How to teach Jewish identity

(JNS) - Many American Jews assume that it's easy to be Jewish in Israel given the ubiquity of Hebrew and history in the Jewish state, where one needn't pay tens of thousands of dollars annually for day school or thousands for synagogue membership to raise children who are knowledgeable about Judaism. But senior Israeli educators told JNS that is not the case.

Several Israeli education officials, who spent a week visiting New York schools and synagogues, told JNS that Israeli students aren't taught what it means to be part of the Jewish people or to appreciate Jewish diversity and pluralism. An...