Jewish Education,Past and Present: Israel Friedlaender Re-Visited

A century ago, Israel Friedlaender—scholar, communal activist, and educator—played a key role in such educational institutions as the Teachers Institute of JTS, the Bureau of Jewish Education, the Menorah Society, Young Israel, and Young Judea. A JTS professor and prolific writer, Friedlaender has been described as “the teacher of the Jewish youth of that generation.” Yet, scant attention has been devoted to exploring his educational thought and action agenda. This retrospective focuses on Friedlaender’s activities and impact in advancing Jewish education and considers the relationship of his legacy to current directions in the field.     

The Guide with the Tourist Gaze: Jewish Heritage Travel to Poland

Over the past three decades, travel to Poland for youth and young adults has become increasingly popular, to the extent that it is even seen as a “rite of passage”¹ for members of many Jewish communities. For these groups, the accompanying guides or educators are central to their educational experience. Based on a series of interviews with educational guides, this article sets out to understand the trips from the perspective of the guides. A deeper appreciation of the guiding experience—the guides’ goals and reflections—will enable a more holistic understanding of these trips.     

Jewish Education and American Jewish Education,Part III

This is the last in a series of articles exploring the history of Jewish Education magazine, later known as the Journal of Jewish Education, with a particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and, more generally, American Jewish life. Major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers are isolated and analyzed as to how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. Particular attention is paid to 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.     

Jewish Education and American Jewish Education,Part I

This series of articles explores the history of Jewish Education magazine, later known as the Journal of Jewish Education, with a particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and, more generally, American Jewish life. Major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers are isolated and analyzed as to how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values, and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. Particular attention is paid to 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.     

A Survey of Jewish Day Schools in America

It is Only in recent years that the systematic study of Jewish educational systems, particularly in a global context, has become a subject of serious concern. Since 1945 a succession of education conferences and surveys provides evidence of an awareness that the future of World Jewry—in Israel as well as the Diaspora—is inextricably linked with the future of its educational institutions. The World Conference on Jewish Education in Jerusalem in 1962 and the subsequent formation two years later of the World Council on Jewish Education are but two examples of this awareness. The establishment of a Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem marks a further practical step toward attaining some form of coordination on the part of world Jewry.     

Teaching Vision: Cultivating a Philosophical Disposition About Jewish Educational Practice

We are sometimes told that practitioners have a hard time with theory. But those who are committed to nurturing a certain kind of intellectual capacity among Jewish educational practitioners—the capacity to identify and critically engage with vision in Jewish education, a capacity that we can call a “philosophical disposition”—must accept the challenge to develop ideas, questions, resources, and learning activities appropriate to that goal. In this article, Levisohn presents a study of his own teaching of novice educators in order to contribute to a conversation about how we might contribute to the development of practical intellectuals in Jewish education in various ways and in various settings.     

Educating Jewish and Arab children for tolerance and coexistence in a situation of ongoing conflict: an encounter program

The ‘Children Teach Children’ (CTC) program aimed to educate Jewish and Arab children in Israel for tolerance and coexistence is first described against the general background of coexistence programs in Israel and in other countries. Results of a study that examined the influence of the program implementation in Grade 7 in a pair of neighboring schools (a Jewish school and an Arab school) indicate differences between perceptions of students and of program coordinator–teachers regarding the achievements of the program's first year. Students' responses pointed at no change in the area of awareness to identity, a positive change in interpersonal relationships yet a worsening of stereotypes, although both Jewish and Arab students expressed the will to continue with the program and with the same class. Teachers revealed a higher degree of satisfaction and emphasized the gains of the program, mainly regarding the improvement of communication skills, disclosure of feelings, acceptance of different opinions, and the creation of an empowering group climate as a platform for the continuation of the program.     

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.     

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.     

Jewish education in Dublin: organizational development and conflicts

The aim of this paper is to dwell on the trends in the development of Jewish education in Dublin. The discussion is based on books written about the Jewish community and central figures in it, on interviews with people who were involved in shaping the Jewish education and with others who were familiar with it, on community magazines and documents found in the community and in the Jewish school.

The findings show that the Chief Rabbis were always the initiators and the driving force behind the founding of the Jewish educational institutions and in determining their educational policies. They were always assisted by the Education Ministry of Ireland, by the State of Israel and by members of the local community.

The Jewish elementary school in Dublin was founded in 1934 by Rabbi Herzog. At the initiative of Rabbi Jakobovitz they founded the Jewish secondary school in the early 1950s, together with an additional Jewish elementary school.

The problem of the Jewish schools was always the limited enrollment figures. Because of this, the Rabbis Cohen and Rosen unified the schools into a single educational institution where students studied from the age of three until the final year of secondary school.

The principals and teachers of secular subjects at the school were always non-Jews. In contrast, in most cases, the directors of the Jewish studies were emissaries from Israel. The teachers of Jewish subjects were residents of Dublin and rabbis who supplemented their rabbinical positions with teaching jobs. Good work relations always prevailed between the Jewish and non-Jewish staff, but the relations of the Israeli emissaries with the teachers of Jewish subjects and the rabbis were characterized by conflict.     

