Developing leaders for today and tomorrow

Over 25,000 people have experienced the Education Division's programming with 15,000 participating this year alone, despite a year marked by war and security upheaval. Participants include students, educators, soldiers, police officers, hospital staff, and public officials. The breadth of the museum’s programs reflects a deliberate effort to reach people across Israeli society, from those working within its institutions today to those who will shape their future.

The Education Division was created in response to some of the most pressing challenges facing Israeli society today: political polarization, social divisions, questions of identity, crises of trust, and a complex security reality. The division’s School of Civic Discourse, as well as its Leadership Academy, address these challenges by equipping people with the tools to navigate disagreement, build relationships across differences, and strengthen a sense of shared responsibility.

“This is our mission,” states Dr. Granit Almog-Bareket, Vice President of MOTJ's Education Division and head of their Leadership Academy program. “In a traditional museum, you observe, experience something internally, and leave. Here, we want you to undergo a process at the end of which you take action upon yourself — a leadership act. This happens because you recognize the complexity; you understand the value of the other. And you realize that difference can be our greatest gift.”

The uniqueness of its programs lies not only in their content, but in their methodology. Visitors are challenged to engage in experiential learning, debate, examine real dilemmas, meet people from different worlds, and learn how to turn values into action.

The School of Civic Discourse seeks to revive the ancient Jewish tradition of respectful disagreement where one does not seek to erase the other side but to learn from it.

At the school, educators, principals, young people, public figures, and community leaders acquire tools for managing complex conversations. They learn how to address sensitive issues, lead diverse groups, and create spaces where people can express an opinion even when it is unpopular.

This philosophy comes to life through one of the museum’s core programs, which brings together high school students from across Israeli society. Now in its second year, the program is run in partnership with the Ministry of Defense.

In its pilot year, the program brought together 1,200 students, including secular teenagers, Haredi students, and Druze and Bedouin youth. For many, it was their first opportunity to sit across from, and genuinely engage with, someone from a very different background.

For example, students from Rimonim School in Gedera met students from Al-Hikma School in Yanuh-Jat, a Druze village in northern Israel, to build connections between their communities. In another initiative, 10th-graders from schools in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Beit Shemesh took part in “Talking Belonging,” a three-session leadership program exploring identity and the common ground they share despite their differences.

Principals and teachers experience the program first, so they can internalize the process before bringing it to their students. This reflects the museum’s broader understanding of educators and school administrators as community leaders who influence hundreds of students, parents, and staff.

When the students arrive, they are placed into small groups and begin with an icebreaker designed to help them get to know one another.

“This is really difficult,” says Almog-Bareket, who designed the wing based on lessons learned from her decades of experience developing programs and training leaders both in Israel and abroad. “You’re asking them to sit down next to each other when they don’t know one another. But then something changes. They get to know one another, and it’s genuinely moving. Because first, it’s about understanding how much we have in common.”

The conversation then moves into more complex territory, including military conscription for Haredim, Israel’s Nation-State Law, and Druze integration.

“When a Druze student shares that her uncle fell in battle alongside Jewish pilots, the Nation-State Law is no longer an abstract debate; it becomes personal,” Almog-Bareket explains. “They sit together, identify shared values, and write joint statements. It is one of the most moving processes I have ever witnessed.”

Participants are then encouraged to continue the conversations throughout the year, and many run joint programming together.

Established by Almog-Bareket in 2024, the Leadership Academy is built around a simple but powerful idea: leadership is not a position. Leadership is an act.

In Israeli society, leadership is sometimes understood in terms of authority, rank, or power. The Museum offers a different approach, where leadership is measured by the ability to create change, influence the people and communities around you, and take responsibility even when you hold no formal authority.

It begins with a question: “What can I do to make the society in which I live better?”

The Academy cultivates a community of young and established leaders from diverse fields, including education, security, civil society, academia, the public sector, and local communities. Rather than separating these groups, the Academy deliberately mixes them, placing a school principal, an army officer, and a civil-society organizer in the same room to work through the same material.

Through meetings between participants with different backgrounds and perspectives, they do not simply learn about leadership; they experience it firsthand. They engage with public dilemmas, questions of Jewish and Israeli identity, managing disagreement, and building social resilience. They learn how to lead complex conversations, bridge divides between different groups, and turn a personal vision into public impact.

The Academy’s central message is that true leadership is not the ability to make people follow you, but the ability to make them believe that they, too, can lead.

Ultimately, MOTJ’s impact is not measured only by the number of people who pass through its programs. It can be seen in principals who return to their schools with a new vision, commanders who lead with a stronger sense of responsibility, educators who acquire tools for managing disagreement, and young people who believe that a better society can be built.

It also extends far beyond the classroom to the field. By working with sports teams such as Beitar Jerusalem, the Museum extends its reach into spaces not traditionally associated with educational dialogue.

“Sport is a powerful force in shaping identity, belonging, and community,” explains Almog-Bareket. “It creates an opportunity to engage fans, players, young people, and community leaders around questions of responsibility, respect, identity, and partnership.”

MOTJ believes that Israel’s future will be determined not only on the battlefields, in the Knesset, or in the courts, but also in classrooms, communities, and the everyday encounters between people. For Almog-Bareket and the museum, the goal is not to eliminate differences, but to build the capacity to live with them: to listen without surrendering conviction, remain in conversation across divides, and ultimately find ways to act together.