As recommended by the Biton Committee, the Israel education ministry has put together an optional curriculum module on the contributions of Sephardi and Mizrahi women, NRG online reports. While a focus on prominent women is to be applauded, these heroines of culture and history have little in common except their gender. (It is as if Albert Einstein and Woody Allen were lumped together because they are both Ashkenazi males). In my view it would have been better for education and social integration had these women being included in the core curriculum, instead of being locked up in an eastern ghetto.
The Israel Ministry of Education has published a part of the curriculum recommended by the Biton Commission – this time on Mizrahi women. The program, to be called ‘Light from the East’, was developed by the Gender Equality Unit at the Ministry of Education, and it focuses on the contributions of 28 Sephardi and Mizrahi women.
Among other things, the new curriculum will include the actress Ronit Elkabetz, the late director and actress Hana Azoulay Spree, Israel Prize laureate Geula Cohen, Israel Prize laureate rabbinic Adina Bar-Shalom who founded the “Haredi College of Jerusalem, (the great Sephardi leader and philanthropist) Dona Gracia, (the poet) Adi Kaissar and more.
Leave a Reply