    This insufficient education affects the spiritual and intellectual elite of society as a whole. It deteriorates not only in its capacity to produce innovative and interesting ideas and create a stimulating cultural environment, but even in its ability to appreciate and preserve the cultural capital which the olim from all over the world bring with them to the land of their ancestors.

    The consequences of this state of affairs are catastrophic for Israel because, Israel, perhaps more than any other country, needs an enlightened elite that represents an array of brilliant minds with broad vision.  

    First, this is so for internal reasons.

    Considering that Jews from every country of the world are involved in the unique process of kibbutz galuyot it is impossible to understand the process of rebuilding the Jewish people without having a broad outlook and a well-developed imagination.

    Second, this is so for external reasons. There is a particularly strong need to produce convincing new ideas, because the recreation of the Jewish state destroyed confessional conceptions, based on which many peoples have created their cultures over the centuries. To produce such ideas it is necessary to have a broad outlook and a well-developed imagination. 

    But the Israeli society does not set forth such a goal for its education system. As the result it receives an elite thus characterized by Professor Aaron Ciechanover: “It’s truly pathetic that there’s not even one person there that conveys some kind of inspiration. There’s nobody you wish to talk to or whose ideas you want to hear… members of the government elite don’t even voice ideas. They lack direction or discourse, they don’t even have an agenda.”

    There is absolutely no doubt that all these “truly pathetic” people possess  
“Jewish brains”. In fact, it is not these individuals that pose a problem but society, which creates the kind of super-motivation to acquire knowledge that is natural for the bearers of the tribal “culture of values”.  

    The fifth reason lies in the specific relationship between the elite and the people, which is characteristic of the tribal “culture of values”.

    The differences between the two types of cultures generate the differences in the relationships between the elite and the people.

    Traditional occupations that are usually passed from one generation to the next are characteristic of the tribal “culture of values”. This makes it possible for the fathers to teach their children all that is necessary for them to support themselves. The fathers can do this without outside help. That is why the level of division of labor in the traditional society remains low and there is no system of professional training.

    It is easy to govern such a society because production relations are so primitive. That explains why it is not people with genuine leadership qualities but those who belong to the upper crust of society who obtain positions of authority.  

    The individualistic “culture of discoveries” stimulates innovations. That is why the level of division of labor in such a society is high and this transforms the relationships between people.

    First, the diversity of professional occupations creates the need for a system of professional training. The family cannot cope with such a task on its own, which is why society takes upon itself the responsibility to provide universal and compulsory education.

    Second, it is difficult to govern such a society, which is why in Europe, for instance, the political power of the aristocracy became merely nominal. Real power has shifted to elected government officials and experts.

     Third, it becomes necessary to create the middle class, which is the most productive in society. The people need it in its capacity as professionals who are able to educate them and introduce various new occupations. The elite also needs the middle class to generate ideas and to perform the function of experts, advisors, etc.  

      Israel is a unique state in this respect.

      At the state level, Israel aspires to the status of a modern state. But the tribal “culture of values” dooms Israeli society to slipping backward, imposing on it the limitations of a traditional patriarchal society.

      Already the founding fathers of the state came face to face with this unique situation.

      When the Jewish people returned to the land of their ancestors, they were so unprepared for life in a sovereign state that the founding fathers had to start everything from scratch and learn the most elementary things from non-Jews.

      Later, it temporarily became possible to resolve the problem of the high level of the division of labor but this was only because the olim brought with them ready-made knowledge and skills which they had acquired in their respective non-Jewish environments.

      This state of affairs, however, lasted only for a while, because as soon as the tribal “culture of values” re-established itself in the land of the ancestors, the characteristic relationships between the elite and the people, typical of that culture, were also re-established, with all consequences following from this situation.  

          Wherever one turns, there are clear indications that the level of qualified work is becoming substandard in Israel. Owners of industrial companies, who have already felt the negative effects of this process on their business, are openly bringing up this issue. Institutions of higher education also admit that this is true. The police force and the army cannot but notice the absence of tradition in professional education and development. Hospital administrators voice their concern. The current education system seems incapable of producing qualified physicians. And this is happening in a field where Jews have excelled for centuries.

          Relying on their ability to foster and nurture their own children, families step in to compensate for the shortcomings of the education system. In the overall context, this phenomenon, commendable in itself, is the first sign of a backward society, where fathers teach their children because there is simply no one else.

          Naturally, every family focuses all its attention on its own child, losing interest in what is going on in the state as a whole.

          Obviously, only a small section of the population is able to educate their own child or has the resources to send their child to study abroad, or to ensure that their child has a prestigious career and good opportunities for advancement. (Members of this privileged class are particularly successful in ensuring that their children have a prestigious career and advancement opportunities. This is because entire clans have de facto privatized the state and created corrupt practices of patronage and mutual “facilitation”.)

