National Jewish Dialogue
Partisan education does our kids no favours
The brave and principled article by Rabbi Greg Alexander about the state of Jewish education in South Africa not only needs to be read carefully, but requires significant deliberation. It should be central to a community-based dialogue. Indeed, little is more important for a community dialogue than the education of our children.
It highlights a fundamental difficulty with the system of Jewish education when it pertains to religion and the role of Israel in Jewish life. To a large degree and for a long time, a fundamentalist Orthodox position has been evident in the manner in which religion is presented in the Jewish day school movement. As Rabbi Alexander has pointed out, it’s only right-wing Zionism that gets a hearing. This is propaganda dressed up as education. It’s also counterproductive in that countless of the brightest graduates of the Jewish day school movement are completely “turned off” this perspective. The system of education is visited thus by failure rather than by profound success. There is a magnificence in the humanity which lies at the heart of the Jewish tradition. One wonders to what extent it is ever considered that there is a moral grandeur to the tradition, as for example articulated by Abraham Joshua Heschel:
“The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became evident to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey; that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself; in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
To what extent does this humanity, rather than an antipathy to a series of identities whether Reform Jews, Muslim, gays, lesbians, or any other category which Orthodoxy regards as marginalised, get any showing? How often I have heard the defence that Palestinian education is designed to ensure that there is Jew hatred. Has it even been considered that what is dressed up as education within our system all too often lends toward hatred in Palestinians as opposed to the obviously legitimate criticism of the barbaric conduct of Hamas.
Similarly, to what extent is the perspective so wonderfully illustrated in the Financial Times by Fania Oz-Salzberger (FT; 30 August 2025) ever represented? She writes that the original idea of Zionism was that there should be no claim to exclusive ownership. The core idea was for there to be a national home and a sovereign state for the Jews (per UN Resolution 181) not at the expense of a Palestinian state but alongside it.
She writes that this ‘is the only basic definition of Zionism and it is fully in line with the two-state solution and with Israeli Palestinian peace’. She adds that “Smotrich and Ben-Gvir alongside dangerous fanatics like Orit Strook, are our greatest curse”.
She continues: “They don’t care how many civilians and soldiers would be sacrificed to the cause. They don’t seem to give a damn ‘about Western Values’ the great tradition of Jewish humanism or Israel’s moral standing in the whole world. Their goal – and please take them very seriously – is the coming of the Messiah, the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem eternal power and glory for the Children of Israel Smotrich style.’
To what extent are children who complete their education at the Jewish day school movement ever exposed to Oz-Salberger’s perspective or indeed to anti-Zionist perspectives which they will doubtless confront as they enter university or other forms of post-school life?
It’s time we reclaimed Jewish humanity from fundamentalists fanatics, and ensured that our education system, at least in part – which is the best I can expect – can ensure that our children are exposed to a variety of views within a contested tradition from which they can make up their own minds. Bravo to you, Rabbi Alexander!
- Dennis Davis is a retired judge president of the Competition Appeal Court. He is also an honorary professor of law at the University of Cape Town, where he has taught for 49 years.
Abigail
September 5, 2025 at 2:11 pm
Thank goodness he is now retired
Greg
September 5, 2025 at 6:39 pm
A better contributor to South Africa than you will ever be.
Steven Apfel
September 5, 2025 at 4:49 pm
“A sore evil under the sun,” King Solomon might have said of the cock-and-bull morality play, the
‘Two State Solution’.
Progressives come alight with self-righteous wrath when the delusion its town. If a rousing brass band accompanied all the fuss and bother it would play a rendition of ‘John Brown’s Body.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of Palestine. It will trample over Israel where victims of occupation pine..”
Basil Dubb
September 5, 2025 at 6:26 pm
Thank you, Judge Davis, for amplifying Rabbi Alexander’s message regarding the sub-mediocre Jewish education offer at SA Jewish Day Schools.
Like many parents I outsourced my kids’ Jewish education to Herzlia.
I spent over 20 consecutive years as a parent of “learners” enrolled at Herzlia.
During those 2 decades, starting at a fairly low base, the quality of Jewish Education declined.
The contracting party failed their responsibility.
The raison d’être of a Jewish Day School, the Jewish Life & Learning (JLL) department never appeared to have a plan, a comprehensive curriculum.
