Here we are. Day 40 of the teachers' strike. A day just like any other, except that since this is the Jewish State, this is a milestone you can't ignore. Moshe (Moses) spends forty days on Mt. Sinai learning the entire Torah; then after the Sin of the Golden Calf, he has do it all over again. Centuries later, Eliyahu (Elijah) reenacts this process. Granted, this is about the best classroom situation you can imagine: no food, drink or bathroom breaks, and a teacher-student ratio of Infinite to one. Still, it shows what you can accomplish in forty days.
It's not only at Sinai that this magic number comes up. Forty days and nights of rain remake the world in Noach's time, and the Midrash notes that it's forty days after conception that an embryo becomes more than “mere water,” and forty days before birth that a heavenly voice announces its soul mate.
This seems to be a point lost on Ran Erez, head of the Secondary Schools Teachers Organization. Possibly, as a gym teacher, he never taught those sources, although you'd think that a guy who wears a kippa would have picked it up somewhere. The number he was aiming for was much more impressive: one hundred thousand. Supposedly, that's how many supporters he got to come out on Saturday night, Motza'ei Shabbat, to Tel Aviv's Rabin Square. It's an admirable achievement, no doubt. But did it slip Mr. Erez's mind what was scheduled for Erev Shabbat, Friday afternoon? The director-general of the Finance Ministry was waiting for him to discuss a possible agreement, but Ran skipped the meeting. He was busy, you see, having a very important demonstration to organize.
I'm not letting the government off the hook here. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to intervene, and he seems miffed that his finance and education minister have been forced to deal with this piddling issue. Still, when the teachers' representative decides it's not worth his time even to show up for a meeting with the other side, there's something seriously wrong. When education ranks below garbage collection or baggage handling as a national priority, you've got to wonder. Granted, one hundred thousand is a big number to gather in one night; now, how about we deal with the five hundred thousand students who are losing out every day?
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