The development of state religious education in Israel

The eighteenth-century Jewish “enlightenment” movement in Central and Eastern Europe laid the foundations for modern religious education. Schools in which secular subject were taught alongside traditional religious topics were established and served as the model for the modern religious educational system. In Palestine schools based on the “enlightenment” model were founded and during the twentieth century up till the establishment of the State of Israel these schools became popular throughout the length and breadth of the country. Immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the different educational streams which existed under the British Mandate prior to the attainment of independence, continued to function under the aegis of the Israel Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, with the different political parties served as “supervising committees” of each of the streams. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who fought to convince the Israeli leadership that a unified educational system was necessary, succeeded in persuading members of hb own political party to support the call to do away with the “General Stream” and the “Workers' Stream” and to form a united state educational system that would include a track solety devoted to religious education. In the early 1950s the religious political leadership decided to opt for integration within the state educational system, while providing full legitimacy and rights for those preferring religious education as well as internal autonomy for the religious track. Thus the two-track system was adopted by the majority within both the secular and modern orthodox population and functions efficiently up to and including the present.