Social Justice,Sport and Judaism: A Position Statement

ABSTRACT

Jewish teachings on social justice include the maxim attributed to Hillel the Elder in the Mishnah: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” This maxim indicates Jewish responses to experiencing anti-Semitism in the context of sports, as Jews have stood up for themselves through protest, cultural adaptation, and boycott, as illustrated in phenomena such as the creation of the HaKoach sports teams in Europe, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team in the United States, and international responses to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It illuminates how others have “been for them,” including Football 4 Peace, responses in Europe to Jewish-identified football teams and anti-Semitism. And it illustrates how the Jewish state, Jewish athletes and teams have responded to the call to stand up for others in American baseball and Israeli football.     

Higher Education in a Global Market: The Case of British Overseas Provision in Israel

In recent years there has been a major expansion by higher education institutions in setting up ‘for-profit’, offshore programmes and campuses. It has been claimed that for-profit provision in a free, or unregulated market, responds to student demand and acts as a catalyst for innovation, thus fuelling arguments for a global ‘free market’ in higher education. There are few opportunities to test these claims since higher education is overwhelmingly provided within national systems of education and is generally subject to strong local regulation. Israel, in the 1990s, offered a rare case of an unregulated market in higher education for foreign providers, albeit one which contained significant distortions: British institutions took the leading part in developments. This article examines that experience in the light of documentation in the public domain and of practitioner research and argues, contrary to unsubstantiated claims, that provision fell below acceptable standards. The article concludes that, in this field, consumer demand did not operate on the basis of quality and that the market-place cannot assure standards of higher education in overseas provision. Furthermore, until international standards are agreed, governments have a responsibility to regulate provision which directly affects the lives of their citizens.     

Teaching controversial issues in a fragile democracy: defusing deliberation in Israeli primary classrooms

Teaching through controversial, politically charged issues is promoted in Anglo-American democracies as a key means for cultivating active citizenry and democratic values. However, the challenges of discussing controversial issues in the classroom may differ in younger, deeply divided democracies that lack common ground and institutional stability. In this study we ask, what approaches to the teaching of controversial issues do Israeli teachers adopt while enacting a curricular unit concerning Israel’s founding fathers? The data were collected in an ethnographic study in two primary schools during the 2012–2013 school year. We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyse the curricular materials and their enactment in four video-recorded lessons in three classrooms. We argue that while the curriculum addresses deeply controversial content, it is designed to inculcate a shared national ethos and therefore avoids controversy. In practice, teachers and students engaged with controversial issues, but in ways that defused their volatility. We highlight two heretofore undocumented approaches to controversial issues: (1) sidestepping controversy by stripping it of real world complexities, and (2) scholasticizing the discussion by focusing on literacy practices. Finally, we discuss the rationales for using these two approaches to defuse controversy in the classroom, and their limitations.     

以色列创新创业教育生态系统的构建及其启示——以以色列理工学院为例

以色列作为中东地区发达国家,其发达的创新创业教育是推动国家科技进步和经济发展的不竭动力。以色列理工学院作为以色列甚至全球领先的创业型大学,通过培育创新创业文化、引进先进创业师资、开发创新创业课程、完善创新创业组织架构、促进科研成果转化等一系列措施已经构建起了成熟的创新创业教育生态系统,对以色列甚至整个世界均产生了重要影响。这对于我国高校创新创业教育生态系统的构建具有一定的借鉴作用。     

论当今美国犹太人民族认同感下降的原因

本通过对犹太民族特性和当代美国犹太人面貌的简单阐述，主要从当代美国犹太人整体的心理、经济状况、婚姻等现状来分析、叙述当代美国犹太人凝聚力下降的原因。     

Israeli teachers make sense of global citizenship education in a divided society- religion,marginalisation and economic globalisation

ABSTRACT

Global citizenship education (GCE) has recently been promoted by national education systems and supranational organisations as a means for facilitating social cohesion and peace education. We examined the perceptions of GCE held by teachers from the three main education sectors in Israel: secular-Jewish, religious-Jewish, and Palestinian Arab, and found stark differences in the way teachers from each sector interpreted the term. For marginalised groups (Palestinian Arab), GCE is seen as offering a way of securing a sense of belonging to a global society. For already well-resourced social groups (Jewish secular), GCE is viewed as a way of promoting global futures. Meanwhile, for the Jewish religious minority in Israel, GCE is seen as a threat to national identity and religious values. Our findings cast doubt on the unifying potential of GCE, and we conclude by calling upon scholars and policymakers to examine unique obstacles facing GCE in their various contexts.     

Role Behavior Profiles of Israeli School Counselors

This study of 681 school counselors in Israel examines how counselors allocate their time between counseling tasks and whether their role behavior can be characterized according to distinctive profiles. Three distinctive profiles of role behavior were identified: The traditional profile (40% of the sample), in which individual counseling to students was prominent; the prevention profile (20% of the sample), in which a guidance curriculum with an emphasis on prevention programs was preva1ent; and the balanced profile (40% of the sample), in which the time devoted to the main counseling responsibilities is allocated in relatively equal proportions. Three variables were found to affect the profiles: the school setting (i.e., level), the principals expectations from the counselor and the counselors personal preferences. The findings of this study can contribute to the effort of defining and clarifying the role and function of school counseling in Israel and other countries.     

Media representations of national and international standardized testing in the Israeli education system

This study applies discourse analysis to Israeli media coverage of national and international standardized examinations within Israel's public education system. Through systematic analysis of the topic in the two main Israeli financial publications between the years 2000 and 2013, we explore the nature and narrative of the media and compare the coverage of national and international standardized testing. We find that most of the media attention was devoted to international examinations, while national examinations were covered in a more limited yet critical way, perceived as unnecessary and even dubious. International examinations, in contrast, were described as axiomatic components of the education system. Articles on both national and international standardized testing criticize the education system, blaming teachers, the Ministry of Education, budget constraints, and marginalized populations for Israeli students’ inadequate results. We frame our analysis by alignment of the articles along global–local and also neoliberal–humanistic axes. We structure our assessment within the global–local nexus and discuss the broader implications of the role of the testing in framing the local educational public discourse.     

LCSH in the Southern Levant*

Abstract

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) geographic headings for the Southern Levant mirror the political investment of Congress and the American public in Middle East politics over the last thirty years. These LCSH headings contrast markedly with those established in other national libraries and independent value vocabularies, and global opinion regarding the legal status of the occupied territories. The author offers ways that libraries can “decolonize” their metadata in service of Sanford Berman's “access and equity.”     

Retiring Around the World

Summary

This article is about the author's temporary work in three different foreign locations Australia, Israel, and Bermuda. She tells how she found the positions, what it was like to live and work in each place, and gives advice on how to find such positions. She ends with a list of law library associations, their listserves, and how to contact them.