The book, “Hedge” (the name in Hebrew, “Gader Hayah,” literally means “Live Fence”) will not be allowed into the extended curriculum in Literature, given the opposition of officials in the Education Ministry to what appears like the promotion of intermarriage between an Arab man and a Jewish woman. The Hebrew Writers Association is not taking the decision lying down, accusing Minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi) of racism.
Ministry of Education senior officials opposed the inclusion into the schools curriculum of “Hedge,” by Dorit Rabinyan, which deals with a love affair between an Arab man and a Jewish woman in New York. This despite the recommendation of the advisory committee on curricular matters of the Ministry of Education, headed by Prof. (and internationally renowned poet) Rafi Weichert from Haifa University, which recommended adding the book to the list for the advanced literature program in high schools.
Earlier this month, Dr. Shlomo Herzig, who is in charge of literary studies at the Education Ministry, appealed the rejection of the recommendation and his appeal was rejected this week. In a letter sent by Deputy Chairwoman of the ministry’s Pedagogical Secretariat Dr. Dalia Pfennig, appointed after Minister Bennett had fired the previous chairman, Dr. Nir Michaeli, explained the reasons for the ban:
“in the Israeli reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the book might create in some classrooms the opposite effect of what the work looks to present,” Pfennig wrote. “The piece is contemporary and therefore places the reader in a very tangible and powerful encounter with the dilemma of the institutionalization of love, when he or she does not have the complete tools with which to weigh such decisions. … The story is based on the romantic theme of impossible, prohibited, secret love. Adolescent youths tend to romanticize reality and lack, for the most part, the overall systemic vision which would include considerations like national identity preservation and the meaning of assimilation.”
MK Dov Hanin (Joint Arab List) said in response that “today the Education Minister bans Dorit Rabinyan’s book because it has a love story between a Jewish woman and an Arab man. Tomorrow he’ll ban the Bible because it has a love story between a Moabite woman and a Jewish man? And they call themselves ‘Bayit Yehudi?'”
MK Merav Michaeli, Chairwoman of the Zionist Camp Knesset faction, said, “The Arabs are flocking to the polls, the Arabs take our daughters — these are two sides of the same coin. In a place where certain human beings are banned, it’s to be expected that books that present them as human beings would also be banned. In a place where people with views the government objects to are marked, it is to be expected that literary and artistic works would also be censored. The Thought Police is already here, in Israel today. Under Minister Bennett, the Ministry of Education has become a branch of LEHAVA (an extremist anti-assimilation group), with the goal of preventing education in the name of racism.”
It should be noted that Minister Bennett does not possess the executive power to actually ban a book from being sold, he can only influence curricular decisions. But in Israel, where best-selling books are those that sell tens of thousands of copies, gaining a captive, classroom audience, makes a big difference to the author.
Dorit Rabinyan, the author of “Hedge,” told Channel 2 News that the ministry’s decision was an ironic meeting between fiction and reality. “The book deals with precisely this fear,” Rabinyan said. “There is an irony of fate in the fact that a book that deals with the Israeli fear of assimilation and disappearance in the Arab region in which we exist was rejected in the very manner of its central theme.”