The Emergence of Counseling in Traditional Cultures: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish and Arab Communities in Israel

The introduction of school counseling services into traditional communities that are unfamiliar with counseling is a complex multidimensional process that involves considerable ideological tensions, disputes and obstacles... This paper considers the different trajectories of the recent development of counseling services within two distinctive minority groups in Israel-Arab and the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. The dynamics of the change process for these traditional communities within the current Israeli social–political context lends support for the advancement of the international counseling community’s vision to promote human welfare and fairness as well as the healthy development of children and youth within diverse cultural contexts. The paper is based on a Keynote address, IAC Conference: Jamaica, April 2004.     

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.     

Making it Personal: Teaching Judaism to North American Youth in Israel

This article offers a general examination of the Israel, Jews, and Judaism displayed to North American Jewish youth on an Israel experience program, called Livnot U'Lehibanot ("To Build and to be Built"). My focus is an analysis of the program's pedagogical techniques. Based on detailed interviews and participant observation, I analyze participants’ responses to aspects of the program, to determine the effects of Livnot's teaching style and goals. This article demonstrates that Livnot's educational emphasis on “the personal” is credited by participants as a very significant factor in transforming their attitudes toward and understanding of Israel, Jews, and Jewish religious tradition.     

On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education

“Jewish identity,” which emerged as an analytical term in the 1950s, appealed to a set of needs that American Jews felt in the postwar period, which accounted for its popularity. Identity was the quintessential conundrum for a community on the threshold of acceptance. The work of Kurt Lewin, Erik Erikson, Will Herberg, Marshall Sklare, and others helped to shape the communal conversation. The reframing of that discourse from one that was essentially psychosocial and therapeutic to one that was sociological and survivalist reflected the community’s growing sense of physical and socioeconomic security in the 1950s and early 1960s. The American Jewish Committee and its Division of Scientific Research offers an enlightening case study of this phenomenon. Jewish educators seized on identity formation, making it the raison d’être of their endeavor. But the ascent of identity discourse also introduced a number of challenges for the Jewish educator—conceptual, methodological, political, and even existential.     

Continuity of Higher Hebrew Study and Jewish Home Environment

Observers of American Jewish education are wont to cite the persistent failure of Jewish ed ucators to incorporate the unfolding events of Jewish life and the world at large within the instructional program of the Jewish school. During the Holocaust period, for example, Jewish schools in America blithely ignored the evolving drama in Europe as they contin ued to focus in narrow, irrelevant fashion on their traditional curriculum of Jewish text study.     

悲诗爱歌话沧桑--解读犹太诗歌(古代部分)

本文从历史发展的角度解读了古代犹太诗歌的创作背景，并从诗歌中阐释犹太人在各个历史时期的生活心态，说明了犹太人极能适应环境及其保持民族文化和宗教传统的原因。     

Train Up a Child: On the Maskilic Attempt to Change the Habitus of Jewish Children and Young Adults

Members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement and Jewish financial entrepreneurs undertook an active, conscious project to effect significant transformations in the Jewish habitus in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A symbiotic relationship allowed these groups to disseminate a new vision of Jewish society through multiple mediums including, as this article examines in particular, a new Jewish educational system and new educational texts written for children and young adults. With guidelines on daily practices including personal hygiene, dress, language, leisure, and interactions with one’s surroundings, these texts reached not only their intended audience but the parents’ generation as well. What should one do after getting up in the morning? Should one wash, and, if so, when? How should one behave at the table? How should one dress, or employ one’s leisure time? These and others are among the daily practices that organize a person’s life. They are not spontaneous actions; rather, they derive from social norms and cultural codes that characterize a particular social group and distinguish it from others. To put it another way: they comprise the habitus of a specific individual and the social group to which he or she belongs. This article examines for the first time the changes in the Jewish habitus that resulted from significant transformations within Jewish society in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the active role played by a new Jewish educational system therein. Changes of this sort are generally inconspicuous and latent; this article, however, points to an intentional and marked effort toward transforming the Jewish habitus via the active help of the educational system made by two key groups: members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement (Maskilim), and the Jewish financial elite of the time. It examines the realities and motivations that spurred both groups to action, the synergistic relationship that existed between them, and the methods each employed.     

Between Two Languages: Student-Teachers Teach Jewish Content

This study focuses on the utilization of different Jewish languages by student-teachers in a two year teacher education program. The study examined the Jewish language used by these students while teaching Jewish content, making the distinction between their personal Jewish language and the cultural Jewish language of the program, which they were expected to use. We found a definite change in the languages used by them: although they seemed, at first, to adopt the cultural Jewish language of the curriculum, they quickly reverted to their personal Jewish language, which, in most cases, was the traditional one. By so doing they actually created a new version of the original program. We conclude that the idea of educating teachers to lead a significant social cultural change involves an inner struggle between the teachers' personal language and that of the program, that may be more difficult to win than was initially expected. This study examines the role of student-teachers' personal Jewish language in their teaching of Jewish content and the relationship that develops between their personal Jewish language and that of the Jewish content they teach.     

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。     

Jewish Youth in Texas: Toward a Multi-Methodological Approach to Minority Identity

Qualitative and quantitative research methods are used to examine the religious and ethnic identity of youth attending a Jewish summer camp in Texas. A strong aspect of participants' Jewish identity is formulated in reaction to the surrounding Christian society, with which they negotiate a compromise to live relatively comfortably. The informal religious education and temporary community of the camp allow exploration of a proactive Jewish identity. A typology is developed with two sets of opposed concepts of identity: individual versus peoplehood and internal versus external. Sub-regions differentiate between fearful versus benevolent external identity and between psychological versus traditional internal identity.