Preparing Jewish Educators: The Research We Have,the Research We Need

This article discusses the research we have and the research we need in both general and Jewish teacher education. First, I discuss three recent efforts to synthesize and assess existing research in teacher education and to identify needed research. Next I review a handful of recent studies in Jewish teacher education which illustrate various research genres and provide a taste of what more coordinated studies could generate in the way of usable knowledge. I conclude by proposing three programs of research on the education of Jewish educators.     

Rosenak Teaching Jewish Values

Rosenak’s Teaching Jewish Values (1986) is perhaps his most accessible book about Jewish education. After diagnosing the “diseases” of Jewish education, he endorses “teaching Jewish values” as the curricular strategy most likely to succeed given the chasm which divides traditional Jewish subject matter and the milieu in which Jewish education takes place—e.g., the values of home and peer group. A close analysis of the book reveals cracks in his commitment to Jewish values, and I explore alternatives to values education he himself presents, such as acquisition of norms or learning the “language of being Jewish.”     

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR CENTRAL AGENCIES OF JEWISH EDUCATION

There is an ancient Chinese saying: “May you live in interesting times.” While some would classify this as a blessing, others would perceive it as a curse. The topic for this morning's discussion arises from a comparable state of ambiguity in regard to Jewish education, for these are certainly the most interesting times for us. Some voices are heard decrying the sorry state of Jewish education in North America and projecting a weakening of Jewish life because of the failures of Jewish education. Others are pointing to the extraordinary potential of Jewish education in the service of Jewish continuity, if we are willing to think about Jewish education in new ways. For those of us who tend the vineyards of Jewish education and maintain the institutions which have served Jewish education, we see great opportunity and serious challenges to existing assumptions in these interesting times. It is in this context that I share some observations about the implications for the future of central agencies of Jewish education.     

Towards an American Jewish Education

My function is to analyze a survey of adult Jewish education and to present briefly some of my own views on the subject. The survey was planned and conducted under the direction of the National Advisory Council on Adult Jewish Education of the American Association for Jewish Education. The Advisory Council includes the directors or representatives of a number of important religious and lay national Jewish agencies which sponsor adult Jewish education. The responses to the questionnaires were analyzed and the Survey Report was written by Rabbi Samuel I. Cohen.     

The New Journal of Jewish Education at Ten: An Appraisal

This article documents the Journal of Jewish Education’s acquisition by the Network for Research in Jewish Education, in 2004, and evaluates the contribution of the re-launched Journal to the field of Jewish education. I explore how the Journal contributed over the past decade in three discrete yet often overlapping areas, thereby realizing its editors’ vision. First, the Journal of Jewish Education became the venue for conversations between researchers, practitioners and funders about the direction of Jewish education research and policy; second, it became an outlet for the sharing of research and other Jewish education scholarship; and third, it became a venue where scholars introduced research and theoretical constructs from the field of general education and sought to demonstrate their relevance to Jewish education. Finally, I suggest some reasons why the editors had less success in realizing a fourth goal for the Journal; that is, making it a forum for new ideas and the charting of new directions in research and practice.     

NATHAN AND DAVID IN II SAMUEL 12:1–13: AN ALTERNATIVE TEXT WITH COMMENTARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

I am honored to give the opening address on the conference theme which deals with 100 years of Jewish education in North America. The topic of this session, “From Sunday School to Day School,” suggests that Jewish education has moved from a one-day-a-week enterprise to a full-time system of education. While there has been significant movement in this direction during the last half of the past 100-year period, this trend has to be placed in proper historical, religious, cultural and social perspective.     

FIFTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR JEWISH EDUCATION

I argue that the interdiscursive relationships between Jewish studies and education are in need of further philosophical articulation and conceptual differentiation in order to realize more beneficial engagement in higher education, professional education, and scholarship. I first consider the literature on interdisciplinarity and explain why I suggest the potentially more fruitful concept of interdiscursivity. Then, drawing on the philosophies of Dewey, Buchler, and Oakeshott, I suggest how their conceptions might inform the purposes and practices of relating education and Jewish studies with one another. Through this philosophical inquiry, I hope to suggest some beneficial, new ways to conceptualize, articulate, refine, and expand these fields and discourses’ relationships.     

Jewish Education and American Jewish Education,Part II

In this series of articles, I explore the history of Jewish Education magazine with particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and American Jewish life more generally. I isolate major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers, and analyze how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values, and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. I am particularly interested in elucidating how Benderly's disciples sought to reinterpret their mentor's vision in a changing American Jewish environment and why this vision was at best only partially realized.     

