Learning from Children’s Ideas about October 7th and the Israel-Hamas War
Lauren Applebaum is the director of the DeLeT programs at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Sivan Zakai is the Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Together, Dr. Applebaum and Dr. Zakai co-direct the “Learning and Teaching about What Matters Project” which was funded by an award from CASJE at The George Washington University and is a project of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University.
Day school teacher Mr. Berkman is a proud long-time Jewish educator, but only recently has he also come to see himself as an Israel educator. “In October,” he explains, “I joined every other Jewish educator in the world in realizing, wait, I have to teach Israel now. But how?”
Ms. Baghai, a general studies teacher at a different Jewish day school, has also had to rethink her teaching in the wake of October 7th. “How much do we talk about it and learn about it? How deep do we go? How much do I share?” she wonders.
As teacher educators and researchers, we’ve spent the year working with teachers like Mr. Berkman and Ms. Baghai as they reflect on and make sense of their teaching at this difficult moment in time. Our approach to professional learning is rooted in a deceptively simple idea: in order to understand how to better teach children about important issues in the world, educators need to understand how children think about those issues.
This year, as the events of October 7th and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war have weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of teachers and students alike, we’ve partnered with teachers to interview 4th and 5th-grade students at their schools to learn more about how Jewish children are making sense of key issues in the world, including October 7th and the war. We invited a group of 85 Jewish children to share their ideas and feelings about a range of current events, and we spent time with their teachers reading and listening to the children’s words. The children and teachers were all affiliated with one of five large synagogues on the West Coast of the United States. Each synagogue has both a day school and a supplementary school, and we spoke with students and teachers from all ten schools, capturing a range of children and educators with different denominational, political, and educational backgrounds. We believe that the ideas of the children in this project—and in all of our schools—ought to shape the ways that Jewish educators think about and approach their work.
From our careful listening to children this year, we’ve learned four important lessons that we think should challenge, complicate, and inspire the ways that Jewish educators approach discussions about October 7th and the war in their classrooms:
1. Jewish Kids Agree: This War Matters
We’ve been speaking with children who attend different types of schools, who affiliate with different types of synagogues, and who come from families representing a wide range of religious and political ideologies. And yet all of the children we’ve interviewed—regardless of the homes and schools in which they’re being raised—are worried about and are paying attention to the war between Israel and Hamas.
Some Jewish children speak about the Israel-Hamas war in much the same way that they speak about the Russia-Ukraine war. As 4th grader Ty explained, “When there’s a war, a lot of people die or get hurt, and it makes me and everyone in the world sad.” For these children, any war is terrible because of its cost to human life, and therefore all war is important—including the Israel-Hamas war. Other Jewish children feel more personally connected to the Israel-Hamas war. Some of these children believe it is important to care about this war as Jews. For example, 4th grader Bryce says that the Israel-Hamas war matters to him “because I’m Jewish. Israel is a home for the Jews. I’m proud to be Jewish. But I hate to say, lots of Jews are dying from this.” Others care about the war in even more deeply personal ways as they worry about family or friends who have been in harm’s way. As 4th grader Dalia told us, the war “really matters to me because I have a lot of family in Israel.” All of these children are united in a belief that the war “really matters.”
2. Jewish Kids Agree: Children Should Not Be Taken Hostage
All of the children we’ve interviewed are also united by a deep concern for the hostages held in Gaza and a shared moral outrage that children in particular were taken into captivity. 5th grader Piper expressed a position widely held by the children, exclaiming, “Hamas, guys, you don’t take kids!”
Many of the children we’ve interviewed are trying to make sense of the ways that they think war “should” work—including a common belief that war “should” impact only adults—and struggle to comprehend the ways that this war has unfolded—including great tragedies involving children. As 5th grader Leo explained, “The way that they took hostages, they took young kids and elderly people. If you think about it, adults are the ones who really fight in the army, not kids.” Some of the children we’ve interviewed, such as 4th grader Ty, draw explicit connections to what is likely at the root of this fear: “War is only supposed to be men versus men. And it’s like taking me or my brothers hostage.” These Jewish children, physically remote from the war and yet clearly tuned into unfolding events, share a deep anxiety about the fate of the hostages and a profound sense of injustice that children—even those who have been released—have been unwittingly drawn into a war that “should” belong only to adults.
