MERCAZ USA Newsletter — Winter 2008-2009

Tali Schools Continue Expansion

The TALI school network, the system of secular schools providing enhanced Jewish studies, continues its growth with ten new elementary schools joining the network with the start of the academic year. This brings to 83 the number of schools identified with TALI, in addition to 100 kindergartens, with the result that 10% of all Israeli children enrolled in secular public elementary schools study in a TALI framework.

This is a tremendous achievement for Dr. Eitan Chikli, the Director–General of the TALI Education Fund, which is associated with the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, the Fund's professional staff and its generous donors, including the Jewish Agency's annual stream funding, that over the past twenty years, have helped the system grow from 2,500 children to the current 35,000 children.

While it celebrates its growth, recent legislation proposed by MK Michael Melchior, Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, and passed by the Knesset to set up a third public education system, has raised a question mark over the future of the TALI network.

The new public education system, is supposed to bring together under one framework, various Israeli educational experiments, including the nearly 200 TALI schools and pre–schools, the 25 institutions in the Meytarim Network for Jewish Democratic Education and a few individual schools, with an enhanced budget from the Ministry of Education.

While agreeing with Dr. Eitan Chikli that the Ministry's funding for the new system is a good start, Dr. David Golinkin, President of the Schechter Institute, has commented: "We are still in doubt as to the law's impact on the TALI school network. The law carefully avoids using the word "pluralism" [in the name of the new school system], which means that this or a future government could put its implementation in the hands of Orthodox political parties that are not pluralistic at all.

[Moreover] the fact that the implementation will be in the hands of a public committee to be appointed by the Ministry of Education means that TALI may not be represented proportionately to its numbers, which currently dwarf any other network of pluralistic schools."

For more information about the TALI schools, contact Schechter Institutes Inc. at 866–830–3321 or visit www.tali.org.il.

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