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Using a multilevel approach, this study examined the role of classroom emotional climate on students' academic achievement. Positive and negative emotions and homeroom teachers' support were used to assess the classroom emotional climate on the individual and class levels. To our knowledge, no study to date has investigated these specific aspects of the classroom emotional climate in relation to students' GPA. Data were collected from 73 classrooms in grades 7-12 (N = 1,641, students; 53% female) across three schools in Israel. Findings revealed that aggregated levels of both positive affect and perceived homeroom teacher support were positively tied to GPA and that aggregated levels of negative affect were negatively tied to GPA. The final model included gender, teacher support, individual and class emotions and explained 14% of within-class GPA. A central implication of this study is the relevance of having an emotionally supportive homeroom teacher for students' academic achievement.

The ‘tend‐and‐befriend’ approach (Taylor et al., ) posits that in times of stress, women in particular may tend to their loved ones and seek out social support as a coping mechanism. Two corollaries of this model are that when confronted with a situation of extreme stress, marriage may be more of a protective factor for men, as central beneficiaries of their wives ‘tending’ or nurturing response, and social support from a wider network may be more of a protective factor for women, as part of women's ‘befriending’ response to stress. Using a sample of 508 Israelis (M = 47 years; 48% women) under the real condition of a population under missile attacks, we investigated the latter two corollaries of the tend‐and‐befriend model, hypothesizing that marriage would buffer against symptoms of traumatic stress for men in particular and that social support would buffer against symptoms of traumatic stress for women in particular. Our findings revealed gender differences affirming both hypotheses and offering interpretive evidence in support of the tend‐and‐befriend model based on a gender‐informed field study of responses to traumatic stress in real time. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a sample of Israeli adolescents living in a city which was under missile attack 2½ months prior to this study, we examined the possible affective and cognitive mechanisms through which gratitude may serve as a protective factor against PTSD symptoms. Specifically, we focused on how this process might be mediated by positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction. These are widely understood as the emotional and cognitive components of subjective well-being and have each been significantly associated with gratitude and with pathology in the literature. Using pathway analysis, our findings revealed that life satisfaction and negative affect, but not positive affect, mediated the relationship between gratitude and PTSD symptoms. Our study suggests that gratitude may serve as a protective factor primarily through cognitive appraisal processes tied to greater appreciation of life in a way that distinguishes it from other positive emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effort of Orthodox women in Israel to strongly advocate a feminist agenda in the religious public sphere. According to the article, they are actively engaged in attempting to achieve increased participation of Orthodox women in synagogue ritual and in the hierarchy of religious authority. It highlights the ultimate objective of the rabbinical Orthodox ordination of women, eventually. It adds that the women have an agenda which aims to counteract the growing fundamental and anti-modernity slogans promoted by an increasing section Orthodox society in Israel.