Confronting Discomfort in Israel Education

This blog post was originally written for the Stanford School of Education blog and reprinted with permission.

Last week, my colleague, Matt Williams, wrote about productive
discomfort, that is, the value of making students uncomfortable in order
to promote their personal and intellectual growth. He argued that the
desire to keep students comfortable stems largely from a consumerist
logic in which the customer is always right even when that customer is a
student deciding what to learn.

But perhaps teachers who want to “meet students where they are at” do
so precisely so that they can ensure that the discomfort they create is
productive and doesn’t merely alienate students from the learning
process. Finding the sweet spot of productive discomfort is easier said
than done (that’s the whole point of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development),
and it is certainly a worth task for Jewish educators to consider what
productive discomfort might look like in the fields they teach.

Articulating a vision of productive discomfort is particularly
challenging when teaching about Israel. Many Jewish educators grapple
with the question of when and how to expose their students to
perspectives on Israel that they might find uncomfortable.

Some writers, most notably Peter Beinart,
argue that teaching excessively idealized images of Israel can lead
young Jewish Americans who cannot reconcile their liberal politics with
the reality of Israeli policies to feel alienated from their Israel
education. This perspective implies that educators ought to abandon
idealized representations of Israel and its history in favor of more
realistic approaches. But abandoning the idealized myths we tell about
Israel can also be dangerous. Students (and their parents) who find a
myth-busting curriculum too uncomfortable may respond by simply
disengaging from the learning process.

For Israel educators, finding a place of productive discomfort,
particularly when faced with a class of students starting in very
different places, can be extraordinarily challenging. The question
remains, “How can we both present an honest account of Israel that
doesn’t shy away from controversy, while still creating an environment
comfortable enough to enable students to productively engage with
Israel?”

I believe that Ari Shavit’s new book, My Promised Land,
tells a narrative of the history of Israel that will place many
American Jews in a place of productive discomfort. The book is not a
work of academic history and those interested in Israeli history will
find no revelations in its pages. Even the most uncomfortable moments,
the expulsion of the Arab population from Lydda and the treatment of
Sephardi immigrants, have been well known since scholars began writing
new Israeli history began almost thirty years ago.

Shavit’s narrative of Israeli history is more or less the well-known
tale of pioneers who, through hard work and perseverance, drained the
swamps, made the desert bloom, and now manage some of the most
successful companies in the world. While grappling with Israel’s darker
side and even expressing some pessimism about the future, Shavit
manages to leave the reader with the familiar image of a vibrant,
embattled Israel succeeding against the odds. In short: the book fits
within the classic Zionist narrative, albeit one leavened with
acknowledgements of the difficulties of maintaining that narrative.

It is Shavit’s conservatism about the basic narrative of Israeli
history that enables My Promised Land to meet many American Jews where
they are. Never before has an author so seamlessly woven the
revelations of the new history into a narrative that, at its heart, is
still so squarely Zionist. Reviewers with widely differing politics have praised the book for approaching Israel from a critical, but deeply caring perspective.

Although you don’t have to be a Zionist to criticize Israel in
America, it definitely helps if you want American Jews to listen (for
the record, even some of his harshest critics
believe that Beinart belongs in the “Zionist tent”). I don’t mean to
make any argument here about the merits of any particular political
position when it comes to Israel. Rather, I am hoping to make the
educational point that to change the nature of Israel education in
America, it is essential to know your audience, and where discomfort can
become unproductive.

More and more, the model of Israel education promoted today is one of “hugging and wrestling.” However, when educators look for examples of what “hugging and wrestling” might look like, they come up short. My Promised Land
does not read like a textbook and it does not present a “balanced” or
“disinterested” evaluation of Israel or its history. What it offers is a
model for a deeply personal attempt to face the uncomfortable moments
in Israeli history without abandoning one’s relationship with Israel. My Promised Land
does not fall prey to critiques of Jewish education that meet us where
we are simply to allow us to comfortably maintain our viewpoints;
rather, it meets us where we are so we can go along for a ride and,
hopefully, end up somewhere new.

Click here for the original blog post.

Jonah Hassenfeld is a second year PhD student in Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University and a Davidson Scholar (Class 26).  He researches the nature and development of high school students' historical understanding with a focus on the teaching and learning of Jewish history.  He can be contacted at jhass@stanford.edu.