ANT KATZ

Read what SA Board of Jewish Education says

Parents of children in the Ilan Poreach (“budding flower”) kindergarten and nursery school, however, rallied strong support for the teacher.

The brouhaha began when a mother posted an image of her three year old wearing the yellow star, which the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust era. According to the teacher, she instructed the children to wear the star as an educational tool to express to them what Holocaust Memorial Day was about, and how Jews were isolated and singled out for persecution.

However, the original complainant – who contacted many Israeli media outlets – said this method of teaching the Holocaust was “unacceptable,” because it was “inappropriate” for children that age. The story was picked up by media in Israel and abroad, and in response the municipality suspended the teacher, and summoned her to a dismissal hearing.

But parents of many of the 20 other children in the kindergarten class have come to the defence of the teacher. On the city’s Facebook page, dozens of messages of support appeared over the weekend, with parents calling the suspension and possible dismissal of the teacher “crazy.”

Posted one parent: “All children should be required to wear the yellow star on Holocaust Memorial Day,” adding that “doing so would solidify the message of the day and ensure that children identify with the Holocaust. If there were more teachers like this, students would have a much stronger connection with their history.”

Reward her instead

A clearly unhappy Clive Levy of Petah Tikva wrote a letter to the Jerusalem Post saying: “…the pre-school instructor should be given an award instead of being castigated. First, children of pre-school age would certainly not be traumatized, and the reaction of the parents was extreme, to say the least. Second, this is a perfect time for parents to explain to their children the meaning of the yellow star and the fact that many children their age were forced to wear them.

Not so, says SA Board of Jewish Education

The SA Board of Jewish Education’s general director, Rabbi Craig Kacev, told Jewish Report Online today that he believed that it was “inappropriate to try and teach pre-school children about the Shoah.”

When he first saw the story, says Rabbi Kacev, what worried him was that the teacher would have been trying to educate the four- or five-year-olds on the subject. “I wouldn’t agree with a teacher at pre-school teaching about the Shoah,” he says emphatically. Jewish day-schools have plenty of time to teach learners about it when they are old enough to understand, he says, without risking traumatising them.

On having older kids wear a yellow star to express their identification with the Europeans who suffered in the Shoah per se, he believes, is okay. But, by wearing it at a Jewish school, in a Jewish community or in Israel for that matter, would not expose them to the humiliation their ancestors would have felt.

Back in central Israel’s Rishon Lezion, another parent asked the municipality not to “fold before the populist and hysterical pressure. Do not harm this teacher’s ability to earn a salary. You could disagree with her methodology, but it isn’t a reason to fire her.” Yet another parent wrote that “creativity is not a crime, and a different approach to education than going by the book is not a reason for dismissal. You could say that she made a mistake, these things happen. All the rest is media hysteria.”

Another local mother posted a photo of her daughter wearing a yellow patch on Facebook. “Shocked, completely stunned, find it hard to speak, refuse to understand… this is how my three-year-old daughter returned from the day care centre today. I don’t remember if and how I was taught in nursery school about Holocaust Remembrance Day, we all know and respect its importance, but the message was conveyed to the toddlers today in an appalling, unacceptable way,” she wrote.

Taking the contrary view, Meir Indor, head of the Almagor terror victims’ organization, sent a letter to the Rishon Lezion municipality, saying that “nothing happened to the children. We are much better off with teachers who creatively try to teach values than those who are passive and just go by the book.”

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