ABSTRACT
The tendency to infuse "secular" education with more and more religious Jewish content pre-dated the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and has been intensifying ever since. A dialectical tension between secular and religious elements has characterized the Israeli educational system from its inception. Gender segregated classes are smaller than mixed gender ones and, students in gender segregated schools come from more affluent families. In spite of that, the educational attainments in the gender segregated schools are similar to those of the non-segregated or partially segregated schools. The history of the thorny issue of Jewish education in the secular state school system has been marked by a series of committees set up in order to recommend ways of dealing with it. Between the enactment of the State Education Law in 1953 and 1985 civic education in Israel was focused on the formal and legal aspects of state institutions and on the citizens' duties, rather than their rights.
