Democracy Day by Rafi Sackville

Israel Today Democracy Day

By Rafi Sackville

History and civics teacher Yevgeni stands in front of a class of juniors on Democracy Day, which commemorates the 27th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. He begins the lesson by explaining that he wasn’t born into a democracy. The Russia he grew up in allowed no freedom of speech or expression. By way of comparison, he wants the students to recognize why they shouldn’t take their personal freedom of speech for granted. Many of them do.

He asks them about their understanding of stereotypes and racism. Their answers, mainly cliched, don’t really get to the heart of the matter, which is this: people aren’t born hating others because of their color or creed. They learn to hate. If we can teach people to hate, we can teach them to love as well. After all, it’s easier to love than to hate.

Yevgeni explains how we develop stereotypes and how there will always be people who are “different” to us be it by skin color, ethnicity, or by our own skewered stances.

It reminded me of an occasion when I was teaching in Reut-Maccabim, which today stands on the edge of Modiin. It was in the early 1990s. I was dressed in black pants, a white shirt, and sneakers. My tzitzit were out, and for all intents and purposes, I looked somewhat charedi, even though I wasn’t.

The school building had not yet been completed, and my 11th graders were assigned to learn in a caravan adjacent to the street. As I was teaching, a group of yeshiva students walked by. They were dressed exactly like me. My students, all of whom were secular, suddenly raced to the window and began chanting, “Dosim Dosim” (religious, religious). When I asked them why they didn’t chant that to me, one of them casually replied, “But Rafi, we know you.”

The story is pertinent, because at this point Yevgeni divided the class into groups. He put up a slide which showed 14 boxes each depicting diametrically opposed groups within Israeli society. Students were assigned the task of choosing any two groups and trying to find common ground between them, to develop a form of reconciliation.

Sample couplings were Jews and Arabs, the Left and Right, Center of the country and the Periphery, Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

It is one of the features living in Israel to be exposed to clearly delineated different, cultural, and political groups. The distinction is more amorphous in New York, where the melting pot of society is unlike Israel. In Israel, we are mostly forced upon each other, whereas America is large enough to afford people the space and comfort to assimilate within their own cliques to the exclusion of other groups.

The classroom debate was lively and telling. The students were like a microcosm of society; some groups succeeded, while others failed to find common ground.

After Yevgeni’s lesson, the students gathered on the outside basketball court where we held a ceremony in honor of the late prime minister. By noon, students were back in regular classes, where I’m quite certain their minds had long wandered onto other things.

The ceremony was a mixture of songs, short speeches, and prayer. The weather was warm. Students were asked to sit in the sun. Some students claimed they would wilt under the “harsh” conditions. Some moved off the court and under the shade of the one tree next to the court. It wasn’t mid-August, nor was it oppressive. The irony was not lost on us because those seeking the shade were mainly seniors, the same students who next year will begin their military service where the conditions any month of the year are difficult. Order was quickly restored by the principal, who gathered these wayward exiles and returned them to the proper places among the general school population.

I looked out across the court and reflected on our youth, how they would soon enter the adult phases of their lives and be given the opportunity to exercise their right to vote. Rabin’s commemoration came days after Israel had elected Binyamin Netanyahu as the country’s next prime minister.

Regardless of one’s political belief, the recent Israeli election was a model of democracy in action. The campaigns were civil, albeit noisy in places. Polling stations were quiet, and the results were accepted across the political spectrum. The only beating of breasts was among the losers who, in retrospect, faltered due to self-inflicted wounds; the liberal left’s failure was not pinned on faulty election machinery or voter fraud or on conspiracy theories. What they didn’t do was blame voting machines, or elections workers, or Maricopa County officials.

The system worked the way it was supposed to. The results speak for themselves. After cracks in the fabric and integrity of recent America elections, Israel, the country more often berated throughout the world for its supposed lack of democracy, deserves a pat on the back.

Israel is far from perfect; the world reminds us so on a daily basis. As educators, we do our best to instill our students with a proper and befitting notion of democracy. Our syllabus allots us 10 daily minutes before the start of the first lesson to address the issues of the day. I have raised topics ranging from road rage and social responsibility to accepting other people’s views of the world.

It is ironic that our current juniors weren’t born until the 10th anniversary of Rabin’s death. Even more ironic that many of my juniors back in 1995 probably have juniors of their own today.

I am hopeful that, despite our best efforts as educators in a world of misinformation, despite the relentless barrage of online violence, the messages we want our children and grandchildren to learn about historical events – messages we don’t want them to forget – are efforts that will not be wasted.

Democracy Day