The Bilingual Program In The Jewish Nursery School

It all began in the second decade of the 1900's. I was then a pupil in an old-fashioned cheder. Mr. Louis Hurwich, of blessed memory, was invited by the Associated Jewish Charities to make a survey of Jewish education in Boston preparatory to the establishment of a Bureau of Jewish Education which he headed as superintendent for many decades. He visited my cheder and selected me as one who should learn Hebrew as a spoken language. He convinced my parents to transfer me to a Hebrew School which used the Ivrit B'Ivrit method of teaching. I made the transfer though this meant a long daily walk of several miles. Upon graduation, he encouraged me to attend the Hebrew Teachers' Training School which was the precursor of the Hebrew Teachers' College, now called Hebrew College.     

Comment

In response to your invitation to participate in a symposium on Jewish supplementary education in the next decade, I would like to suggest a number of processes which should be considered and implemented in order to make for an effective and rewarding educational system. In spite of the recent growth in the number of children in Jewish day schools, more than two-thirds of the Jewish students registered in Jewish schools attend supplementary schools in a variety of programs. Therefore, frustration and hand-wringing which have become too fashionable among laymen and professional educators who readily proclaim these schools to be inherently ineffectual due to constraints of time, the unavailability and inadequacy of trained and committed teachers, the indifference of family and community, etc., leaves us with a sense of hopelessness. Such an attitude is destructive and must not be perpetuated. Instead our energies should be invested in a thorough reexamination of the constructs of the schools within the framework of the total Jewish community. If we recognize that great education can only come from bold and creative measures confronting the nature, the values, the conditions and the potentialities of the civilization in which we live, the schools and the community agencies must plan together to meet the challenge.     

BUREAUS AND MOVEMENTS TOWARD COOPERATION AND SYNERGISM

For some eighty years, Bureaus of Jewish Education, working under a variety of names, have served the cause of Jewish education and the Jewish community. From time to time, as have all agencies of the Jewish community, the Bureaus have had to rethink their roles. Because of radical shifts in the way Jews live their lives, the nature of Jewish community, and the emergence of Jewish education as a priority, at least, in the rhetoric of Jewish life, this would appear to be such a moment. In doing so, agencies have to understand the questions and problems that are specific to their times and also revisit old questions to find new answers. An example of the former is what happens to the advocacy role of the bureau when the Federation, at least rhetorically, adopts Jewish education as a priority. An old question that, perhaps, requires new answers is “What ought to be the relationship between Bureaus of Jewish Education and denominational movements?” In this article, I wish to turn my attention to this question, and, perhaps, provide some basis for formulating policy and ideas about practice. My response cannot help but be affected by my experience as Director of the Department of Education of The United Synagogue of America but it should not be taken as the official position of The United Synagogue.     

From Integration of Curricula to the Pedagogy of Integrity

The literature on curricular integration in Jewish education has tended to focus on two basic paradigms. In the first paradigm, the integration of Jewish and general studies curricula represents the aspiration that the graduates of the institution will likewise integrate Jewish and general studies (or “Americanism” or “modernity”) in their lives. In the second paradigm, the integration of Jewish and general studies is conceptualized as a specific form of the more general educational desire for connection making. In this article, I critique specific articulations of these paradigms and argue instead for attention to the pedagogy of integrity.     

DEFEATING THE ENEMY WITHIN: EXPLORING THE LINK BETWEEN HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND THE ARAB/ISRAELI CONFLICT

This paper exposes the sources of anti‐Jewish education in Zionist thought and praxis by examining an unsuccessful attempt to educate for sensitivity to the suffering of the others in Israel. I argue that by conceiving the “Jew” as the ultimate victim of human history, and instrumentalizing Holocaust memory in the service of Israeli ethnocentrism, this form of education conflicts with central themes of Jewish tradition and leads to violent oppression of the Palestinian “other.” This double violence, to Jewish authenticity and the Palestinian “other,” can only be overcome by a reassessment of the transcendent dimension required for a geniune radical education.     

Definitions of Integration Can Be Misleading

The discussion in this paper departs from a fundamental premise: that in the foreseeable future local central agencies for Jewish education will not be receiving from their parent Federations the degree of increase in allocations which will enable them to significantly expand — let alone sustain at the current levels — the array of services which they deliver. This situation can be traced to a number of factors. To begin with, in many communities the ability of the Federation to raise funds through its annual campaign has leveled off. As a result, the total amount of money available for distribution to all Federation constituencies, including local bureaus of education, is no longer increasing in step-function fashion. Secondly, other Federation beneficiaries are staking claim with ever greater determination to their perceived share of the community dollar. Over the years most central agencies for Jewish education have become inured to this sort of competition for Federation funds from such sister agencies as the Jewish community center, the local Jewish home, and the like. But in recent years, allocations to local Jewish Day Schools have climbed to record levels, often making these institutions prime “competitors” with bureaus of Jewish education for community funds, more particularly with that portion of the total pie which has been allotted to education. This places bureaus in a difficult dilemma: On the one hand, they must support — indeed, encourage — increased funding for Jewish day school education. At the same time, bureaus are confronted with the uncomfortable fact that each community dollar allocated to day school education is a dollar which, potentially, might have been assigned to the central agency.     

