Haaretz - Israel News - The Bible - a foreign language:
"The Bible - a foreign language

By Avirama GolanWhat a humiliating ping-pong High School Bible studies have undergone. First they were reduced, then they were turned into an optional subject, and this week, after protests erupted from all those appalled by the prospective disengagement between Jewish students and their culture's founding text, they were restored to the mandatory curriculum. Just as has happened with literature and other humanities...

...Now, in their time of crisis, the settlers are moving closer to ultra-Orthodoxy and abandoning the entire Israeli canon. The Bible, along with Natan Alterman, are giving way to the Talmud, and "faith-based" Hebrew is replacing the rich, multilayered Biblical tongue."