Furthermore, most of the instructors for JLL are not trained teachers.
No curriculum, no professional staff, no measurable outcome.
Mediocrity – at best – is baked into an inadequate system that is designed to fail.
The ultimate losers are the next generation who are not provided the wherewithal to integrate a living Judaism into their 21st Century lives.
Sharon
September 5, 2025 at 7:31 pm
How does a two state solution factor in to the repeated declarations of the Palestinian Arabs that they don’t want a two state solution? They want Israel/Palestine to be Jew free From the River to the Sea
They could not be more clear about it
It’s the only thing they have not lied about
Ryan
September 8, 2025 at 10:06 am
How does it factor in when Likud has done everything in its power to make sure it never happens?
Jessica
September 6, 2025 at 2:51 pm
Pre-modern Zionism never had to contend with the current strain of socialist ideology (read: New Left Wokery), which has become inextricable in its deeply loving relationship with Islamism, which in turn, needless to say, has proved itself to be a radical death cult to the core.
Islam = Global Jihad, in other words.
The leftist – and hence also the self-proclaimed “Progressive-Jewish” movement’s insistence on a “Two-State solution” is therefore perfectly in line with Hamas’ “Two-State solution”, which of course is doublespeak for “Final Solution”.
Hence, the empathy of today’s so-called “Jewish humanism” with a “Palestinian State” (where’s “Palestine”, by the way?) amounts to what Professor Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy”.
Gary Selikow
September 6, 2025 at 7:51 pm
One would think in a world and country here the media and universities vomit out anti-Israel agitprop and never gives Israel’s point of view, we should thank G-D that Jewish schools promote the Zionist view but Davis thinks otherwise,that these schools should also spew anti-Israel rubbish. And Davis writes ““Smotrich and Ben-Gvir alongside dangerous fanatics like Orit Strook, are our greatest curse”. No our greatest curse is the anti-Zionist Jewish fanatics like Norman Finkelstein, Ronnie Kasris, Steven Freidman , Heidi Grunebaum and Megan Chorwitz. People filled with venomous hate fo0r millions of fellow Jews.
Paula Green
September 6, 2025 at 10:12 pm
Bravo Dennis Davis. I always feel tongue tied faced with the stone wall of one-sighted views of most the people in my community. Instead I follow online the efforts of Joint Israeli and Palestinian organisations that despite the odds are still brave enough to be speaking out for and actively seeking peace. I even fear writing this comment, but do so because I do not want my withdrawal from the community to be seen as indifference. I want the hostages home, I want no more loss of life, I want lasting peace in Israel and just cannot see that ever being possible without dialogue and compromise.
Steven Apfel
September 7, 2025 at 4:06 am
Each number in this comment matches a footnote. The footnotes contain links.
Dennis Davis is an honorary professor and a retired judge. He owes these attainments to political qualifications as (a) radical Communist and (b) his ‘Commie’ comrades in high places in the criminal and antisemitic ANC. Davis continues to apply Marxism to the rights and wrongs of the Zionists and Zionism he admits to loathing.
When Davis was a judge he prevented Prof Allan Dershowitz speaking at the University of Cape Town (4) Afterwards on the law faculty of UCT he did nothing to let Hezbollah speak at UCT. (5)
Davis paid good money for a large ad in the Sunday Times. It called for a permanent cease fire.(6) This gave Hamas a chance to regroup which, many years later, gave it the strength to fight the 700 days war.
When his Commie comrades hauled Israel to the ICJ on a charge of genocide, Davis called for prosecutions – of Israelis.(7)
Who did Prof Davis succeed as Dir of the Wits Centre for applied law? None other than Prof John Dugard. Dugard is the leading law brain behind the ANCs case of genocide at the ICJ. The ANC monimated Dugard to be their ad hoc judge for its genocide case.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Davis_(judge)
(2) Judging from a bubble: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366975
(3) https://academic.oup.com/lril/article/9/1/137/6310433?login=false
(4) https://www.jpost.com/magazine/features/south-african-charge-of-israeli-apartheid-rings-hollow
(5) https://www.sajr.co.za/uct-allows-third-terrorism-engagement-in-one-year/
(6) SA Jews stand up against Israel (IOL)
Jessica
September 8, 2025 at 3:03 pm
Right on the money.
