This study presents the cases of two teachers in a Jewish supplementary school whose experiences as learners in a year-long professional development (PD) program shaped their teaching practice. The PD program, based in a theory of havruta text learning, immersed the faculty in the very pedagogy they were being encouraged to use in their teaching…

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…

Education and assimilation seem intimately connected; education either supports assimilation or thwarts it. But these paradigms assume a model of cultural vitality that depends on what one scholar aptly terms "tenacious adherence," over time, to an unchanging cultural or religious tradition. Taking the example of the Jewish community and Jewish…

Throughout history, young people earned adult roles through observing, imitating, and interacting with adults around them. Rituals of initiation such as the Jewish bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah are very important rite of passage ceremonies. Many churches confer baptism, confirmation, or catechism as rites of passage to adulthood. Without such…

As the author reads through Dr. Woocher's article, she was inspired and excited by his call to reassess goals and by the possibilities he describes. At the same time, she felt overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues and the breadth of potential solutions educators face as Jewish communities in 5773. Woocher points straight to the heart of…

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…

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,…

Research into school choice has generally explored both the processes by which choices are made and the considerations that parents explore when making this important decision on behalf of their children. This article examines the secondary school choices of Jewish parents in the United Kingdom. It explores parents' reasons for choosing to select…

Didactic rewrites of aggadic stories are an important resource in values education. This study, geared primarily toward teachers involved in choosing curricular materials, investigates how the didactic rewriter actually becomes an interpreter, rather than a mere transmitter, of the original text. The personal values of the rewriters can influence…

This article explores the North African Jewish community's establishment of Or Haemet Sephardic School as a response to the forced "Ashkenazification" of Sephardic students in the Orthodox Jewish day school system. The establishment of the school signifies the North African Jewish community's refusal and resistance to an essentialist…

This article summarizes a study of the viewpoints of Bible lecturers in the Kindergarten Education Department while teaching content related to the biblical "other." The study, by two researchers themselves part of the study population, was conducted according to the qualitative approach and included interviews with participants from a…

The teaching and learning of Modern Hebrew outside of Israel is essential to Jewish education and identity. One of the most contested issues in Modern Hebrew pedagogy is the use of code-switching between Modern Hebrew and learners' first language. Moreover, this is one of the longest running disputes in the broader field of second language…

Reflective journaling is frequently employed to help preservice educators make sense of fieldwork experiences. Analyzing the weekly journals of eight preservice educators, I offer conceptual language to describe how journal writing provides a window into students' capacity for reflection. This capacity is described in terms of three continua:…

A century ago a group of educators led an effort to transform American Jewish education to enable it to operate successfully in the 20th century. Today, with American Jews living under very different conditions, a similar effort is needed to reinvent Jewish education for the 21st century. Changes and new initiatives already taking place on the…

Jonathan Woocher is to be commended for offering his thought-provoking "big picture" account of where the field of Jewish education has been and where, if it is to be successful, it needs to be going under the conditions of life in the 21st century. Woocher's capacity to use an array of relevant perspectives and literatures to illuminate the…