Historical background and theoretical framework: Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a change in the perception of art in the religious education system in Israel. After many years of suspicion and being closed towards the term art in Orthodox schools for reasons stemming from conservatism, religious art teachers began to pave their way and establish art classes in girls' schools. The change began as a grassroots movement of individual pioneering women who, in an autodidactic manner, found a way to acquire the profession because there were no ultra-orthodox schools for studying art. Another reason for the shift is sociological and related to the migration of general art teachers into Orthodox society (secular art teachers becoming orthodox) and bringing new knowledge that was thus far unknown and packaging it in an adapted and accepted form to the conservative society. Another reason is related to the technological and media revolution that has penetrated closed societies, and brought about a change in consciousness that has slowly permeated them and brought new ideas. And lastly, there has been a change in the attitude of the education system towards marginalized groups and there is a willingness to allow them to study art in a way that does not contradict their ideological values though certain adjustments (excluding nudity and subject matters relating to other religions, for example).

In one way or another, these art teachers are exceptions among the teaching staff and in the communities to which they belong, communities which glorifies the collective over individualism. Due to the fact that the art education programs are based on postmodern concepts that are contrary to the view of the schools where they teach, and the fact that there is no body that groups them together or recognizes their uniqueness and difficulties and provides them with tailored training, the art teachers find themselves standing in the middle between, on the one hand, loyalty to the values and the schools and representing the establishment, and on the other hand, the creative spirit that brought them to the pioneering path. This contradiction inevitably produces conflicts that take them out of their comfort zone and they have to deal with them alone.

The paper will deal with the conflicts and difficulties these teachers face in teaching modern and post-modern art in conservative educational institutions, and will examine the coping practices and apologetic tactics they have adapted to mediate the issue to their community. It will examine the desire to synthesize the Jewish sources and the art world in order to give validation and the acceptance of perception for their actions, as well as look at the long self-guided journey they must travel to acquire knowledge and the frustration they feel when they realize that there are no institutions that they can attend to acquire knowledge in an optimal manner.

The paper uses semi-structured qualitative interviews (Jamshed, 2004) with 15 female teachers in Israel, each at different stages of their careers and from different places in the country, selected using the snowball method. The interviews were not done in the school environment in which they taught so as to ensure that their employment would not be at risk due to their participation in the study. The analysis of the interviews was done using grounded theory and Strategies for Qualitative Research (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). When the themes that emerged from the interviews were coded, categorized, named and selected a limited number of subjects to discuss with collaboration of the Reception Theory. (Holub, 1992) This is a pioneering study done for the first time in this field and there are no previous studies on the same or similar topics that can be relied upon, and therefore the need for this research is acute because it makes possible giving voice, space and visibility to this issue. The researcher who conducted the interviews herself hails from religious society and is in fact a native feminist researcher and ethnographer (Qamar, 2020) on her home turf. Her great advantage lies in understanding the language and in describing the conservative habitus and internal codes that a foreigner would have difficulty handling.

They operate with a double mission: working to develop and expand creation and art for their students and on the other hand, maintaining the values of the community in which they, and their students live. They pay the price of diversity and loneliness and most of them don't have colleagues or anyone to consult with within the educational institutions in which they work. The establishment also treats them different mostly they don’t get enough hours for their major and needed to complete their jobs other places; they are on the fringes of the school and there is an unofficial expectation that they serve as a kind of ‘decoration committee’, which reduces their status as expert educators in the eyes of the administration. Due to the establishment's lack of recognition of them, and their inability to form a community of their own with its own cultural capital, prestige and respect, the knowledge they have acquired is not incorporated proactively and they are required to 'reinvent the wheel' every time. The outcome findings deal with the added value of art studies in a conservative society and how it allows them to deal with problems and conflicts that the younger generation presents to the community, and how the teachers provide new tools to respond to the needs of the times. The religious art teachers bring ideas of creative and non-conformist thinking in the name of art studies, thus unwittingly becoming cultural agents, and agents of change in wide circles of Orthodox society as well as creating a feminist change while somewhat oblivious to the revolutionary impact of their actions. Finally, emphasis should be placed on adapting art curricula to different societies and diverse demographic sectors.

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