Opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Thursday condemned secular Israelis’ ignorance of Judaism, especially in the “state of Tel Aviv” as well as the religious school system’s reluctance to recognize the state of Israel.
“There are schools in Israel that refuse to conduct national matriculation exams because they refuse to recognize the state of Israel as the body testing their students,” Livni said during a Kadima conference at the Knesset. “I will be the first person to support minority rights, but the question is whether minorities have the right, due to bad political system and weak politicians, to shrug off the authority of the government and promote only that one sector of Israeli society without even trying to create common ground. This is how we now find ourselves living in separate societies, one next to the other, without a common language – some will speak Hebrew, some Arabic, others Yiddish.”
“Being a Jew is not something you’re told,” she continued, “it’s an inner feeling of belonging, of being moved and wanting to belong.”
“I am more concerned by the public in the Jewish state of Tel Aviv than the public in Bnei Brak – in Bnei Brak there is a closed community that guards the tradition of the same Jewish melody on Yom Kippur, holidays and Shabbat. I am concerned by the fact that this melody isn’t sounded in other parts of the nation. A generation has arisen here that avoids visiting synagogues because they identify the Jewish thing as some… >>>
