Decrying the state of secular studies in Israel, a leading Conservative educator from Jerusalem told an audience at the Morristown Jewish Center Beit Yisrael, “There is the awful alienation and incredible ignorance of Jewish culture and tradition” in his country.

Rabbi David Golinkin, the American-born president of the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, asked some 75 members of his audience on Feb. 18 for their support in bringing “the ideals of Conservative Judaism — a love of God, Jewish tradition, Zionism, and pluralism — to millions of Israelis who have little or no connection to Judaism.”

Speaking at a breakfast meeting in the synagogue’s recreation hall, Golinkin said he had been shocked to discover an airline counter employee at Ben-Gurion Airport who had never heard of the Talmud and to learn in 2003 that a Jerusalem high school held a Hanukka party with a Christmas theme, complete with a tree and Santa Claus.

After he made aliya following his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Golinkin said, he had thought “the enemy of Judaism in the State of Israel was the religious establishment and the Chief Rabbinate.”

But “now, after 31 years of educational activity in Israel,” he said, he believes “the main enemy is secularism, and that secularism was created by the founders of the State of Israel and their successors.”

He said young people’s ignorance of their religious roots occurred “because three generations of Israelis did not receive a serious Jewish education, and that was a conscious decision of Israeli governments and ministers of education since the state was founded.”

Apart from the 20 percent of the Israeli population who he estimates are rigorously Orthodox, and another 20 percent who are avowedly secular, Golinkin said, “the 60 percent in the middle” in fact are in favor of including more religious content in the nation’s public schools.

As an antidote, his institute operates the TALI Schools, a network of 120 schools with a Conservative theological bent, offering programs for some 30,000 students in pre-kindergarten through high school.

TALI is the acronym of the Hebrew for “Enrichment of Jewish Studies,” and many of the people who founded the schools 25 years ago were North American immigrants who wanted their children to have a pluralistic Jewish education in the non-Orthodox state schools. While some of those parents came from the Reform movement, the educational outlook is based on the Conservative outlook of educator Solomon Schechter.

Although state funding is limited to $100,000 “in a good year,” and by law, the TALI Schools cannot charge tuition, their $6 million annual budget is made up partly by funding of $800,000 a year from American Jews via the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Golinkin noted that the agency also distributes similar amounts to Reform and Modern Orthodox educational endeavors, while “the Orthodox Jewish movement gets hundreds of millions of shekels directly from the Israeli government.”

Despite private endowments and contributions from some American-Jewish federations — including UJC MetroWest — which allocates $100,000 annually to the Masorti movement — Golinkin said, “The bottom line is we have to raise $4 million a year in North America. That is why I get on an airplane five times a year. It is not because I like flying on an airplane. I don’t.”

He called for a “Jewish revolution” in Israel “that must adopt itself to the Israeli reality” by sending graduates of his institute’s rabbinical seminary to “participate in different rabbinical and educational activities in order to reach as many Israelis as possible out in the field,” including work as hospital chaplains and religious leaders at Matnasim, Israeli community centers analogous to American JCCs.

“This is a revolution — rabbis who go out to the field and integrate into every aspect of Israeli society,” he said. “Most Israeli children think that a rabbi wears black and does not serve in the army. In TALI schools, the children meet the school rabbi, who is a student or graduate of Schechter who dresses like them and speaks their language.”

Another Schechter Institute program, Midreshet Yerushalayim, teaches basic Judaism in Russian at 34 study centers throughout Israel.

“Some 1,100 new immigrants come every week to study. Most of them are still afraid to pray, but they love to study, because it is an important part of Russian culture,” Golinkin said, noting they are drawn to the program because it is in their native language.

“Is there anything wrong with the way they speak Hebrew? No. But would they come if the program was conducted in Hebrew? No. They come because they like to speak Russian.”

“Without some sort of Jewish identity, we will not be able to exist,” said Golinkin, quoting Aharon Appelfeld, a Holocaust survivor and one of Israel’s leading novelists. “A society without true roots is a society without a future.”