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This paper is a first effort to systematically document programmatic interventions in five of the ten communities participating in The Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative, a joi...

The world’s understanding of adolescence has come a long way since Stanley G. Hall first characterized this stage of development as one of “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904) and the term teenager was ...

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 back- drop 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 attend- ing Jewish faith schools. We show that for many parents, schooling is synonymous with Jewish socialization, or encul- turation; 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 advance- ment for these families; they have become the primary locus of Jewish community.

This chapter calls into question two commonplace assumptions that undergird the work of those who study and develop ‘school–community connections’. The first assumption is that there is a generally unidirectional sequence of cause and effect (from home to school) in the relationships between communities/parents and schools. The second is that the primary outcomes of these relationships have greater significance for children than for parents. At the same time, the chapter suggests that these outcomes confirm an emerging strand of thought within the study of contemporary Jewry. This emphasizes the fluidity of adult Jewish identities, even — if not especially — among those who may not have previously been deeply engaged with aspects of Jewish life.

In 2005 the Network for Research in Jewish Education (NRJE) assumed ownership of and full editorial responsibilities for the Journal of Jewish Education. For 9 years until then, the Journal—under t...

This article takes up categories from literature on political and civic engagement to help make sense of data collected from interviews with 40 American Jewish day high school students about what they think and feel about Israel. Viewed through a set of lenses that distinguish between the manifestations and motivations of political and civic engagement, the article helps clarify why young Jews, even when actively and positively engaged with Israel, are uncomfortable labeling themselves as Zionists. The analysis points to an important distinction between the concepts of Israel as “home” and “homeland.” The article also raises important questions about what is presumed to be an increasing distance or alienation from Israel among young American Jews.

The paper argues that the practices of schools—frequently seen by sociologists as accurate mirrors of society—confirm many of the claims made by Cohen and Kelman. The widespread uptake by day schools of an advocacy approach to Israel education, and the shift to a pedagogy of enculturation from one of instruction, testify to a decline in attachment and a loss of self-confidence among families and communities. The cultivation of attachment to Israel has been subcontracted to schools where often it is focused on a singular limited performance: advocacy for Israel during the few years that students spend on university campuses.

What are North American Jewish day schools doing when they engage in Israel education, what shapes their practices, and to what ends? In this article, we report on a multi-method study inspired by these questions. Our account is organized around an analytical model that helps distinguish between what we call the vehicles, intensifiers, and conditions of day school Israel education. Our discussion explores the possibility that when it comes to Israel education, schools have shifted from a paradigm of instruction to one of enculturation. This shift, we suggest, is indicative of a generalized anxiety about students' commitments to Israel and about their capacity to advocate for Israel when they “come of age” at university.

More than 2,100 people subscribe to LookJed, an online discussion forum for individuals interested in Jewish education. The conversation of active forum participants—most of whom are modern Orthodox Jewish educators—has been preserved in a format readily available for analysis and interpretation. This article explores whether the discussion among listserv participants reflects widely assumed “haredi dominance” over modern Orthodox day schools and the sociological stresses thereby produced.

This issue of the Journal of Jewish Education models what it will take to develop a stable field of research in Jewish education: building on the work of predecessors, refining their ideas and meth...

This article proposes to read events of the educational past not as history but as midrash. It juxtaposes an historical account of a watershed experiment in adult education (Franz Rosenzweig's Freie Judisches Lehrhaus) with an ethnographic account of a presently practicing elementary school teacher. These accounts are generically different and historically distant from one other, but, through association and conversation, there emerges from them some challenging suggestions about how knowledge is born of speech, how learning includes teaching, and how teaching is predicated on desire. Viewing the Lehrhaus project from a “midrashic” stance, invites an enlarged reading of it as an educational experiment and poses questions about the interpretative potential in the intersections between narrative research genres.

This paper sheds light on previously unresearched dimensions in the private-parochial school environment, which help account for the willingness of private school teachers to accept salaries inferior to those offered in public (state) schools. In-depth biographical interviews with a group of 18 Canadian university graduates, qualified to teach in both public schools and private Jewish schools, reveal four aspects of parochial school life whose special influence on teachers' satisfactions and dissatisfactions have not previously been described. These aspects relate to the collegiality, culture and language of schools, as well as the schools' special position at the intersection of teachers' personal and professional commitments.

