Societal Values in Jewish State Religious and State Secular Schools in Israel
The Israeli Jewish educational system offers mandatory religious and heritage education specially tailored to the specific needs of the state religious and state secular sectors of the Israeli population. In both state religious and state secular schools, study about Jewish religion, Jewish tradition, Jewish history, and Jewish culture falls under the category of religious and heritage education and, as such, addresses the normative societal values common to both sectors in Israeli Jewish society. In state religious schools religious and heritage education is both faith and knowledge based and is characterized by an emphasis on religious themes underlying societal values, whereas in state secular schools religious and heritage education is entirely knowledge based with emphasis on the secular character of societal values. In the present study a questionnaire designed to examine the values of Jewish identity, Jewish tradition, Jewish peoplehood, humanism and universalism was administered to 84 eleventh grade students in Israeli state religious and state secular high schools. Results of the study indicate that while students in the state religious high school hold significantly more intense attitudes toward Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood and Jewish tradition, students in the state secular high school exhibited significantly more intense attitudes toward humanism and universalism. The results of the study were explained in light of the different emphases characterizing religious and heritage education studied in state religious and state secular high schools and the resulting differences in the intensity of the influence of religiosity or secularity on the formation of societal values of students in the two educational sectors.