Between Ritual and Spiritual: Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices Regarding Prayer Education in TALI Day Schools in Israel

The aim of this qualitative study is to describe teachers’ perceptions and roles in prayer education in TALI day schools in Israel, using in-depth oral Interviews, written questionnaires and written materials of the schools’ network. Two educational ideologies were identified: Belonging to the Jewish collective and Personal-spiritual ideology. While participants perceive the aim of Jewish education as enhancing students’ belonging to the Jewish collective, prayer education introduces a personal-spiritual aspect that was not typically a part of teachers’ discourse on Jewish education.     

BACKGROUND AND TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN JEWISH SCHOOLS: CURRENT STATUS AND LEVERS FOR CHANGE

Abstract

This paper presents a secondary analysis of data from a survey of teachers in the Jewish schools of three communities. Previous findings had shown that only 19% of teachers have professional training in both Jewish content areas and in the field of education, and despite incomplete professional backgrounds, little professional growth was required of teachers. What can be done to enhance and expand professional growth activities for teachers in Jewish schools? Analyses reported in this paper examine three possible “levers” for changing standards for professional growth: state licensing requirements for pre‐schools, state requirements for continuing education among professionally‐trained teachers, and community incentives for training of supplementary school teachers. Results indicate that pre‐school teachers in state‐licensed pre‐schools and supplementary school teachers who were paid for meeting a professional growth standard reported that they were required to attend more in‐service workshops, compared to other teachers who were not subject to these conditions. In addition, standards for the quantity of in‐service were higher among teachers who have stronger Judaic backgrounds and who are committed to a career in Jewish education.     

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.     

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.     

Teaching Kids to Care about Jewish Problems: A Noddings’ Approach

Drawing on Noddings’ work on religion and education (1993), moral education (2002), and citizenship education (2005\, 2015), this article contemplates how educators both in public schools and parochial Jewish schools might teach students to care about critical issues confronting the Jewish community historically and contemporarily. Its premise is that the teaching of the Jewish experience is presently deficient in both school settings. The article suggests ways that Noddings’ conceptions of caring (1992), pedagogical neutrality (1993), and critical lessons (2006) can be adapted and applied to the teaching of Jewish civilization in more appropriate, holistic, and nuanced ways. Its implications are applicable to many other American subgroups whose treatment in the social studies curriculum is typically inadequate.     

Embracing Jewish day school education in England, 1965–1979

Between 1965 and 1979 the demand for places at Jewish day schools in England rose dramatically. In the preceding decades, most parents sent their children to state non‐denominational schools, showing little interest in providing their children with a solid Jewish education. Sunday or after‐school Hebrew classes, rarely extending beyond Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, sufficed. Yet beginning in the mid‐1960s, parents evinced increasing enthusiasm for Jewish day schools, both primary and secondary. This phenomenon has been attributed to various factors, such as the changing ethnic mix at state schools and Anglo‐Jewry’s communal pride after the Six‐Day War. It is argued in this article that the major concern of Jewish parents was academic achievement. Upon the introduction of the non‐selective comprehensive schools, parents fled the non‐denominational state system, preferring voluntary aided Jewish day schools, or, for those who could afford them, private schools.     

Magnes,the Champion of Justice

Introduction

In years past, Jewish supplementary education has been the basis of religious growth for thousands of youngsters. Congregational and communal schools throughout the country have touched the lives of many Jewish youth.     

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

The American-Jewish communal environment is complex and changing. It has both a historically unique voluntary nature and a multitude of educational providers. This combination creates many operational and perceptual challenges for Central Agencies for Jewish Education (CAJEs or BJEs). Among these challenges are to:

? interpret conclusively why current central agency activities are appropriate and necessary; and

? to project what central agency roles and responsibilities ought to be in the future.     

Understanding the Study of Religion in Undergraduate Programs of Religious Studies as Religious Education

The aim of this research is to investigate the intergenerational changes that have occurred in Australian Jewish day schools and the challenges these pose for religious and Jewish education. Using a grounded theory approach according to the constant comparative method (Strauss 1987), data from three sources (interviews [296], observations [27], and documents) were analyzed, thus enabling triangulation. Findings show that there is an incongruity between what the adult community defines as the central components of Jewish and religious identity, which are more particularistic, and the perspectives of Jewish youth, which are more universalistic.     

NOSTALGIC NOTES ON MY DAY SCHOOL YEARS

Schools Necessarily reflect the conditions of the society which they represent.¹ As Elazar Notes,² Jewish schools so accurately reflect the ambiguities of American Jewish life that the experience of the schools necessarily creates conflicts within the Jewish community. This paper examines that important relationship between the Jewish school and American Jewish life. In particular, it looks outside the school to the loss of a substantive identity among Jews and to the dissolution of community among Jews. Within the school, it describes a disturbing picture of Jewish education that is reflective of those wider conflicts.     

Self‐Acceptance of Jewishness By Young Jewish People

This article focuses on one aspect of a case study of three congregations (Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant): the structure of the religious education programs. The three institutions were structured in much the same way, and the way they were structured looked like public school. If we have more in common with our neighborhood churches and public schools than we may have thought, the implication for scholarship and policy work in Jewish education is that we would benefit from more comparative work as we seek to produce more comprehensive scholarship, better informed policies, and more satisfying experiences in synagogue-based education.     

