A leader in Jewish education policy for over 30 years, Jonathan Woocher influenced countless practitioners and policy makers. This article examines Woocher's body of written work by investigating three of his pieces published over a span of 20 years. The article exposes four themes: Jewish education is a project of building infrastructure, Jewish…

The French Saint-Joseph school in Jaffa is one of the few educational institutions in Israel that have survived, since 1882, three political regimes without relinquishing pedagogical or managerial autonomy. This article examines the emergence of "circumstantial multiculturalism" in the midst of radical political changes in a…

The study explored how a group of private Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) schools legitimized an innovative non-mandatory reform. Specifically, it examined the circumstances that facilitated and hindered a "coincidence of wants" between the schools and the Ministry of Education, which resulted in signing agreements that changed the status…

In the face of the dynamic tension between internal goals and external reform demands, school principals' role has become increasingly more complex and their sense-making more crucial. Yet, research has paid little attention to the significant role principals perform as sense makers in local reform implementation processes. This study explores…

The purpose of this paper is to problematize the place of religious authority in politics and education. Specifically, this essay highlights the role of religious authority in establishing a moral order that values compliance and conformity at the expense of liberty and critique. In doing so, the essay reflects on Israeli politics and Islamic…

This article documents the "Journal of Jewish Education's" acquisition by the Network for Research in Jewish Education, in 2004, and evaluates the contribution of the re-launched Journal to the field of Jewish education. I explore how the Journal contributed over the past decade in three discrete yet often overlapping areas, thereby…

This paper offers a model for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of judicial involvement in educational reforms. It uses the model to analyze two case studies of court-led educational reforms in the third rail of Israeli politics--the curricula and the admission policies of ultra-Othodox (Haredi) schools. These case studies are located at the…

This study explores how the constitutional right to educational freedom penetrates to the schools of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Antwerp, which is one of the largest Haredi communities in the world. The findings indicate that the constitutional educational freedom is altered by various legal rules, social norms, and…

This paper employs the provisions of international human rights law in order to analyse whether and how liberal states should regulate Haredi educational practices, which sanctify the exclusive focus on religious studies in schools for boys. It conceptualises the conflict between the right to acceptable education and the right to adaptable…

The article examines state-supported religious education and its consequences for civic attitudes in Indonesia and Israel, two democracies that grant religion a prominent place in the public sphere, particularly in education. The comparison reveals that while in Indonesia the state was able to gradually introduce a secular curriculum in religious…

Jonathan Woocher's "Reinventing Jewish Education for the 21st Century" presents a vision for a reimagined system of Jewish education. The educational landscape is changing, Woocher says, both because of a myriad of contextual factors (economic, geopolitical, technological, sociological) and because of the very need for Jewish educational decision…

This article focuses on one aspect of a case study of three congregations (Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant): the structure of the religious education programs. The three institutions were structured in much the same way, and the way they were structured looked like public school. If we have more in common with our neighborhood churches and public…

In what ways do Jewish and Muslim faith schools in Britain play a role in promoting and contributing to community cohesion? What 21st-century skills around intercultural understanding do they foster? This book examines the nuances of faith in school settings and draws on a case study of Jewish and Muslim faith schools. The authors show how these…

This article ethnographically analyzes the everyday negotiations of a language policy at a private religious educational institution whose explicit educative mission is the transmission of religious beliefs, values, and practices. Specifically, it explores a Hebrew-only language policy at a Jewish day school located in New York City, and focuses…

This paper explores the concept of "community engagement," a central theme within a British research project examining the issues of cultural sustainability among faith-based schools. Discussion is informed by the views of Muslim and Jewish school community stakeholders at the time when the policy of social cohesion was being legally…