3. Jewish Kids Disagree: Is Israel Conducting the War Ethically?
Despite children’s shared interest in the war and shared concern about the hostages, the children we’ve interviewed have vastly different beliefs about the morality of Israel’s conduct as the war has unfolded. American Jewish children—much like American Jewish adults—differ in both their political ideologies and their range of beliefs about the ethical use of military force.
Some Jewish children believe that because the horrific events of October 7th were perpetrated by Hamas, Israel is—by definition—in the moral right as it conducts the war. As 4th grader Gideon explains, “Everything that happens in the war is not Israel’s fault, because Hamas attacked first.” Other Jewish children, however, are profoundly skeptical about Israel’s conduct in the war, and many of these children are especially concerned about the fate of Palestinian children in Gaza. In the words of 4th grader Darya, “It makes me sad that women and children in Gaza have died because I know that they’re not Hamas. They didn’t deserve to die.” These two types of Jewish children—those like Addison, who is “not convinced Israel is doing the right thing about Gaza,” and those like Gala, who believe that “Israel has a right to defend themselves no matter what”— sit side by side in Jewish classrooms.
4. Jewish Kids Disagree: How Much is Too Much Information?
Just as the children have no unified set of beliefs about Israel’s conduct in the war, they also have no shared understanding of the question Ms. Baghai and many others wonder about: how much should children learn about (and how much should they be shielded from) violent and horrific events?
Many of the children we’ve interviewed have strong feelings about this question. On one side of the spectrum fall children like 4th grader Jeremiah, who insists that because children know how important the war is, it ought to be a central topic for teaching and learning in Jewish schools. In his words, “I want to learn about it, and I think that children have a right to learn about it!” On the other side of the spectrum sit children like Dalia, for whom any discussions about October 7th and the war make her feel “upset and worried.” Dalia insists that she “can’t bear to see” what’s happening in Israel and Gaza, and she wants the adults in her life to construct spaces for her where she doesn’t need to think or worry about the war. Other children, like Addison, fall elsewhere along this continuum, believing that children and their teachers should discuss some—but not all—information. In her view, “I want teachers to inform us, but I don’t want to know every single detail about what’s happening.” Teachers should expect that the children in their classrooms have different levels of interest in discussing events related to the war and different levels of tolerance for learning about violence.
What Children’s Ideas Mean for Teachers
Regardless of their educational settings or religious affiliations, Jewish children are united in concern about the fate of the hostages and outrage about child hostages in particular but hold very different beliefs about the morality of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. They have a shared belief in the significance of the war, but different beliefs about how the war ought (or ought not) enter their classrooms. Both the commonalities and the differences among children must inform teachers’ ways of responding to and proactively addressing children’s ideas in the classroom.
Every year—and perhaps this year more than ever—teachers make choices about how to respond to the world around them while creating a safe environment in which students can learn and grow. Because of the quick pace of classroom life, teachers often make these choices at lightning speed while also juggling their curriculum, social dynamics, and a myriad of other challenges. Children’s ideas should inform this decision-making, but teachers need opportunities to pause and step back from the rapid-fire pace of classroom discourse and listen to those ideas.
One powerful way to help teachers reflect on how and when to have classroom conversations about the Israel-Hamas war (or any challenging topic) is to offer them the chance to pause, slow down, and hear the ideas of the children they teach, whether those ideas are challenging, reassuring, or surprising. When teachers can hear the voices of their students without needing to react immediately, it allows them to ground themselves in what they know to be true about teaching and learning. As veteran teacher Mrs. Ingram explained after examining the words of students, “I am reminded that what we do [as teachers] is meaningful work. Kids are going to be the next grown-ups, and they’ve got real serious thoughts.” Getting to hear those serious thoughts is a gift that all teachers deserve this year and every year.
