Cultural Thieves

By Guy Rakover

The students’ protests around the country can’t help but bring the concept of education to our attention. The level of knowledge that its average citizen possesses can measure a society, and inevitably shapes and defines the societies moral and cultural characteristics. An educated society is a strong society, hence the expression, “knowledge is power.”

There are many arguments against the Ministry of Education regarding the quality of education that our state’s youth is receiving. As I am not yet a parent and it is difficult for me to completely engage in the daily battle of educating our children, I can only view the issue from a distance. With this in mind, I believe that there are many important things to keep in mind when dealing with the issue of education.

It says in the Talmud that if you do not teach your child a trade, you teach him to be a thief. This can be applied not only to an actual profession by which he sustains himself, but also as to the cultural lessons that should be taught. If you do not teach your child the history of our people, our culture and ancient traditions, then you are teaching him to be “a thief”, he will steel his morals and values from other races and cultures, who in reality are all distortions of our forefathers’ teachings.

In a democratic society, the state is a reflection of the people. Elected leaders dictate policy so in the end of the day the citizens are responsible. The Jewish people at large, those residing in the homeland and those still in the Diaspora, need to actively engage their children and teach them the history of our people. It is essential to the future of our state that we embrace our history and instill the values of our fathers in our youth. If not then we are abandoning our children, and leaving them to be educated by western popular culture and “so-called” eastern mysticism.

I feel that in many cases, as our citizens reach the stage in their lives when they search for spirituality, they do not look within. Due to the lack of respect for our traditions that is instilled in them from their childhood, they look to other religions and cultures before truly investigating their own. When searching for an understanding of universal truths why look to what was written a couple hundred years ago when you can benefit from what our ancient wise men said thousands of years ago. In our culture there is an analytical process, even dialogue, which has developed over the course of over 3000 years. Shouldn’t our children be aware of this? Don’t we have a responsibility to expose them to this vast knowledge?

It is not surprising that so many of our children are “cultural thieves” for our biggest fault as a nation is that we have not learned from our history. Until we do, we will be doomed to repeat it, and the first stage in this process is true Jewish Education.