The Unfinished Education: Power, Religion and Education Struggles in Multicultural Israel

Abstract

The chapter looks at the workings of legal pluralism in public education in a system that has been openly recognized as multicultural. It deals with the interplay of law and religion in public education through the versatility of religious law, legal pluralism as well as religion’s possible adaptation and reconciliation with modernity in the concrete Israeli setting. It explores more specifically how legal and policy responses to religious diversity in education are balanced (or not) with the exercise of other fundamental rights within a multicultural society as well as the implications that these clashes of rights produce. The basis of each conflict involving religion in the public sphere relates to whether the preservation of cultural identity should take priority over the enforcement of shared citizenship (values) or vice versa. It is the nature and resolution of these conflicts that the discussion will engage with. To that effect, the chapter will focus on how, from a constitutional perspective, the rights to religious freedom, education and equality are balanced and through which constitutional tools they are operationalized. The factors of legal tradition, constitutional make-up, constitutional recognition of diversity/religion will be taken into account along with more socio-historical factors dictating constitutional choice.

Keywords: Religious Freedom, Education, Identity, Equality, Multiculturalism, Conflict, Normative Pluralism