          Some can resolve their personal problems, but the problems of society as a whole clearly cannot be resolved in this manner. 

          No one is really making an effort to resolve them, because the true Israelis form a tight circle and closely collaborate with each other, which gives them the misleading feeling that it is quite easy to govern a modern state.

          The newly cultivated Israeli “aristocracy” grew up with the same perception (many people even call them “princes”, hinting at the fact that they are the direct descendants of the founding fathers). Israeli society pays a high price for their illusion: all state institutions are in a shambles, since nobody is actually capable of governing the state built by the people.

          The unbelievably huge bureaucracy – the most unproductive segment of society – has taken upon itself the role of the middle class. Not surprisingly, such a “middle class” is not able to perform the role it is designed to play in modern society.

          That is why the Israeli people who possess a tremendous potential are unable to realize their full potential. 

          In this situation those who have “Jewish brains” cannot count on anyone but themselves, which is precisely what they are doing.

 Those people who have “Jewish brains” are quite numerous. They are intelligent, self-sufficient and enterprising – exactly the kind of people who could perform the roles of the middle class and the elite. In Israel, genius abounds. But these talented individuals have achieved everything on their own, and they have done it not thanks to any positive impact from society but against its opposition, which seriously undermines their ties to society.

          They feel that this patriarchal society does not need them, just as there was no place for them years before in the shtetl. That is why, similarly to how it happened during the disintegration of the shtetl, people like them begin to look around in order to find a more suitable society for their “Jewish brains”, one where “brains” are valued. 

What Are the Jews Running Away From? 

      If all the reasons presented above are taken in their totality, it creates the feeling that some sort of misrepresentation took place in Israel when the shtetl was revived in the land of the ancestors under the guise of a state. It is impossible to mislead the Jews about it because they instantly recognize the atmosphere of the shtetl. (The Russian olim immediately responded to it by changing Israel’s name for Israelovka.)

      It is true that the shtetl had a special home atmosphere. Everybody belonged to the same people and practiced the same faith. But there came a time when this was not enough, when the people realized that “Jewish brains” were dying in the cultural atmosphere of the shtetl.

      And people started to leave the shtetl. They traveled in great numbers to non-Jewish states, begged other nations to give them refuge, humiliated themselves and converted to Christianity to receive “the ticket of admission to European culture”, because they had no other choice but to replant their “Jewish brains” in a foreign cultural soil, since their own cultural soil had become infertile.

      The people paid for this escape with the Holocaust, which many Zionist ideologists had foreseen, though not in its actual horrific scope.  

      The rebuilding of the Jewish state gave the people hope. They expected that it would be possible to stop mass conversion when Jews have their own schools and universities, theaters, fields, vineyards and factories.

          After the Jewish state was rebuilt it became obvious that the issue is not the state, or the language, or Jewish schools, universities, theaters, fields, vineyards and factories.

          The issue is the culture – the tribal “culture of values”, which the people had outgrown.

          “Jewish brains” did not vanish in the Jewish state either. It is just that after the people’s return to the land of their ancestors these “Jewish brains” could only be cultivated in a cultural soil so barren that it can produce nothing except thistle and thorns.

          That is why as soon as the Jewish people realized that this culture had rebuilt itself, having acquired particularly hideous forms because it now happened on a statewide scale, they were overtaken by the same pessimism they had experienced years before. The Jewish people began to take off, and hence “brain drain” occurred again.

          The issue of “brain drain” resurfaced once again but this time in the Jewish state, not in the shtetl.

          At one point, the Jewish people decided that the culture of the shtetl had outlived its usefulness. They have now drawn the same conclusion in relation to the Jewish state. 

    Many people have already noticed a peculiar trend: Jews start to pack their suitcases and leave Israel at a time when the economy is on the rise. No statistics indicating economic growth can stop these Jews because the Jewish people are experienced enough to feel intuitively how threatening shtetl culture is for “Jewish brains”.

          So Jews are asking once again to be allowed to live in states of the Christian realm. They are settling in Germany where years ago they wanted to be considered Germans of Moses’ faith. Even the fact that their efforts to become Germans ended so tragically, does not stop the Jews, some of whom belong to the true Israelis.

          Nothing can be done about it: Jews fear insufficient civilization development more than death itself.  

          True, the “brain drain” from Israel is also happening for some of the same reasons that it is happening in other countries. Everybody is trying to find a place under the sun with better conditions and a higher salary.

          But this tells only part of the story. The “Jewish brain drain” has its own specifics: the deep underlying reasons for the “brain drain” from the Jewish state are entirely different.

          Even more importantly, it has different consequences.

Russian version