Editorial (June 12, 2009)

Excellence in teaching

FROM humble beginnings, Limmud-Oz has grown into one of the most important annual events on the Australian Jewish calendar.¬†If it’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend, forget about heading to the snow, it must be time for Limmud-Oz.¬†More than 1100 people attended last weekend’s Limmud-Oz in Sydney. That’s a tremendous figure and all credit goes to the organisers for presenting an engaging and vibrant schedule that delved into so many areas of Jewish learning, tradition, spirituality, history and culture.

What we take out of Limmud-Oz every year, and the huge array of learning options at the various Tikkun Leil Shavuot learning sessions that took place the week before, is that Jews love to learn. Education is part of our DNA.¬†Yet for all the talk about the importance of Jewish education, aside from the ultra-Orthodox world, as a community we don’t walk the walk when it comes to Jewish teaching.¬†

While the Jewish community is seemingly not as fixated on producing doctors and lawyers as it was a generation ago, teaching, particularly Jewish teaching, has never quite carried the status and frankly the value in the community as other professions.¬†Jewish teachers will tell you that when parents criticise and dissect teachers around the dining table, they’re sending their children a message not to become teachers.¬†

And a great deal of them, when choosing what to do, put teaching at the bottom of the list. To be fair, projected earnings play a part in career choices, and in terms of sheer remuneration, teaching is universally regarded as an undervalued profession. But the perception of teaching and the importance of good teaching needs to be better managed if we are going to develop the next generation of teachers. 

Jewish schools around Australia announced this week they are to receive a large amount of money from the federal Government for capital works.¬†This is very pleasing and means that within the next few years, students at Jewish schools will enjoy the very best physical facilities.¬†But what about Jewish education itself? How seriously are we investing in developing the core capability that goes to the heart of the existence of Jewish schools -— the kind of teaching that will engage our kids in serious learning about their heritage and in grappling with their Jewish identities.¬†And while making Jewish education as affordable as possible is something the community must continue striving to achieve, hand-in-hand with that should be a strategy to make Jewish education an attractive career choice.

 

Direct negotiations now

US President Barack Obama must be commended for taking the initiative and making a sincere effort to engage with the Muslim world as he did last Thursday in his speech from Cairo.¬†There is much to be gained by reaching out, putting past mistrust aside and attempting to forge a “new beginning” in what has often been a troubled relationship.¬†

In particular, we applaud Obama’s courage for imploring the Arab world to accept Israel and work together towards peace for mutual benefit.¬†To be sure, not everything Obama said regarding Israel, the Palestinians and Iran would be something that all of us would agree with.¬†Indeed, there has been insightful criticism of parts of the speech. However, to borrow a line from the movie The Castle, the “vibe of the thing” was generally welcomed.

Now that the speech is over, however, the details of the new administration’s policy towards Israel are coming into focus.¬†A relatively small story this week tells how the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United States are close to a deal whereby, the US would pressure Israel to withdraw troops who have been manning checkpoints outside Palestinian cities in the West Bank, since the Second Intifada.

If this story is accurate, it may be an omen of trouble ahead for US-Israel relations. Israeli troop deployments are based on carefully weighed security considerations. If the PA believes it has clamped down on terror infrastructure, to the point where control of security checkpoints could be handed over to them, the address for that request is the negotiating table with Israel, not the White House. 

We join in the chorus of voices calling for the immediate resumption of direct peace negotiations. In Egypt, Obama said that peace could not be imposed upon the Israelis and Palestinians. We agree, and for that reason, we believe that the US should avoid the temptation to intercede in negotiations without the consent of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.