Steven Apfel
September 7, 2025 at 4:20 am
Davis as honorary professor of law, is an ignoramus about international law with regards to ‘Palestine’ and the 2-state solution.
He’d do well to consult my latest articles on sites in the US and Israel.
The “Palestine” fantasy holds the key to rescuing Israel from Global Pariah
The catch? Netanyahu has been clutching the key for a decade.
Steve Apfel Sep 4, 2025 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/414400
That was a fuller version of my article on a mainstream US site. https://spectator.org/the-fiction-of-occupied-palestinian-territory-made-israel-a-pariah/
yitzchak
September 8, 2025 at 7:51 am
A wedding:
I once went to a Jewish wedding
The groom had previously undergone gender reassignment, while the bride had also undergone gender reassignment.
The canopy was a keffiya held up by 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.
A glass was forbidden to be broken because the new historians had pontificated that the fall of Jerusalem, Massada and Gamla was open to conjecture.And why break a perfectly good glass?
and future family life for this ecstatic couple? Well each had their gametes preserved before the transubsatantiation and were held in a laboratory . In due course IVF took place with a surrogate mother and a happy infant was born to be raised as an orthodox Jew., whose parents thought that Herzlia was too right wing for them.The gender of the child has never been disclosed…in case!
Why don’t the Alexanders and the Davises of the world vote with their feet and establish their new pedagoggic
schools to embrace all.
The concern especially in the US is that those in the reform/progressive/reconstruction movements are declining in numbers and only orthodox Jewry has come to the rescue.Perhaps Jewish education could be approached differently especially for those who are secular Jews. Human Rights culture with the enlightenment
did us no favours so we have to walk a tightrope between the 2.
No doubt Reform numbers are equally on the decline in RSA noting the end of the Masorti synagogue in JHB
Ryan
September 8, 2025 at 10:05 am
Thank you so much for this artcile Mr Davis!
When I left school and only learned then that most of the ‘History’ we are taught was debunked in the 1980’s, I was shocked.
We drastically need to improve what we are teaching our kids.
Gary Selikow
September 8, 2025 at 11:16 am
No Ryan, it wasnt ”debunked” you were brainwashed at your university. It’s the propagnda of Israel-haters that is untrue. No put on your keffiyeh and ‘Free Palestine” t shirt and please go now!
Ryan
September 8, 2025 at 12:35 pm
No Gary, I was not.
I have spent the past 20 years reading source material to understand the real history.
I am happy to compare reading lists and source material but I dont think you will come out looking very good.
Dennis davis
September 8, 2025 at 3:27 pm
I am greatly encouraged by much of this dialogue to which my attention has been drawn. Both positive and negative. But the ad hominem responses always leaves one
With the view that the person has no argument to lodge which meets a standard of rationality But that
We should debate this key issue is obvious
Just for the record i have taught international law at harvard and new york law schools. And although i have not
Raised intetnstional law in my article i find it amazing whomhas no legal
Training can express so defamatory a view. Ah well take it from where it comes
Gary Selikow
September 9, 2025 at 10:09 am
Id love to see someone ask Muslim schools to also teach the “”other side””
yitzchak
September 9, 2025 at 1:12 pm
so many clever Islamic scholars Avicenna(Ibn Sinna) Averroes(Ibn Rushd) Maimonides (Ibn Maimoon).
The conviviality of Andalucia placed Moslems at the head of the pile.If they were alive today, some mullah would have issued a fatwa aginst them. Ask Salman Rushdie. Ask Kassogy who has been sliced up by now.
The decline of Cordoba had as much to do with the Catholics as the splintered Moslem fiefdoms (Taifs)
Baghdad fell to the Mongols and its great libraries destroyed.
Islam has become intolerant even of itself. It has a long way to go allow usury( ribitt/ribaat), and enlightenment .
M’lud, the only rational thing in Fordsberg these days is the samoosa.. a 3 cornered delicacy whose sides add up to 180 degrees.
It is vital forJewish culture that Hebrew/Yiddish and diapora and Zionist history be indoctrinated so that we can read and understand our texts and liturgy.THere is so much to reestablish and recover since so much has been destroyed over the ages and each day is a new discovery. More yiddishkeit would be appreciated esp at the jewish schools, .Sadly the rush to the future has left so much behind and forgotten.