Lauren Applebaum is the director of the DeLeT programs at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Sivan Zakai is the Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Together, Dr. Applebaum and Dr. Zakai co-direct the “Learning and Teaching about What Matters Project” which was funded by an award from CASJE at The George Washington University and is a project of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University.
FROM THE EDITOR: Fall 2024
It feels pretentious and premature to be talking about retooling education about Israel. The war is not over, the wounds are still fresh, barely a year has passed since that awful day, there are thousands of children-parents-loved ones still in active combat and separated from their families for months at a time, many of the hostages are still in captivity, the campuses are reeling, the internal divisions in Israel are deepening rather than abating, and the landscape of the Jewish world is muddled at best as the aftershocks of the earthquake still rattle us. And yet, we dare to think that we have something meaningful to contribute as to how to teach about Israel. It is fair to say that everything written in this journal is written with the awareness that when the dust settles, we may need to re-examine everything all over again.
The Story of the Ever-Living People
As a preface, I believe that we are all experiencing a revolutionary moment in the evolution of the Jewish people. By that, I mean that while the evolution of the Jewish people remains a constant, we are nonetheless at the forefront of a moment of awareness—of what in Judaism is known as she’at ratzon—a moment of willingness among Jews that is unprecedented in modern Jewish history. That, in and of itself, should raise for us a great call for action as educators and as people who work on behalf of the Jewish community in charting a path for our envisioned trajectory.
Knowledge and Identity: An Interview with Natan Kapustin
I would identify two very different kinds of Israel education that we do. The one that I will not speak about much is what I might call the reactive component. When things happen in or related to Israel, we need to address them. And we do that in a variety of ways. We have speakers come in, debriefing sessions with our students, Town Halls dedicated to open discussions about Israel, special tefillot, etc. This past year, post-October 7th, we were particularly intense in the reactive programming, and it is hard to know what this next year will bring. But none of this has affected what we have been doing in our core Israel education programming.
The Times They Are A’changin…
When I began my work in Jewish education at the Park Avenue Synagogue High School in September of 1967 it was, as some will remember, a tumultuous time. In the Jewish world, the Six-Day War gave a sense of elation (albeit very temporary as we have seen for many decades) and America was filled with social and political crises. Our afterschool and weekend program quickly became a magnet for Jewish and even non-Jewish teenagers from across the Upper East and West sides of Manhattan. Feeling the absence of the “international” (Jewish and beyond) in my own education and seeking to emphasize and expand it in that of my students, we quickly added international travel during summer and mid-year vacations as a key part of our curriculum, and within a decade we were traveling into the Arab world. We began with Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, and in the summer of 1978, our students had a historic private audience with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat even before Camp David.
Developing Students’ Capacity to Engage in Productive Dialog about Israel
In April 2023, David Bryfman and Barry Chazan wrote: “Today the issues of identity and Jewish identity not only have lots to do with Israel, but also the connection between Israel and Jewish identity may be one of the most significant developments for Jewish identity, life, and education that we have known.” In other words, Jewish identity is intertwined with Israel in ways that have never before been true. This sentiment and understanding have shaped and guided our school’s recent thinking about Israel education.
Israel Front and Center: Developing a Curriculum on Am and Medinat Yisrael
Sitting in my 12th grade Modern Israel class, one of my students raised her hand and asked “why haven’t we learned anything about Israel in History classes since 10th grade?” While I began to explain the sequence of the History curriculum, where students learn Zionism and the history of Israel in 10th and 12th grade, I realized that students learn about Israel in multiple subjects and in co-curricular activities throughout their four years of high school. I pointed out that the 11th grade Hebrew curriculum offers a range of readings and discussions on early Zionist thinkers and Israeli literary figures, many of whom students engaged with, albeit from a historical perspective, in their 10th grade History classes.
Finding the Balance: The Synergy of Nuance, Critical Thinking, and Ahavat Yisrael
We get off the bus for a quick stop on our first day of Derech l’Lev, our 8th-grade Israel experience. There is an electric energy as our two busloads of students and chaperones embark on this much-anticipated, two-week journey to Israel. I turn to one of my students: “So Sarah, what do you think? What are your first impressions of Israel?” Her face lights up. “I can’t explain it,” she says. “It’s all so familiar even though it’s my first time here. I just feel like I belong, like I’m home. I love this country!”
