No Religion Is an Island: Teaching World Religions to Adolescents in a Jewish Educational Context

What is the place of teaching about other world religions in a Jewish educational curriculum for adolescents? This article explores a course in world religions that has been taught at the Genesis Program at Brandeis University since 2001. Based on a participant observational study during 2002 and 2012, the author traces how the teachers construct goals and implement plans that include site visits to places of worship of the religions they are studying. The questions raised and the struggles of students to make sense of Judaism in the context of world religions is the backdrop for considering both why and how other Jewish educators might thoughtfully include the study of other religions as part of their Jewish education for adolescents.     

Socialization into a Civilization: The Dewey–Kaplan Synthesis in American Jewish Schooling in the Early 20th Century

This historical study focuses on how John Dewey's theory of education as socialization and Mordecai Kaplan's theory of Judaism as a civilization together served as an ideological base and pedagogical framework for the creation of “progressive,” “reconstructed” American Jewish school programs in the early 20th century (1910s–1930s). In the main, progressive Jewish educators no longer conceived of Jewish education merely as a program of religious education designed to impart the ways and dictates of Judaism. Rather, Jewish education was conceptualized as a total program of socialization designed to prepare children for active and intelligent participation in American Jewish life.     

非常的“原罪”——论卡夫卡的犹太文化渊源

卡夫卡的“原罪”观主要是来自于犹太文化传统。犹太教的“原罪”论与基督教的不同,体现了两个宗教信仰体系之间的差异。卡夫卡主要在家庭生活中形成了犹太化的情感心理结构。对于人的本质、人的历史和世界图像的理解,两个宗教存在着根本性的差异。卡夫卡对于自身的犹太文化底蕴的自觉有一个逐渐明晰的发展过程。     

近五年来中国大陆犹太教研究综述

近5年来,我国犹太教研究无论在广度上还是在深度上都有了很大提高,有关中国犹太教和犹太人、犹太教基本理论和典籍、犹太人婚姻制度、纳粹屠犹、犹太现代化等方面的研究都取得了很大的成绩。我国犹太教研究也存在一些不足,主要表现在:对犹太教教法和教派的研究稍欠深入:个案研究相对薄弱;研究方法稍嫌单一。     

Teacher Professional Development in Congregational Settings 1

This article describes the impact of sustained professional development programs in two Jewish congregational schools. This research suggests that contrary to common assumptions, part-time teachers in Jewish congregational schools will invest time in professional development when it is of high quality, interactive and engaging and based at their school. These programs have significantly affected teacher collegiality, knowledge of pedagogy and Jewish content, and reflection about teachers' own teaching practices and practice of Judaism. The role of the educational leader is a salient feature of the program success.     

REA Presidential Address: Spaces of Inter-cultural Provocation for Religious Formation

In this essay, I reflect on the challenges faced by professors teaching Jewish studies in a Catholic university system. The essay records my experiences teaching two courses, “Judaism and the Holocaust” and “American Judaism: Thought and Culture,” at Santa Clara University as an adjunct lecturer during the academic year 1994‐95. The essay touches on broader questions concerning “the dialectics of difference” that inform cross‐cultural education and exchange. Teach‐ ing Jewish studies in any Gentile space (Catholic, Protestant, or secular) entails a constructive tension between trust and suspicion, candor and reserve.     

犹太民族的宗教性及成因探析

宗教性是犹太民族的显著特性。犹太民族的宗教性首先体现在犹太人的宗教性,即犹太教与犹太人相统一;其次是犹太人的国家、民族、伦理观念等的宗教性;第三是犹太人日常生活的宗教性;第四是其文化典籍、民族节日等犹太文化也具有宗教性。不仅如此,在犹太人身份、地域观念、宗教经典等方面,犹太民族的宗教性还具有等级性。犹太民族宗教性的形成既有内部原因——犹太人与犹太教的统一性、同源性以及犹太民族的传统观念,也有外部原因一一外来民族的长期压迫。     

The Crisis in Jewish Education

What will the Jewish supplementary school be in the 1990's? A more definitive question might be what will it supplement? In the beginning “supplementary” schools brought Jewish knowled[ggrave]e to the student who was already experiencing living Judaism in the home. In the 1960's, heyday of Jewish afternoon schools, the school supplemented secular knowledge and secular living with Jewish knowledge and some Jewish life experience as the home contributed less and less.     

