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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]

During the 1990s, Jewish communal leaders in Britain reached a consensus that Jewish education, in the broadest sense, was the principal means of strengthening Jewish identity and securing Jewish continuity. This belief motivated considerable investment in communal intervention programs such as Jewish schools, Israel experience trips, and youth movements. Twenty years on, it is pertinent to ask whether, and to what extent, this intervention has worked. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research's (JPR) 2011 National Jewish Student Survey contains data on over 900 Jewish students in Britain and presents an opportunity to empirically assess the impact such intervention programs may have had on respondents' Jewish identity by comparing those who have experienced them with those who have not. Regression analysis is used to test the theory based on a set of six dimensions of Jewish identity generated using principal component analysis. The results show that after controlling for the substantial effects of Jewish upbringing, intervention has collectively had a positive impact on all aspects of Jewish identity examined. The effects are greatest on behavioral and mental aspects of socio-religious identity; they are far weaker at strengthening student community engagement, ethnocentricity, and Jewish values. Further, the most important intervention programs were found to be yeshiva and a gap year in Israel. Both youth movement involvement and Jewish schooling had positive but rather limited effects on Jewish identity, and short-stay Israel tours had no positive measurable effects at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultra-orthodox (haredi) Jewish schools have regularly although not invariably been subject to criticism in inspection reports since at least the 1980s. Criticism focuses on the quality of secular education provided in these schools. It is argued that this education is insufficient to allow pupils to function effectively in modern society. This article analyses haredi schools in the context of the haredi communities that they serve. It shows that whilst these communities are exclusive in their nature and seek to be removed from the mainstream of society they also value education to a degree that is far higher than that to be found elsewhere. Education within haredi schools is largely religious and centres on the reading and interpretation of Jewish religious texts in their original languages. This article argues that such an education, although it does not give pupils much that might be regarded as basic information in other types of school, does give the pupils a high level of general, transferable, intellectual skills. Given this, the adverse reports that the schools receive may be difficult to defend both in the context of the general values of a country that considers itself both liberal and religiously pluralistic and in the light of the particular obligations that the United Kingdom has under the European Convention on Human Rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profiles Israel Abrahams, British writer and teacher of Jewish theology. Education background; Family life; Work experience as professor at Cambridge University; Discussion on the books published by the writer; Views on Rabbinism and the Jewish religious experience.

The article focuses on the social research on the Jewish Community in Great Britain. It presents edition of the Register that has been drawn up on the basis of information available to the Unit in June 1968. It includes details of social research currently being undertaken in Anglo-Jewish studies, together with information about recently completed projects. Further editions are planned and it is hoped that readers will submit details of any further projects, which might be included. For each project the following information is given, in so far as it is relevant and available: (a) title of the project, (b) a short description of the project, (c) the name of the person or committee responsible for the research, (d) the name of the principal research workers, (e) the actual or proposed starting date, (f) the proposed completion date, (g) date and details of publication of interim results, (h) probable date and place of publication of final result. The Register is divided into two parts: (A) research undertaken or sponsored by Jewish communal organizations, and (B) research undertaken under university auspices (as a research thesis or otherwise).