Re: Ma'ayanot and Israel

I do feel that Ma'ayanot could use more of the ardent Zionism that I feel is so integral to a Jewish education. Many of the students are very Zionistic, and many do aspire to make aliya, but it seems that this aspect of their education happened more outside of school than in it. I do think that we need to make a MUCH bigger deal of Yom Ha'atzmaut in order to communicate and educate about the importance of the current incarnation of Eretz Yisrael. And there are "small" ways that we can more consistently include Israel--like one day of Chanuka featuring the "Kotel Cam" of lighting the menorah, like a monthly trivia contest in the Stream based on modern Zionist history and maybe a speaker from NORPAC (or pushing the mission this year more) or the Israel Consul General Also, do we still have the Israel updates once a week after tefilla? I think we are all somewhat reluctant to "preach" anything because it goes against the Ma'ayanot philosophy of critical inquiry and I certainly do not believe in supplanting religion with Zionism. Also, the very fact that the modern State has been around for (BH) a while, makes the urgency somewhat harder to grasp. But I think that as we have emphasized yirat shamayim when analyzing midrash and m'farshim, maybe we should talk about how to put the centrality of Eretz Yisrael (and its modern incarnation) into the curriculum more?