Creating a safe place: SRE teaching as an act of security and identity formation in government schools in Australia

This study seeks to analyse the components that contribute to Special Religious Education (SRE) classes in government schools in Australia being considered as a ‘safe place’ and the ways in which they facilitate an understanding of the students’ own religious and cultural identity. Our research focuses on one of the small faiths, Judaism, as a case study through observation of the Jewish SRE/SRI classes in the two largest Jewish population centres, Sydney and Melbourne. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants, and classroom observations were undertaken in both cities. This paper draws on Kymlicka’s concept of the rights of minority groups in a liberal society and discusses the distinction between thin and thick multiculturalism. Our findings show that the Jewish SRE teachers implemented Jackson’s interpretive approach, ensuring that the students’ educational experience is meaningful. As a result, they are able to develop their unique identity capital, which is important in a multifaith society to ensure ‘thick’ multiculturalism. Our argument is that students need to have an understanding of their own particularistic identity, as well as learning to respect other religions.     

Diversity,Community, and Pluralism in Jewish Community Day High Schools

Students in “community” (nondenominational) Jewish high schools represent a diversity of denominational affiliations, including those who affiliate with more than one denomination and those that affiliate with none. These schools strive to create communities in which students with varying Jewish beliefs and practices are, at the very least, respected and comfortable. At the same time, schools work to avoid internal Jewish communal fragmentation. In this article, the approach to diversity in three such high schools is compared. Each school, in addition to presenting an approach distinct from the others, has created opportunities for communal Jewish engagement through the enactment of practices that are rooted in Judaism and in the ethos of the school, and allow individualization within universal participation. Further, the range of approaches to Jewish diversity exhibited raises questions about pluralism as it relates to the Jewish educational goals of these schools.     

A Review of: “Jewish Lives,Jewish Learning: Adult Jewish Learning in Theory and Practice by Diane Tickton Schuster (UAHC Press, 2003)”

This articles explores how a group of women in the Former Soviet Union grapple with questions of Jewish identity and Jewish “authenticity” as they participate in adult Jewish learning program that employs methods of feminist pedagogy and transformative learning. The study reflects on areas of dissonance between the transformational learning process and the tenacity of the women's world assumptions that are shaped by background, history, and worldview. While the learning process seems to be prompting these women to seriously and critically reflect on and reframe their self-understanding as learners and as Jews, their limited content-knowledge combined with a tentative sense of personal authority about Jewish life seems to impede their ability to harmonize their learning with a clear sense of what constitutes authentic practice of Judaism.     

JEWISH EDUCATION IN EXTREMIS: A PROLEGOMENON TO POSTMODERN JEWISH EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

Abstract In this article the author argues that for 150 years Jewish education has negotiated the tensions between modernity and Judaism by means of liberal religion, ultra Orthodoxy, and secular Zionism. All three are in crisis today due to the rise of postmodernism. Jewish educational thought therefore needs to create new syntheses between Jewish and postmodern life. To this end the concepts of Aliyah, modernity, and exile should be reevaluated and Jewish education should embrace the goal of working with God toward redemption. For more than 150 years Jewish education has focused on the tensions between rabbinic Judaism and modernity. Each of the models for negotiating these tensions-religious liberalism, ultra orthodoxy, and secular Zionism-succeeded beyond the imaginations of those who conceived them. Yet, each is in a state of crisis today, resulting from a deconstruction of both the rabbinic and modern assumptions upon which they are based. Addressing these crises requires reevaluation of key assumptions about the educational significance of Israel, modernity, and exile in order to lay the groundwork for more productive interactions between the Jewish people and its heritage on the one hand and the postmodern condition into which we are emerging on the other.     

“Method is Education:” Making Informal Education Social and Substantive

This article examines 10 textbooks used in Jewish religion classes in Russian high schools in the final decades of the 19th century. The textbooks reveal an expectation of a low level of Hebrew background, an interest in promoting the practice of prayer, and two distinct approaches to teaching Judaism. While some of the books introduce students to their religion through Biblical or later Jewish history, others present the religion as a systematic set of beliefs and practices. Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly how the books were utilized in classrooms, they certainly provide a sense of the priorities of a group of educators, as well as of the relative freedom they had in defining Judaism for the next generation.     

