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• 1 2021-06-29T17:49:01+00:00 Zionism and Hebrew School 11 plain 2021-06-29T22:27:26+00:00 Hebrew School is an extremely important aspect of early Jewish education for many Jewish Americans, and neither its methods of teaching about Israel and the Israel-Palestine conflict, nor its impact on the opinions of young Jewish Americans’ views on these issues, have been thoroughly researched. The most significant study on this topic was completed by Louis Katzoff in 1949, in which he recorded the percentage of Sunday School teachers who emphasized specific ideas about Israel in their lessons. 
  
  
  
  While this was 72 years ago, and does not answer my question of how current young Jewish Americans were impacted by Hebrew School education, it does highlight the fact that Hebrew School curricula have been promoting Zionism since at least the 1940s. This trend can be seen in multiple texts about Jewish supplementary schooling from the mid-20th century.
  
  
  
  "In the diaspora Jewish relationships express themselves in four areas: (a) Relationships to family and home, reflected in traditions and way of life; (b) relationships to fellow-Jews, obligating participation in the life of the community, its various forms of mutual aid, and the building of Erets Yisrael*; (c) relationships to non-Jewish neighbors, bringing with them the ambivalence of strangeness and discrimination on the one hand, and the rights of citizenship and opportunities for cooperation on the other; (d) relationship of the Jew himself, requiring of him an outlook on life and a cultivated attitude toward humanity, and toward G-d. In the diaspora Jewish education must concern itself with all four of these areas of life" (Dushkin 62).
  *English transliteration for "the Land of Israel" in Hebrew
  
  
  "We are committed to the belief that Jewish tradition, the renewal of our life in the Land of Israel and the teaching of the national renascence and of the Zionist idea amidst American Jewry are the foundations on which the Hebrew school stands..." (Constitution and By-laws of the Hebrew Teachers Union)
  
  "Though Palestine is not studied generally as a specific subject, it may be said to permeate the classroom by its recurrent emphasis. The dominant role of the Holy Land in determining the form of Jewish history is underscored heavily by the schools. Three considerations were paramount when Palestine or Zionism were discussed. They were:
  1. Palestine as a solution to the problem of Jewish homelessness,
  2. the need for a Jewish State,
  3. the need for a cultural and religious center for world Jewry" (Katzoff 158). 
  
  
  It seems highly likely that these trends have continued into the present day. The data I have collected, presented on the next page, explores this possibility.