Ideas and Ideals of Jewish Education: Initiating a Conversation on Visions of Jewish Education

Barry Holtz' (2003) presentation of a map of orientations for the teaching of Bible provides a certain kind of focus for research, enabling us to ask deeper and richer question about those orientations. This article investigates the teaching of one teacher, in two different settings— more specifically, how that teacher introduces Bible in those settings— as a way of generating insight into the particular features of what Holtz calls the “contextual orientation.” Building on the sketch that Holtz offers, it explores the internal variation within that orientation, and hence begins to reveal some of the pedagogic possibilities.     

Jewish Creative Sensibilities: Framing a New Aspiration for Jewish Education

ABSTRACT

Proponents of building a “creative society” through educational innovation are calling for engaging learners in new modes of collaboration, problem solving, and original thinking. How might the enterprise of Jewish education contribute to this evolution in creative thinking and action? This article explores how “the Jewish sensibilities” can be adapted into a framework infusing Jewish “ways of seeing and being” into a vision of “Jewish education for a creative society.” The proposed conceptual framework aims to spark conversation, experimentation, research, and inquiry within the broader discourse of rethinking the aims of Jewish education for the future.     

从犹太经典看犹太人先进的生育、饮食和教育观

<圣经·旧约>和<塔木德>同为犹太经典,分别成书于公元前1000年和公元4-6世纪,它们是人们了解和研究犹太人的一个窗口.这两部著作所体现出来的犹太人既重视数量又重视质量的生育观、既讲究卫生又讲究科学的饮食观;既视教育为第一位又主张均衡全面教育的教育观在今日仍然适用.犹太人的先进性由此可见一斑.     

The Reconstruction of Jewish Education

Some forty years ago, Milton Steinberg, in his A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, presented a “Gallery of Jewish Portraits” in which he surveyed the varieties of attitudes and beliefs which characterize twentieth century American Jews.¹ In describing the memories, commitments and problems of his Jewish types, Steinberg presented graphically his contention that there is no longer one “ideal” Jew nor a normative tradition acceptable, even superficially, to all Jews.