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There’s a phrase that has quietly become the governing philosophy of Israel education: Meet learners where they are. It sounds humble. It sounds learner-centered. It has the ring of progressive pedagogy and good pastoral instinct.

It is also, if taken seriously as an educational principle, a recipe for going nowhere.

I have a confession to make: I’ve said it myself. We all have. It rolls off the tongue at board presentations and foundation convenings, and no one pushes back because what kind of monster argues against meeting people where they are? But somewhere along the way, a posture of pastoral care got elevated into an educational philosophy — and those are not the same thing.

Education exists to impart information, shape attitudes and inspire behaviors. It presupposes that there is somewhere worth going, and that the educator has a responsibility — not just a preference — to help get learners there. That’s the work, and it is directional by definition. Of course, educators must be sensitive to who the learner is, but they should not have to choose between fidelity to tradition and responsiveness to students. They have to hold that tension with honesty and integrity.

This doesn’t mean coercion. It doesn’t mean indifference to the context, readiness or emotional reality of the person sitting in front of you. But taking your student seriously is not the same as ratifying wherever they happen to be. A doctor who only tells patients what they want to hear isn’t being compassionate. A coach who never pushes an athlete past a comfort zone isn’t being kind.

The crisis facing Israel education right now is not a deficit of warmth. Israel educators in particular and Jewish educators more generally are, as a cohort, extraordinarily caring people. The crisis is a deficit of conviction — conviction that Israel literacy matters, that certain texts and practices and historical memories are worth transmitting even to people who did not ask for them, that education has goals that exist prior to and independent of what any given learner shows up wanting.

The Jewish community has every right to expect educators to have a perspective on Israel that is not reduced to “complexity.” While Israel faces challenges, both internal and external, so does every other country in the world. Those challenges don’t belie the fact that Israel is core to our identity, home to nearly half our people and a breathtaking miracle in which each of us has a stake and to which each of us has a responsibility. 

As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, “To defend a country, you need an army. But to defend an identity, you need a school.” That line gets at something essential: Education is not merely accompaniment; it is transmission. It has a utility and purpose. It is the deliberate handing on of memory, knowledge, language and love. 

The events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath clarified a great deal. They revealed that gaps in Jewish knowledge and Jewish belonging are not neutral; they have consequences. Young Jews who did not know enough to contextualize what they were seeing were, in many cases, swept away by the first compelling narrative that found them. That is an educational failure — not a failure of meeting people where they are, but a failure of not having brought them far enough along before the storm hit.

Jewish educators do not need to choose between being welcoming and being purposeful. The most transformative teachers in anyone’s life were usually both: They saw you clearly, and then they handed you something you did not know you needed. They held a destination in mind even when you could not yet see it yourself.

That is not a betrayal of the learner. It is the whole point of education.

Mark Charendoff is the president of Maimonides Fund.