Teaching about Israel’s Many Complexities with Confidence, Competence, and Courage
Jewish educators have long been successful at instilling a love of Israel in their learners by providing opportunities to engage with the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and vibrancy of the country and its people in an ongoing way. Many settings culminate their Israel educational programs by visiting Israel, an experience designed to further deepen learners’ relationships with the people, land, and State of Israel. These varied modalities and content areas all are critical tools for achieving our collective goal of fostering a deep connection and commitment to Israel and the Jewish people.
“History of Israel” as History
As the years continue, Israel education now necessarily includes the history of Medinat Yisrael as a larger component than it has in the past. Young students have no memories of the major events in the history of the state, and as time passes, more information, stories, and significant events must be learned in order for students to be able to understand deeply what Israel represents and how its past informs its present. Language, culture, and geography are no longer sufficient for a well-crafted Israel education program.
Israel Education in a Post October 7th World
Is being pro-Israel the same as being Zionist? Is the call of the hour advocacy training or education? As Israel educators with decades of experience between us, October 7th forced us to take a hard look at what we teach, and how we teach it. We’ve taught American high school students, Masa gap year and Yeshiva/Seminary students, and visiting college students. We certainly weren’t prepared for this traumatic war, but we will argue that an authentic, classic Zionist approach to Israel education makes more sense now than ever.
Cultivating Respect in Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Being a Jewish History teacher in a pluralistic Jewish day school, I often find myself up against the question of how we apply the principles of pluralism to the teaching of Israel, and especially the teaching of the “Conflict.” Given that Jewish identity and religious expression are tied to Israel, it is important to help guide students through the fraught path of figuring out the relationship between their emotional connections and the political and social responses to the academic study of Israel. But, just as we set out guideposts for the limits of pluralism, it is important to craft boundaries of what is acceptable within our classroom environment. Key to this challenge is helping students understand their identities and how this sense of self shapes the way that student views the historical realities behind these conflicts.
Israel Education For Today’s Generation
For many educators, teaching about Israel has never been so challenging. The emotionally charged nature of the discussion, attitudes on Israel dovetailing with political affiliations, and educators’ fears of facing backlash from parents and the community, are all reasons for why teachers are reluctant to address Israel in the classroom. This is further complicated when considering the generational gap surrounding Israel in our communities. While previous generations saw Israel as the country of miracles and the underdog in the Arab-Israeli conflict, many in the younger generation see Israel as the aggressor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and feel conflicted over support for Israel.
Middle School Israel Advocacy
Yavneh Academy, in Paramus, New Jersey, is a Modern Orthodox, staunchly Zionist, preK-8 Jewish day school. Its mission statement includes: “Establishing the centrality of the State of Israel in the life of our school and in the lives of our children and imbuing each child with a connection to the State of Israel as an essential part of his/her identity.” Yavneh has always held true to its mission statement. It has seamlessly woven the study of Israel into much of its curriculum. Students learn Hebrew in every grade, including pre-K. They are exposed to Judaic texts and maps to connect history to the present-day land.
A Shared Student and Teacher Approach at Learning About Israel
The first aspect of helping my students this year was to create a safe, open, and accepting environment in the classroom to allow students to share their fears, questions, and thoughts. I have learned over many years of teaching that students desire to be heard and validated. They are seeking to be heard, much more than they are seeking actual answers to their thoughts and (philosophical) questions. I have learned over the years to listen and understand them.
Preparing Students For Their Encounter With Broader Society
Long before October 7th, as a teacher with a Social Studies background, I have been working with my administration team and the Center for Israel Education to revamp our Israel curriculum. My instinct was to bring Israel education from a place of chronological progression of events to finding touch points with other historical events outside of our people and land, helping to anchor historical periods in students’ minds. This approach mixed with modern culture and current events, should give students a broad and basic foundation of understanding that culminates in our annual 8th grade trip to Israel.
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