The Education Ministry has asked textbook publishers to eliminate chapters on human reproduction, pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted diseases from science textbooks used in state religious junior high schools as well as from their teacher manuals, Haaretz has learned.

Several publishers have already started making the changes, which were requested in late June. The revised textbooks will be sent to the ministry for approval in the coming weeks.

Publishing sources said that, after they had agreed in principle, the ministry began requesting additional changes, such as eliminating any reference to the female body throughout the book, softening any text or image liable to offend religious sensibilities and using examples more suitable to a religious lifestyle. As a result, one publishing executive said, some publishers who originally agreed to make the revisions changed their minds after realizing their scope.

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The ministry requested the changes at the urging of officials in the state religious school system. “The ministry capitulated to one of the most extremist factions of the religious public,” one publishing executive charged. Another said the changes resembled those demanded by ultra-Orthodox schools.

This will be the first time any distinction has been made between the science texts used in religious schools and those used in secular schools. Until now, all state schools, whether religious or secular, used the same science texts.

Removing the chapter on reproduction means that at no point during their schooling will religious students learn about reproduction from a scientific standpoint, unless they take biology in high school.

Every major textbook publisher in Israel confirmed the details of this report.

Currently, junior high school science texts have chapters on animal, vegetable and human reproduction. The human chapter includes pictures of the male and female reproductive systems and of a sperm fertilizing an egg, as well as explanations of the menstrual cycle.

According to the Education Ministry’s curriculum, the chapter “invites treatment of the issues of preventing pregnancy and preventing sexually transmitted diseases, with sensitivity and adjustments for the target audience.” This treatment is supposed to cover both “behavioral and technological methods” of prevention.

Such preventive methods aren’t in the texts themselves; they are supposed to be taught orally by the teachers. Nevertheless, removing the human reproduction chapter from the texts means the issue won’t arise in class at all.

An examination of the chapters slated for removal reveals that they include basic scientific information about the reproductive system. For instance, one section describes the monthly menstrual cycle: “Every month (during the woman’s period of fertility) one of her ova (the egg cells) ripens and is released from the ovary where it was created. This stage is called ovulation ... Only if a sperm cell reaches the fallopian tube during those days will fertilization occur.”

The chapter includes pictures of the sperm approaching the egg, as well as illustrations of reproductive organs, like the ovary, uterus and fallopian tubes, but these organs are shown in isolation, unconnected to the rest of the body. There are almost no pictures of the human body, only illustrations, and even those, as noted, aren’t placed in the context of the entire body.

Last month, the ministry sent a letter to the publishers in which it asked them to send it a copy of each book before the changes, along with exact descriptions of “the pages and locations that must be removed.” A similar request was sent to the Weizmann Institute of Science, whose researchers write some of the textbooks. Weizmann’s publishing house originally agreed to make the alterations but later changed its mind.

One person involved in the issue said the decision is outrageous, because the ministry never formally decided to change the science curriculum. Academics involved in drafting the curriculum declined to comment.

Science textbooks aren’t the only ones being altered for use in state religious schools, which have long had different history and literature curricula than the secular schools. About 18 months ago, the ministry decided to alter their Hebrew language textbooks as well. For instance, all women pictured in these texts now wear head coverings, and all the girls wear skirts.

Shmuel Shattah, executive director of the moderate religious Zionist organization Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, blasted the decision to censor the science textbooks. “This was an opportunity for religious schools, during the school year and in a supervised fashion, to speak with students about very important matters, and it’s preferable for this to be done in the schools, by educators, rather than outside the schools, in places one shouldn’t learn such things from,” he said.

Shattah, who himself teaches seventh and eighth grade, said he brings in professionals to teach human reproduction and give his students a chance to ask questions. “The attitude was, it’s better for them to hear this from us and not get information only from the Internet or unsupervised sources,” he said.

“After all, children will be exposed to the world at some stage, and then one possibility is that it will blow up in their faces and they won’t be able to cope with it as religious people,” he continued. “As a religious person, it’s better to inoculate them and teach them the reality of the world.”

The Education Ministry responded that women will still figure in the textbooks, but the chapter on human reproduction and methods of preventing it was removed because it doesn’t accord with the state religious school system’s educational doctrine for junior high schools.

Chairwoman of Meretz Zahava Gal-On said in response to the report that the ministry's decision "to censor 'damaging' topics from the curriculum in state-religious schools, such as the human reproductive system or references to the female body, is not only ridiculous, but also worrying."

Meretz chairwoman, Zahava Gal-On described the Education Ministry's decision as "not only ridiculous, but also worrying."

"More than 200,000 children today are in the state-religious education system, which is 200,000 future citizens of the State of Israel who will grow up with ignorance and with the sense that the human body, or to be more specific, the body of the woman, is something dirty," she said. Gal-On added that the education minister and everyone behind the 'terrible' decision should understand that there is nothing embarrasing or damaging in descriptions of ovaries, "but that the education system is something very shameful."

Open gallery view Texts redacted by some publishers at Education Ministry's request.