The Talmud tells us that every human being must possess at least a modicum, a fraction, of ego. While Judaism enjoins one to defeat hubris, in no way does this depreciate the necessity to know that G-d has endowed us with astonishing potential. As Hillel said: “If I am not for myself, then who am I?”

The need for self-respect is also elemental for a nation. When a people as a whole ceases to value itself, it starts to lose its raison d’etre. Throughout history, no nation has so meticulously defined itself as the Jews. From the most religious cheder to the secular fringe of Yiddish culture, the distinctiveness of the Jewish experience has been a paramount educational goal. How disturbing it is, therefore, to note the recent rewriting of Jewish history in Israel’s educational curriculum, presided over by the country’s academic elite and encouraged by both Labor and Likud governments. Indeed, the very concept of a “Jewish history” is under attack.

A report in the New Republic depicts the surgical precision with which Israeli textbooks are deconstructing our past, guided primarily by professors from the Hebrew University. In a mindboggling turn, intellectuals who grew to academic fruition in a Jewish milieu are questioning the need for that very environment. (The Hebrew University was created for the specific purpose of having a Jewishly influenced learning culture.) They are calling Jewish peoplehood into question, from its formation at Mount Sinai until today.

The old curriculum saw much of the world through Jewish eyes — from the glorious kingdoms of David and Solomon through the miracle of the 1948 War of Independence and Israel’s subsequent battles for existence. Triumph and tragedy — both were represented in an educational system that inculcated youth with a sense of their worth as part of a united people.

By contrast, the new curriculum sees Jews as a motley assortment of subgroups, each to be studied in the historical context of its host country. Thus, American Jews and Moroccan Jews are not Jews who happen to live in separate environments, but Americans and Moroccans with a vague common ancestry. And ancient Greek culture receives more prominence than that of ancient Israel, which is acually studied within the context of Greece!

This is tragic. Religiously, it is a distortion of the three-thousand-year-old concept of the am hanivchar, the people chosen by G-d. But even on a secular level, it undermines the philosophy upon which the State of Israel is founded: that wherever Jews live, they ultimately are one people, and that a Jew from Uzbekistan and a Jew from Canada are eternally bound to each other.

Moreover, the curriculum distorts the truth. By almost any measure, Jews have excelled on the world stage. No nation has suffered more, yet no nation has contributed more to morality, science, education, and medicine. The new education will have none of this. Jewish nationalism has received the heave-ho. The curriculum ignores most pre-state Zionist leaders (who helped provide the intellectual foundation for Israel); dispenses with the notion that in 1948, the Jews were a badly outmanned minority whose victory was nothing short of miraculous; and discards the notion of nationalism as a positive quantity. The justice of Israel’s cause vis a vis its Arab neighbors is not presented in positive terms; rather, the two sides are viewed as having equal validity.

The malaise among today’s secular Israeli youths is no secret. Writing in The Jerusalem Report, Ze’ev Chafetz laments the fact that many of his son’s friends seek to delay or duck army service. To participate in the defense of Israel was once a badge of pride; but if youth are taught that Israel is not worth defending, why should they be prepared to die for it? A jaunt to India or Nepal is eminently more appealing. Only among Israel’s religious population does fervor for the Holy Land continue to reside; the rest of the country is firmly in post-Zionist mode.

The dangers of this cannot be overstated. It matters little whether one personally is a Zionist, no more than it matters whether, had one lived in Colonial America, one would have supported the colonists or the Tories. Once the battle for statehood is won, a nation’s civics program has to stress the positives. This is especially so in a nation whose existence remains unassured.

This educational deconstruction may impact American Jewish day schools as well. Israelis are being trained to come here as teachers. While we may not be able to influence Education Minister Yossi Sarid, it is our responsibility to make sure that at least in our own backyard, Jewish education remains Jewish.

At this time of year, we recall the Lawgiving at Mount Sinai, when the Jewish people formally assumed nationhood. We cannot be silent as that precious concept is undermined. The people, the Torah, and the land are one.

- Avraham M. Goldstein