Search

Beginning in 1997, the Har Hamor Yeshiva, a leading Jerusalem-based institute for Torah learning, has become the center of a unique stream of thought in religious Zionist philosophy. This article examines how religious Zionist yeshivas have developed an educational curriculum that translates theological beliefs and values into political action. The article seeks to evaluate to what extent this ideology and curriculum will be able to survive in a political reality in which the rift between religious and secular Zionism is constantly increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article sets up a dialogue betweenauto-referential (looking to self) andallo-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 betweenauto- andallo-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 theauto-referential framework ofbeing and doingJewish. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study seeks to analyse the components that contribute to Special Religious Education (SRE) classes in government schools in Australia being considered as a ‘safe place’ and the ways in which they facilitate an understanding of the students’ own religious and cultural identity. Our research focuses on one of the small faiths, Judaism, as a case study through observation of the Jewish SRE/SRI classes in the two largest Jewish population centres, Sydney and Melbourne. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants, and classroom observations were undertaken in both cities. This paper draws on Kymlicka’s concept of the rights of minority groups in a liberal society and discusses the distinction between thin and thick multiculturalism. Our findings show that the Jewish SRE teachers implemented Jackson’s interpretive approach, ensuring that the students’ educational experience is meaningful. As a result, they are able to develop their unique identity capital, which is important in a multifaith society to ensure ‘thick’ multiculturalism. Our argument is that students need to have an understanding of their own particularistic identity, as well as learning to respect other religions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two mid-nineteenth-century American Jewish Sunday-school textbooks-Mrs. Eliezer [Rachel Peixotto] Pyke's Scriptural Questions for the Use of Sunday Schools for the Instruction of Israelites (1843) and Simha C. Peixotto's Elementary Introduction to the Scriptures for the Use of Hebrew Children (1840)-shed important light on the relationship between Jews and the dominant Christian (largely Protestant) culture that surrounded them. A comparison of these books with the Protestant Sunday-school texts upon which they drew serves as a revealing case study of cultural borrowing and cultural resistance between minority and majority faiths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison to the expected outcome of the long lasting suppression and persecution, Jews during centuries demonstrated the relative resistance to stress, learned helplessness and depression. This article suggests that this resistance may be related to the peculiarity of the traditional Jewish religious education that stimulates intellectual search activity as well as right-hemispheric polysemantic thinking in equilibrium with the left hemispheric verbal thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares a stand-alone program with no linkage to formal Jewish education, the Brandeis Collegiate Institute, with the most currently accepted criteria of informal Jewish education (IJE). It demonstrates the inherent educational value of IJE programming in strengthening Jewish identity and affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how arts-based learning can facilitate understandings of Jewish religious texts. Through practical examples drawn from our own research, from the worlds of dance, drama, and the visual arts in education, we demonstrate the ways in which arts can allow for the transmission of information and knowledge, as well as offer a “transformative” learning experience; a student can bring the text to life while bringing the text into his or her life. We stress the primary importance and centrality of sacred text within Jewish tradition and assert that the written text should serve in Jewish education as the starting point. The ultimate goal, however, is to enable learners' personal connection with texts. We argue that learning through the arts opens up opportunities for multiple shared interpretations of text, as well as accentuation of the “affective” dimensions of Jewish textual learning. By becoming more aware of the varied possible paths for generating learning activities, educators might choose learning strategies that enable an integration of both the cognitive and affective domains. The examples of Arts Reflective learning demonstrate possibilities for the structuring of “teaching towards transformation.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While representing a small percentage of all private, religious schools, Jewish schools are nonetheless a significant presence on the religious landscape. This article analyzes the rapid growth of Jewish schools over the past three decades and examines possible future directions for Jewish schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of philosophers Horace M. Kallen and John Dewey in Jewish Education in the U.S. Kallen was a philosopher and educator who became known in his work about the theory of cultural pluralism. Dewey has become his collaborator in promoting Jewish education in the country. Kallen and Dewey has become friends since their first meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Cambridge in 1905. The two philosophers have shared political outlook and collaborated in different philosophical and political issues. The cultural pluralism in the country has succeeded which it was advanced by Kallen and was accepted in principle by Jewish survivalists.

Discusses the politicization and depoliticization of Jewish religious education in Israel. Traditional `Jewish religious education' in the Diaspora and in Israel; Religious education and the new state of Israel; Four types of religious education and politics.

Israel as a unique country composed of a religiously heterogeneous society of native-born Israelis whose parents arrived in the country before the declaration of Israel as an independent state in 1948 and immigrant Jews coming from countries spread throughout the world, mainly from the early 1960s until the present time, as well as Arab Moslem, Arab Christian, and Druze citizens born in the country. The Jewish population consists of secularized Jews who are almost totally estranged from the Jewish religion; traditional Jews who identify with the Jewish religion; religious modern orthodox observant Jews who share common societal goals with members of secular and religious Jewish society; and religious ultra-orthodox observant Jews who are rigid in their faith and oppose absorption and assimilation into general society. The Israeli Arab population comprises Moslems who are generally more religious than Israeli Jews, but are less religious and more flexible in their religious beliefs than Moslems living in many other countries in the Middle East. Christians who identify with their religion; and a moderately religious Druze community. Because of the heterogeneity of Israeli society, mandatory religious and heritage education presents each sector with a unique curriculum that serves the particular needs considered vital for each sector be they secular, traditional, or religious. In order to offset the differences in religious and heritage education and to enhance common social values and social cohesion in Israeli society, citizenship education, coupled with religious and heritage education, is compulsory for all population sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]