A real problem is the structure of education which gears us to the holy grail of the matric exams which is so
blinkering. I am sure all schools in SA have the same conundrum.
Nietsche Hobbes Locke, need to wait for later.
Do I hate Moslems, Palestinians? There is a dialectic and polarity here but Islam radiates the worst of anti liberal praxis, but I read and know that it isn’t Western depiction of orientals as the others on whom we can inflict our venom, alone and that it works both ways. The Jews/Zionists etc are the kickball in this interface.
Hamas and its followers are true polytheists apostates and satans and eeblees (Muslim tokoloshes)
Their Kaaba was originally a pagan devotional site.
Ryan
September 9, 2025 at 5:01 pm
Gary & Yitzchak
Are we now just openly biggoted towards Muslims?
Are we going to paint 1.9 Billion people with a broad brush while at the same time constantly complaining about antisemitism?
Opinions like this can only be formed in an echo chamber
Gary Selikow
September 10, 2025 at 9:55 am
Ryan the same way you prejudiced against Israelis.
Ryan
September 10, 2025 at 2:15 pm
Nope, I am critical of Government, not people.
I have never made blanket statements about the whole of Israeli society.
So number 1, nice whataboutisms, and number 2, thanks for confirming your bigotry in your whataboutism.
I am very tired of being called a self hating jew just because I dont break my back deffending Bibi and not hating Muslims.
yitzchak
September 10, 2025 at 2:30 pm
you have no critique of Islam, Islamism.
The West developed and moved forward, often with an antireligious agenda.Islam manacles and shackles cognitive cogitation.and free thought.
Read Farid Essak’s views on inherent Islam’s anti semitism. It has its own entropy unrelated to anything. The tight binding of mosque and state in the Islamic world is a good place to start.
BTW advocacy of hatred which does not constitute incitement is well within current discourse.
Do that in a moslem country and you will have some morality police throw you into an echo chamber.
Ryan
September 10, 2025 at 4:29 pm
Yes, The same way I am critical of the Israeli religious far right, I am critical of fundementalist Muslims. You would never take the likes of Ben Gvir or Smotrich as a representation of all Jews but you happily do the same with Islam.
Please dont talk to me about free thought when you have advocated for Indoctrination brother.
It is astonishing to me that yourself and Gary are so mask off about your blatent bigitory towards 1.9 billion people and then accuse them of the exact same thing.
Glass houses.
Gary Selikow
September 10, 2025 at 4:38 pm
Ryan, your SAJFP was celebrating the October 7 hostilities with their Muslim friends the Monday after October 7, in front of the American consulate in Sandton. I do hate anyone who does not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland, top defend herself and to determine her own borders.
Take the log out your own eye before you try take the splint out of anyone else’s eye. when you point a finger at someone you have three fingers pointing back!
yitzchak
September 11, 2025 at 6:13 am
So Mr Lamola claims that Israel began this war by invading Gaza.
Ryan you sound like an antisemitic invert to me.
If you are opposed to Moslem fundamentalism I am yet to see it.
Try the embassies of Sudan,Iran,Iraq Syria opposing human rights violations, for your next protest.
You echo the bigotry of those around you which you have absorbed by blue tooth symbiosis.
SAJFP? South Africans for a Jew Free Palestine
Ryan
September 11, 2025 at 2:13 pm
Yitzchak, you are scrambling.
I have not mensioned Lamola once and I totally disagree with his analysis. You somehow just transplant his views onto me?
I have openly said I am oppsoed to Islamic fundametalism, what would you like me to do in order to prove it to you? Accuse all Muslims of being anti-semetic as you do?
I invite you to show me anything I have said that is anti-semetic. I am so tired of being called a self hating Jew becuase you have no substance to your argument so you cling to that as a life raft.
What do I have to do with the SAJFP???? You and your buddy Gary are the ones that bring them up, I dont have any views that align with theirs so why are both of you so obssesed with them?
Stop throwing mud and address an argument.
yitzchak
September 12, 2025 at 11:30 am
The nazis called the Jews..Luftmenschen….people who float around without identity.
These days disaffiliated deracinated Jews are Bundists reincarnated.
They are still fantasizing over Birobidjan.
My problem is that the 21C Jews will lose their identity, and that education begins with a tabula rasa.