Background For good reason, most research literature on schooling focuses on the experiences of students or teachers. Schools originally were devised to prepare children for life within particular religious, social or occupational communities, and, in more recent times, to ready them as productive citizens in the broader, industrialized society.1 Understandably, educational research largely has been concerned with the triangle of the child, the teacher and the curriculum—those core elements in the educational process that socialize young people to the values and wisdom of earlier generations and that help youths fulfill their potential.2 When parents have been the focus of educational research, they invariably have been viewed as factors within a larger milieu that influences what occurs inside schools.3 Educational researchers have studied parents insofar as their presence or absence has shaped the quality of children's education. Thus, in the most recent edition of the Handbook of Research on Teaching, parents are recognized as an important "out-of-school factor that affects school performance."4 Over the last decade, however, as charter schools, education vouchers and public debate about school choice have become an increasingly visible part of the educational landscape, there has been a move toward a more dialectical recognition of the relationships between parents and their children's education. At the very least, parents' school choice has been researched not only for how it affects children's education, but for how it serves as a marker or facet of parents' own identities.

Although research has consistently shown that culturally embedded archetypes of teaching powerfully shape the ways teachers conceive of their work and lives, it remains unclear why or how these archetypes continue to exert such influence. This paper argues that the strength of teaching archetypes might usefully be attributed to their continuing potential for translation as what MacIntyre calls not-yet-completed narratives. This claim is supported by drawing on accounts from Jewish day school teachers about their lives and work. A portrait is offered of a teacher whose image of teaching is not only grounded in an influential patriarchal archetype, it also contributes to a significant transformation of the archetype in terms of its gender and its construction of the teacher's role. The case suggests that traditions of teaching remain vital by generating new literatures of practice.