Identity and inter religious understanding in Jewish schools in England

This article sets up a dialogue between auto-referential (looking to self) and allo-referential (looking to the other) approaches to religious difference and applies these to education for inter religious understanding in Jewish schools. It begins by arguing that the multiculturalism of the 1980s and 1990s set up a duality of self and other, with the responsibility for looking to ‘the other’ (allo-reference) resting largely on the majority community and the licence to look to self (auto-reference) being given to minority communities. Within the Jewish community, multiculturalism supported and legitimated the development of an inward-looking Jewish identity-based education. This was challenged in the 2000s however by the new outward-looking emphases of the community cohesion agenda, and so Jewish schools have had to negotiate a place for themselves between auto- and allo-reference. Brief case studies illustrate contrasting ways in which two schools have positioned themselves in relation to these two poles. In School A, the imperative towards ‘the other’ attempts an openness to ‘the other’ in ‘the other’s’ own terms, whereas in School B the same imperative towards ‘the other’ is framed within the auto-referential framework of being and doing Jewish.     

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.     

Philosophy and Empirical Evidence: Achieving Vision Through Research

Ben-Avie and Comer describe how Jewish day schools and the Yale Child Study Center’s School Development Program (SDP) share a common agenda regarding the aim of education. The foundational science of education is child development, advocates James P. Comer in such seminal works as School Power (1980) and Waiting For A Miracle (1998). SDP, the educational change initiative founded by Comer, informed the design of the current study, which is an empirical exploration of how the climate of relationships in Jewish day schools impede or promote the process through which children forge a relationship to the Jewish people.     

Teaching Sacred Texts in the Classroom: The Pedagogy of Transmission and the Pedagogy of Interpretive Facilitation

Empirical research in Jewish education has found almost exclusive use of transmission pedagogy among Jewish studies teachers. This study hoped to fill out the empirical landscape by studying Jewish studies teachers who prioritize student-driven interpretation. It followed six Jewish studies teachers in four different Jewish elementary schools who all professed a commitment to student-driven textual interpretation. It found that in such classrooms there was a clear pattern of teaching moves. This article offers a detailed portrait of the previously undocumented Jewish studies pedagogy, interpretive facilitation.     

THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE CENTRAL AGENCIES

Central agencies for Jewish education were developed along the model of the American public school system. They were to fulfill the same functions, in their unique settings, as the public schools board of education. The central agencies were assigned duties and tasks that could not be performed by single schools such as teacher certification, setting educational standards and teacher training.     

Learning From a Mussar-Based Initiative in a Community Day School

Mussar, an approach to character growth emerging as a movement in the 18th century, has increasingly been incorporated into contemporary Jewish education. The purpose of mussar—the cultivation of character—is consistent with the goals of Jewish day schools and other settings. This article examines the implementation of a mussar-based program in a Jewish community high school. Particular attention is given to questions raised by the introduction of this program into a pluralistic school setting. Implications are discussed in terms of the broader goals of Jewish education.     

Secondary School Choice as a Window on Jewish Faith Schools in Contemporary British Society

ABSTRACT

Research into school choice has generally explored both the processes by which choices are made and the considerations that parents explore when making this important decision on behalf of their children. This article examines the secondary school choices of Jewish parents in the United Kingdom. It explores parents’ reasons for choosing to select Jewish faith secondary schools. We frame our arguments against the backdrop of the wider faith-school phenomenon in the UK, and as with the Christian communities, we find a disconnect between the small number of Jewish adults attending places of worship regularly and the growing number of Jewish children attending Jewish faith schools. We show that for many parents, schooling is synonymous with Jewish socialization, or enculturation; developing networks of Jewish friends, providing sufficient cultural resources to enable participation in Jewish life, and nurturing distinctive values. We show how Jewish schools have become more than places for academic advancement for these families; they have become the primary locus of Jewish community.     

Toward a More Effective Mentoring Model: An Innovative Program of Collaboration

Mentoring is a powerful and often effective tool in supporting the work of new and experienced teachers. It can also be a means of attracting and retaining talented teachers in schools which face challenges in staffing and turnover. In this article we describe and analyze the first 2 years of a mentoring program designed to support teacher retention and growth. The program, planned between a Jewish education agency and university faculty, was implemented in several Orthodox Jewish day schools. Mentoring was provided by university faculty and the relationship between the mentor and teacher was non-evaluative and fully collaborative. Data collected from mentors, teachers, and principals are analyzed and presented, and implications for Jewish day schools are discussed.     

Jewish Education in the Age of the Rediscovery of the Soul

The literature on Reform Jewish education in America rightly recognizes Emanuel Gamoran’s work in establishing the direction of Hebrew schools in the Reform movement toward a cultural pluralism influenced by Samson Benderley et al. Yet the terrain onto which Gamoran stepped was not unmarked. Prior to his tenure, three Reform rabbis thought hard about how new currents in psychology could strengthen Jewish education toward the ends of religious individualism. This article examines how Henry Berkowitz, David Philipson, and Louis Grossman integrated select currents in educational psychology into their writings on Jewish education, and into their theology of the educated Jew.