JERUSALEM 3000 — EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES

There is a strong tendency in American Jewish education to promote the coordination of formal and informal Jewish education. This is not always possible for a variety of different reasons. One factor is the separate nature of the formal educational and informal educational organizations and their institutional goals and directions. Moreover, the formal educational agencies tend to hire staff that are not capable of dealing with informal education. They look at Jewish education as the transmission of cognitive skills; Jewish knowledge is viewed largely as a set of skills which demands long hours in classroom situations. On the other hand, informal educational institutions like the Jewish communal camps (in contrast to the ideological camps such as Camps Ramah, Morasha, Habonim Camps, Young Judea Camps, etc.) are generally social-work-oriented agencies. They do not always perceive themselves as the transmitters of Jewish culture nor as change agents in the complex process of Jewish identity. There is an unspoken tension between Federation-supported camping agencies and communal educational agencies.     

Jewish Identity In A Changing World An Historical Survey

What are the basic variables that one ought to consider when attempting to describe possible trends in supplementary Jewish education in the United States during the next decade? They should include the following: Birth rate in Jewish families which are but marginally associated with various Jewish causes; the interest of these families in Jewish life and religion; identification with Israel and Israel-related causes; general climate for Jewish education in the communities in which these families reside; rate of growth in tuition requirements for day school enrollment; and comparative educational achievement in day schools and supplementary schools.     

The role of education in Jewish continuity: a response to Jonathan Sacks

Contrasting explanations of Jewish survival form the backdrop to this article. For Jonathan Sacks (1994 Sacks, J. 1994. Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren?, Ilford: Vallentine Mitchell.  [Google Scholar]) the crucial factor has been the role played by Jewish education; indeed, he claims that the demographic threat currently facing Anglo‐Jewry is largely the result of the community having neglected the Jewish education of its children over the past 200 years. He advocates reinstating this communal responsibility as the sovereign Jewish value in order to deal with the threat. In my view, the influence that Sacks attributes to education and particularly to Jewish schools is overstated. It stems from a misreading of modern Anglo‐Jewish history and from a failure to take fully into account the ways in which Jewish schools impact on their pupils’ ethnic and religious identity. These considerations apart, I contend that prioritising education will not necessarily strengthen the commitment to Jewish continuity that is the sine qua non of survival.     

The Pedagogy of Jewish Community: Reflections on the Work of Jonathan Woocher

A leader in Jewish education policy for over 30 years, Jonathan Woocher influenced countless practitioners and policy makers. This article examines Woocher’s body of written work by investigating three of his pieces published over a span of 20 years. The article exposes four themes: Jewish education is a project of building infrastructure, Jewish education is a project of America, Jewish education needs to emphasize not program but person, and Jewish education needs to be restimulated by Jewish wisdom. The themes woven together amount to a pedagogy of community, a way to understand the purpose, structure, and tools of Jewish education.     

“Do Not Turn a Deaf Ear or a Blind Eye on Me,as I Am Your Son”: New Conceptions of Childhood and Parenthood in 18th- and 19th-Century Jewish Letter-Writing Manuals

This article focuses on the cultural functions of Hebrew letter-writing manuals published in German-speaking countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, aimed at young people. I argue that these books, which were used frequently as textbooks for studying Hebrew writing, conveyed modern ideological values and at the same time corresponded to the particular requirements of the traditional Jewish audience. They also bear witness to a marked shift in the conceptions of childhood and of education within the Jewish realm, as their emphasis on sons’ duties toward their fathers was gradually replaced by a growing sensitivity toward their young audience’s needs.     

犹太民族家庭教育考察及其启示

犹太民族是世界上最成功的民族之一。犹太民族的成功与犹太民族的家庭教育有着重要的关系。犹太民族盛产时代巨人,家庭教育有着重要的地位,并且有其犹太民族独特的家庭教育理念、特色内容和方法。通过对犹太民族家庭教育的考察可以获得教育子女是父母的职责、"经典"熏陶、适度的"爱"、改变方法四个方面的启示。