Teaching Zionism in an age of moral complexity

There is a moment in every great story — Shakespeare knew it well — when a character reaches a point of ‘anagnorisis’, a Greek word that reflects a flash of recognition. It is a realisation that the world is more complicated than once believed. It is the moment when the plot twists, but more importantly, so does the soul.

Our tradition is full of points of anagnorisis. When Tamar reveals she is pregnant by the same Judah who seeks to burn her alive for ‘harlotry’, Judah slumps and declares She is more righteous than I. When Moses transforms to a leader who will confront Pharoah and lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he asks Who am I that I should go to Pharoah? And after King David’s sins with Bathsheva and the murder of her husband Uria, Natan shakes him with the words You are the man and David finally realises the error of his ways and repents, I have sinned against the Lord.

Now more than ever it is that same spirit of recognition that underpins what we try to achieve every day in the classrooms of our Zionist Jewish schools, especially when teaching our young people about Israel, Gaza, Zionism, and identity.

This is not an academic exercise. It is an act of courage, faith, and a commitment to complexity.

Why complexity? Because complexity is not something to be feared — it is something to be cultivated.

I have been asked many times if the teaching of Zionism has recently become complicated, and I always reply that whilst the history of our people is complicated, the teaching of Zionism is not.

Let us start with something foundational: Zionism is not a problematic idea. It is not, as some would have us believe, a synonym for oppression or expansionism. It is, quite simply and unapologetically, the belief that the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination in a portion of our ancestral homeland. It is the ongoing commitment to a Jewish homeland, people and sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

There is nothing controversial about teaching that.

In fact, it would be educational negligence to do otherwise. At the school in which I have the privilege of being Principal, as with the Jewish people worldwide for millennia, we have taught, sung, studied, questioned, and prayed about Israel for generations. And we do so joyfully and we do so with purpose.

But Zionism, like any political or ideological framework, does not exist in a vacuum. To teach Zionism responsibly in 2025 is to teach it as a love that is neither blind nor naïve. We teach it through the lens of the Holocaust, through Jewish migration stories, through poetry and politics, through Israeli music and the lives of immigrants and sabras, and soldiers and citizens. And just as Australians teach about Australian history, British teach about British history and Americans teach about American history, we teach it alongside its ethical burdens, its historical tensions and its unresolved dreams.

To love Israel is not to idolise it. Nor is it to immunise it from critique.

So let us now focus on our present situation.

October 7th shattered something. Hamas’s rampage — the murders, the kidnappings, the sadism — was not only an attack on Israelis. It was an attack on decency, on coexistence and on the very possibility of peace.

In our classrooms, particularly for our older children, we do not shy away from naming the horror. But nor did we flatten the story. It is possible — and necessary — to hold multiple truths:
- That Hamas bears full responsibility for initiating a war of terror.
- That Israel has a moral right and obligation to defend itself and secure its people.
- That the experience of ordinary Gazans — suffering, starving, grieving — is real and heart-wrenching.
- That Israeli actions must be held to high moral standards, and that mistakes made in war demand reflection.

All of this can be true at the same time.

Our students are not too young or too fragile to hear that. Quite the opposite: they crave it. They hunger for moral clarity, yes — but not at the expense of intellectual honesty.

Some wonder if Jewish schools which are not confined by denominational Orthodoxies – such as pluralist ones including Bialik — have it especially hard.

But here is the truth: pluralism is our strength, not our weakness.

Pluralism doesn’t mean 'everything goes.' It means that we embrace the richness of Jewish thought, from the Mishnah to Amos Oz, from Etgar Keret to the Chief Rabbinate. It means that we see Jewish identity as textured, and Jewish belonging as an open tent. Torah is an open-source construct and no community holds it only for themselves.

We do not shrink from uncomfortable conversations. We facilitate them with care.

We teach our students that just as Australians can love their country while acknowledging the deep wounds inflicted on Indigenous peoples, so too can Jews love Israel while holding space for its challenges, errors, and unmet aspirations.

This is not disloyalty. It is in reality a deep and honest form of loyalty.

Our students live in a digital age in which binary thinking is rewarded and algorithmic certainty is a feature, not a bug. The world of social media demands allegiance to the simplest, loudest position. You're either for or against. Zionist or Terrorist.  Victim or villain.

But we do not teach TikTok Torah.

We teach that Jewish tradition embraces nuance: that the Torah commands us not only to remember our nemesis Amalek but also to return the lost donkey of our enemy. That even as we celebrate our freedom on Passover, we diminish our joy by spilling wine in memory of the Egyptian dead. We halve our celebratory Hallel because we care about the Other.

This tradition is not new. It is 3,000 years old.

We do not need to manufacture complexity. We need to trust our students, in the words of the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, as ‘citizens from birth’.  Complexity is a door that we know our children can walk through.  

To teach Zionism, to teach Israel, to teach war and ethics and empathy, is not to walk a tightrope. It is to plant a garden — where roots run deep and branches grow in different directions.

We do not need to panic. And we reject fear. As Chaim Nachman Bialik exhorts us, we need to step forth with courage.

We need to have the courage to say that there is no 'perfect victim' in the eyes of the world, and that the Jewish people have long been forced to apologise for surviving. We need to have the courage to say that we will not abandon our Zionism because others are uncomfortable with Jewish autonomy. We need to have the courage to teach our children that our tradition demands compassion, even toward our enemies.

And we need to have the courage to say — clearly and without equivocation — that we will never apologise for defending ourselves, nor for teaching our children to think critically.

The greatest gift that we can offer our children is the ability to hold more than one truth at the same time. We welcome anagnorisis not as a moment of shame or failure, but as an essential rite of passage.

Israel is not perfect. No country is. But Israel remains a miracle in a hostile region, a place where Hebrew poetry and high-tech innovation and human resilience dance daily with grief and geopolitics.

To teach that is not indoctrination. It is education.

It is what Jewish schools must do — and what Jewish identity demands.

We will not give in to the simplicity the world craves. Instead we will raise a generation unafraid of complexity. And in doing so, we will raise leaders, thinkers, and lovers of Israel who will build a better future — not because it is easy, but because it is worthy.