The Hyde Perk Guild,Chicago

Utilizing “teachable moments” within daily situations to impart knowledge and transmit values is a type of informal education. In a structured camp environment, such teachable moments may be integrated into the educational curriculum. “Jewish teachable moments” may be used to address Judaism and Jewish Peoplehood holistically, as the educators and counselors guide the campers through the Jewish summer camp environment. This article examines the Jewish Teachable Moments method through a case study conducted at a Reform movement affiliated camp in Texas. Theoretical and pedagogical implications of the Jewish Teachable Moments method are discussed.     

HOW SHOULD THE COMMUNITY SERVE THE NON-DAY SCHOOL POPULATION?

What if a law were passed that Jews could not marry other Jews, that synagogues could not exist, that all Jews had to work on Saturday, that Jews could not participate in group worship, and that Jewish children could not receive a Jewish education? How would we, Federation planners and chief executives of central agencies for Jewish education react? How would we suggest the community organize a system in which Judaism would continue?     

ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER: DIASPORIC PHILOSOPHY, NEGATIVE THEOLOGY, AND COUNTER-EDUCATION

From a contemporary perspective, the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers can be considered the last grand modern attempt to offer transcendence, meaning, and religiosity rather than "emancipation" and "truth." In the very first stage of their work, Adorno and Horkheimer interlaced the goals of Critical Theory with the Marxian revolutionary project. The development of their thought led them to criticize orthodox Marxism and ended in a complete break with that tradition, as they developed a quest for a unique kind religiosity connected with the Gnostic tradition and emanating, to a certain extent, from Judaism. This religiosity offers a reformulated Negative Theology within the framework of what I call "Diasporic philosophy." In his later work, Horkheimer explicitly presented Critical Theory as a new Jewish theology. Rearticulating Critical Theory is of vital importance today, both for understanding the current historical moment and for going beyond the oppressive dimensions of Critical Pedagogy. This article does not satisfy itself by offering a new reconstruction of Critical Theory; its goal is to offer a blueprint for a Diasporic counter-education that transcends Critical Pedagogy and goes beyond the emancipatory dimensions of Judaism itself.     

‘Marching at the Speed of the Slowest Man’: The Facilitation and Regulation of Student Autonomy in a Pluralist Jewish Day School

ABSTRACT

Faith schools are often perceived as restricting students’ autonomy through inculcating a single religious ideology and compelling participation in collective worship. Based on interviews and focus groups with parents, students and senior staff, this article investigates how England’s one pluralist Jewish secondary school has, in contrast, attempted to accommodate various forms of Jewish practice and facilitate students’ agency to determine their Jewish identities as desired. It reveals that students enjoy opportunities to actively negotiate Judaism, but that their autonomy is not without limits, and issues inherent to pluralism exist in executing an ethos accommodative of diverse, personalized expressions of Jewishness.     

THE RATIONALE FOR JEWISH EDUCATION AS EXPRESSED IN THE JEWISH EDUCATION MAGAZINE — 1929–1955

Questioning-asking has not only long been seen as a central component of Jewish educational practice but has also been thought to be part of a broader culture of Judaism. In this article, we apply cognitive-developmental theories to advance the discussion of the use of questioning in Jewish education. Such theories allow Jewish educators to more fully understand the function of questioning and to appreciate affective elements involved in the context of question-asking. Further, these theories connect question-asking with issues of identity development. Recommendations are made for Jewish educational practice, including an example of a cognitive-developmentally based questioning strategy applied to a biblical text.     

犹太民族顽强生命力的原因探析

犹太民族是一个历经苦难的民族,从“巴比伦之囚”到在巴勒斯坦重新建国,在两千多年的风雨飘摇的岁月中,犹太人经历了无数次的磨难和浩劫。但貌似弱小的犹太民族都能化险为夷,依然屹立在世界舞台上。那么,是什么原因使这个民族在历史的惊涛骇浪中生存下来呢?其原因大致有犹太教、犹太民族的复国信念和犹太民族的民族精神等方面。