The unfinished education

Franz von Benda-Beckmann’s frame on human rights in legally plural settings suggests that the study of the struggles between laws and cultures can be enlightening in order to understand better the dialogical analysis of human rights in their socio-legal dimension. ¹ ‘Empirical variations’ of such rights are observed within Israel. While there is an obvious level of constitutional analysis, this inquiry, focusing on the right to education and religious freedom also carries the more ambitious (and nuanced) aim of offering a different perspective on how human rights may be understood, interpreted and applied by different categories of social actors, more particularly religious communities. The ‘voice’ of freedom of education and religion certainly belongs to governments, political parties and courts but it should also be heard from religious communities, especially within divided social contexts.