Second-graders at Gordon Elementary School in Givatayim visited an Orthodox synagogue in town a couple of weeks ago to participate in a traditional ceremony where they receive their Hebrew Bibles. It was seemingly a routine event, which takes place every year for this grade. The ceremony has taken place at the synagogue the last five years. This time, however, it was at the heart of a heated battle between two groups of parents, and between some parents and the principal and the Education Ministry. 

“Religious radicalization!” parents wrote on Facebook, some of whom are members of the group called Free Givatayim, when they learned the ceremony would be held at a synagogue. They argued that holding the event at a religious site is part of an attempt to force their children to become more religious. Free Givatayim published an open letter that stated, among other things, “There are parents of children in the grade who oppose holding the ceremony at an Orthodox synagogue, for whom the connection between Bible studies and an Orthodox synagogue contradicts the way they wish to educate their children, and utterly contradicts their Judaism.” 

Following the parents’ protest, the school’s principal decided to hold the ceremony distributing the Bibles at the school instead. But then a counterpetition, signed by most of the parents of children in the grade, caused him to change his decision again — and to hold the event at that synagogue after all. 

This conflict is one example that attests to the escalating struggle in Israeli society over the question of “religious radicalization.” According to the group Secular Forum, which was established to fight the phenomenon, religious radicalization is “the control of religious Orthodox Judaism over public space by upsetting the necessary balance between Jewish and democratic values and diminishing the various diverse manifestations of Judaism. Radicalization violates the basic right of every person to freedom from religion; it’s the right of every person to be secular.”