Preface.- About the editors.- About the contributors.- Introduction: Helena Miller, Lisa Grant and Alex Pomson.- VOLUME ONE: Section One: Vision and Practice.- Introduction.- Analytic Philosophy of Education and Jewish Education - the road not taken Barry Chazan.- Community Engagement - the challenge of connecting Jewish schools to the wider community Helena Miller.- Culture - restoring culture to Jewish cultural education Zvi Bekerman and Sue Rosenfeld.- Curriculum Development - what we can learn from International curricula Roberta Louis Goodman and Jan Katzew.- Curriculum Integration Mitch Malkus.- Gender and Jewish Education - why doesn't this feel good? Tova Hartman and Tamar Miller.- Historiography of American Jewish Education - a case for guarded optimism Jonathan Krasner.- Janush Korczak's Life and Legacy for Jewish Education Marc Silverman.- Jewish Identities - education for multiple and moving targets Stuart Charme and Tali Hyman Zelcowicz.- Jewish Identity and Jewish Education: the Jewish identity space and its contribution to research and practice Gaby Horenczyk and Hagit Hacohen Woolf.- Jewish Identity- who you knew affects how you Jew - The impact of childhood Jewish networks upon adult Jewish identity Steven M. Cohen and Judith Veinstein.- Jewish Thought for Jewish Education - sources and resources Jonathan A. Cohen.- Philosophy of Jewish Education - thoughts Michael Rosenak.- Planning for Jewish Education in the 21st Century - towards a new praxis Jonathan S. Woocher.- Pluralism in Jewish Education Brian Conyer.- Post modernism - after enlightenment - Jewish education and the paradoxes of post modernism Hanan Alexander.- Spirituality - the spiritual child and Jewish childhood Michael Shire.- Visions in Jewish Education Daniel Pekarsky.- Section Two: Teaching and Learning.- Introduction.- Art - educating with art without ruining it Robbie Gringras.- Arts and Jewish Day School Education in North America Ofra Backenroth.- Bible - teaching the bible in our times Barry W. Holtz.- Environment: Jewish Education as if the Planet Mattered Eilon Shwartz.- Havruta Study - what do we know and what do we hope to learn? Elie Holzer, Orit Kent.- Hebrew Language in Israel and the Diaspora Nava Navo.- History - issues in teaching and learning Jewish history Benjamin M. Jacobs and Yona Shem Tov.- Holocaust Education Simone Schweber.- Israel Education - purposes and practices Alick Isaacs.- Israel Travel Education Scott Copeland.- Jewish Peoplehood Education David Mittelberg.- Life Cycle Education: Tradition, Ritual and Transition Howard Deitcher.- Other Religions in Jewish Education Michael Gillis.- Talmud: Making a Case for Talmud Pedagogy - the Talmud as an educational model Marjorie Lehmann and Jane Kanarek.- Technology: The Digital Revolution That is Shaping the 21st Century - a fleeting snapshot from the first decade Brian Amkraut.- Travel as a Jewish Educational Tool Erik H. Cohen.- Travel: Location, Location, Location - a practitioner's perspective on Jewish travel Jeremy Leigh.- VOLUME TWO: Section Three: Applications.- Introduction.- Academic Jewish Studies in North America Judith R. Baskin.- Adult Jewish Education - the landscape Lisa D. Grant and Diane Tickton Schuster.- Congregational Schools Isa Aron.- Day schools in the Liberal sector - challenges and opportunities at the intersection of two traditions of Jewish schooling Alex Pomson.- Day schools in the Orthodox Sector Shani Bechhofer.- Early Childhood Education Michael Ben Avie, Ilene Vogelstein, Roberta Louis Goodman, Eli Schaap and Pat Bidol-Padva.- Experiential Jewish Education - reaching the tipping point David Bryfman.- Gender - shifting from evading to engaging gender issues and Jewish education Shira D. Epstein.- Informal Education - the decisive decade - how informal Jewish education was transformed in its relationship with Jewish philanthropy Joseph Reimer.- Intermarriage - connection, commitment, continuity Evie Levy Rotstein.- Learning Organisations - learning to learn - the learning organisation in theory and practice Susan L. Shevitz.- Limmud: A unique model of transformative Jewish learning Raymond Simonson.- Mentoring - ideological encounters - mentoring teachers in Jewish education Michal Muszkat Barkan.- Parents and Jewish Educational Settings Jeff Kress.- Practitioner Enquiry and its Role in Jewish Education Alex Sinclair.- Preparing for Jewish schools - enduring issues for changing contexts Sharon Feiman Nemser.- Professional Development of teachers in Jewish Education Gail Zaiman Dorph.- Professional Development: Vini, Vidi, Vici? Jewish educators short term trips to Israel as professional development programs Shelley Kedar.- Rabbis as Educators - professional training and identity formation Lisa D. Grant and Michal Muszkat Barkan.- Special Education - and you shall do what is right and good in special education in North America - from exclusion to inclusion Rona Milch Novick and Jeffrey Glanz.- Teacher Education: ensuring a cadre of well-qualified Jewish Education Personnel for Jewish schools Leora Isaacs.- Ultra Orthodox/Haredi Education Yoel Finkelman.- Section Four: Geographical.- Introduction.- American Jewish Education in an Age of Choice and Pluralism Jack Wertheimer.- Anglo-Jewish Education: day schools, funding and religious education in State schools David Mendelsson.- Australia - The Jewel in the Crown of Jewish Education Paul Forgasz and Miriam Munz.- Canada - Jewish Education in Canada Michael Brown.- Europe: Education of Adult Jewish Leaders in a Pan-European Perspective Barbara Lerner Spectre.- Europe: Something From (almost) Nothing: the challenge of education in European communities - a personal perspective Steve Israel.- Former Soviet Union - Jewish Education Olga Markus and Michael Farbman.- France - Jewish Education in France Ami Bouganim.- Israel - State religious education in Israel Zehavit Gross.- Israel - Innovations in Secular Schooling in Israel Yehuda Bar Shalom and Tamar Ascher Shai.- Latin America - Jewish Education in Latin America: Challenges, trends and processes Yossi Goldstein and Drori Ganiel.- Netherlands - Social Integration and Religious Identity Hetty Van Het Hoofd.- Name Index.- Subject Index.

This introductory chapter discusses the growing social significance of Jewish day-school education within the context of the Jewish community. It looks more broadly at the developments within a relationship between school and community. Such questions provided the context and motivation for an international conference held in June 2006 at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University, organized with the support of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. This event was convened with the specific intention of encouraging researchers to think in new ways about the sociological functions of Jewish day schools. The chapter discusses the particulars of this conference as well as the research into the inner life of Jewish schools.