What does it mean for teachers to "know their subject matter" and what are--or might be--the sources of teachers' knowledge? The article contends that there is an underutilized potential resource for Jewish teachers that Judaica scholarship about classic texts may offer to pedagogy. The article examines, as a model, the Rabbinic…

This study explores how the relationships between congregational school Jewish educators built during ongoing "havruta" (partner-based) text study can carry over into a professional relationship that is aimed toward learning to integrate technology. Educator relationships were studied as part of the Jewish Educator Technology Initiative…

We frequently encounter the claim that a particular Jewish educational experience will be "transformative" for the participants. The language may be hyperbole. But it may also point to educators' aspirations to affect not just knowledge and practice but character and identity. In order to understand this phenomenon--not the phenomenon of…

Dr. Woocher's essay, states Mirvis, is seminal in the field of Jewish education. It proposes a new paradigm for Jewish education in North America. This proposed paradigm is supported by a comprehensive multi-disciplinary research drawing on literature from education, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and economics. The essay reflects a…

Reinventing Jewish education is not about tinkering at the surface level but at creating deep change, a new paradigm. Superficial change is built on existing models, but deep change dramatically breaks with the past and challenges current models, norms, values, and beliefs. A paradigm shift is a radical move and, as many have discovered, it is…

Jonathan Woocher opens his clarion call for a new paradigm in Jewish education with a nod to Samson Benderly, founding executive of the Bureau of Jewish Education in New York (BJENY), who at the beginning of the 20th century set out to design a communal system built upon the twin pillars of progressive educational theory and practice and cultural…

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…

This article provides an overview and analysis of a relatively new phenomenon: congregational schools that have altered the conventional grammar of schooling, either through their structural arrangements or through their curricular approaches. Five pre-bar/bat mitzvah models are discussed: family schools, schools as communities,…

In his retrospective essay, Seymour Fox (1997) identified "vision" as the essential element that shaped the Ramah camp system. I will take a critical look at Fox's main claims: (1) A particular model of vision was essential to the development of Camp Ramah; and (2) That model of vision should guide contemporary Jewish educators in creating Jewish…

Stuart Schoenfeld's (1987) essay "Folk Judaism, Elite Judaism and the Role of Bar Mitzvah in the Development of the Synagogue and Jewish School in America" recounts how, in the 1930s and 40s, rabbis and Jewish educators banded together to impose attendance requirements on families that wanted to celebrate their sons' b'nei mitzvah in synagogues.…

Liberal day schools in the United States have long championed the ideology of integration between Jewish and secular subjects and values, and have made the "integration" of these subjects and values with one another a cornerstone of their curriculum. In recent years, the ideology of integration has been called into question, and an alternative…

The literature on curricular integration in Jewish education has tended to focus on two basic paradigms. In the first paradigm, the integration of Jewish and general studies curricula represents the aspiration that the graduates of the institution will likewise integrate Jewish and general studies (or "Americanism" or "modernity") in their lives.…

This article examines the question of whether one ought to hold religious experience as a Jewish educational goal and, more fundamentally, to ask what this might mean. The objective is to begin to probe what an education toward (Jewish) religious experience would entail and what some of the theoretical, moral and practical obstacles might be. The…