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.     

A Review of: ““Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out,Materialistic, and Miseducated Students”

The views of Jewish education articulated by Rosenzweig in his essays “It is Time” and in “The Opening of the Lehrhaus” are quite different. So different, in fact, that an account of how one mind can produce such different accounts is necessary. Following the lead of a 1950’s popular television quiz show, the authors ask “Will the Real Franz Rosenzweig Please Stand Up?” The authors end by exploring how the tensions within Rosenzweig's educational thinking can yield new insights into the contemporary challenges of Jewish education.     

A Review of: “Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Anthony S. Bryk,Penny Bender Sebring,Elaine Allensworth,Stuart Luppescu,and John Q. Easton.”

This article summarizes the results of a study of state and local practices related to the implementation of Title I of the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA; 1994). In translating policy to practice, state and local practitioners articulated how they approached the provisions of IASA: the expectation that all children will meet challenging state standards, flexibility with accountability, targeting funds, family and community partnerships, and support system roles and infrastructure. This snapshot of reform in progress shows that multiple chains of events at the national and state levels influenced the implementation of the law and that more time and support are needed to produce the impact intended in the Title I reauthorization.