Seventh graders at Katzir A School in Rehovot were recently given a unique task: building Christian symbol models. As part of a history lesson in which they learned about the birth of Jesus and customs and rituals in Christianity, the children were given a mandatory task with 5 options to choose from: making a model of Jesus, a model of the Last Supper, a model of the miracle of bread, a model of Mary’s meeting with the angel Gabriel.
“As a school assignment let the children draw a portrait of Jesus, to sculpt Jesus – it is idolatry, it is foreign work.” This is what Diana, the mother of one of the children in the class, tells Makor Rishon today (Wednesday). Diana is very upset by the incident and its implications: “Christians bow to these images, worship them and pray to them. I know exactly what it’s sitting on. I’m a convert, as a ten-year-old girl I converted. I grew up among Christians – it’s missionary work.”
We talked to Diana’s son who got the assignment and prepared it with his friends: “The Middle East teacher came and said there was a chore and she would be fun. There was something fun about it that was not just school but the fact that there is too much of Jesus in it I do not really like.”
As part of the assignment the students were divided into groups and each group chose one option related to Christianity. The parents only became aware of this after the children had prepared the assignment whose submission date was today. “It has already been done. I had a picture of Jesus in the center of the house for two days! I have never had a picture of Jesus in the house,” says Diana. “At first he tried to hide from me, he knows what Christ is and what Christianity is. You can not do such a terrible coercion to try to get into the soul of the children, that’s why I say it’s missionary. If they were really telling history, then okay. They did not tell the truth “And they did not speak history, they spoke Christianity in an attractive way until the children said ‘it was fun’, it just shocks us.”
“This is not the first event, the education system in Israel is under progressive attack,” Elad Tzadikov, director of Ofek Israel, an organization that works to strengthen Jewish identity in education, culture and communication, tells us today. “The goal is to detach children from the Jewish heritage. Also by blurring the theme of the family and blurring the gender theme, and the second axis is blurring the Jewish identity. He will not be able to say his own. ”
Tzadikov, who also serves as deputy mayor of Herzliya, talks about the parents’ difficulty in dealing with the system: “In every such event, the parents are attacked. The principal enters the class and asks which of the children opposes. Is it brave in front of you and in front of his friends to oppose a mandatory task? “.
A number of parents sent an email to the school administration in protest of the matter. Diana says that the school principal entered the classroom and demanded to know which of the children objected and asked to “let the parents relax”.
“My son came out with a pale face. The principal enters the children’s classroom in a threatening manner and demanded to know which of the children opposes the task, it’s crazy. She just marked them and they came out frightened and shocked. To convey a message to us through the children?”, She wonders.
Diana further says that in her son’s class there are no Bible lessons but Islam and Christianity do, and not only in the historical aspect: “Every first half they learned about Islam, every second half they learned about Christianity and have no Bible lessons at all because they wanted to overcome English and math. And it’s not really true because they do not have these reinforcements. They present the Bible as a literary work. There is no Bible study even as an authority, and they have compulsory studies on Islam and Jesus and he will be tested on it he gets a certificate for it. What is the next step? Draw Muhammad, the PLO flag? “.
The school principal responded that “this is a class of young diplomats, in which students are exposed to different peoples, different cultures, different religions and different worldviews. Or otherwise. The work is part of the summary of the students’ in-depth learning process. As for Bible study at school: the subject is taught so that all hours of Bible study are given in the eighth and ninth grades.