Moshe Shriki, director of the social leadership college Mimizrach Shemesh, strives to instill Mizrahi culture — the heritage of Jewry from Islamic lands — in his students, but it is not always easy. “The book ‘Faith and Redemption’ is a perfect example,” Shriki​ told Al-Monitor. “It’s a Jewish thought textbook for the public religious school system, published in 2014. The book covers 160 Jewish thinkers, only one of whom is Mizrahi.”

In September 2015, “​Faith and Redemption” caused an uproar in Israel as another example of the exclusion of Mizrahi culture and history from the Israeli curriculum. “We put together an alternative list of 30-40 Mizrahi thinkers and presented it [to the Education Ministry]. Now they have added an optional list of Mizrahi philosophers to the existing book. That is, the teacher can choose whether to teach about them or not,” said Shriki.

From Shriki's perspective, the place of Mizrahi authors and thinkers in the Israeli curriculum is critical. Shriki, also former principal of the alternative Kedma secondary school, said, “There were contributions from Mizrahi writers like Almog Behar and Eli Eliyahu in the [reading comprehension] portions of the matriculation exams in literature in recent years. But I don’t want them there. I want them in the mandatory curriculum.” 

Israeli society deals quite a bit with inter-ethnic tensions. Such tensions, it seems, led the Education Ministry to make the dramatic announcement on Feb. 4 of plans to establish a committee to strengthen the Mizrahi cultural presence in the educational system. The committee is to be headed by the poet Erez Biton, winner of the 2015 Israel Prize and of Mizrahi descent. The goal of the committee is “to create balance in relation to the heritage of Eastern communities and to deepen the sense of unity among the people.”