Introducing students to the similarities and connections among the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an is a means to introduce students to a shared source of humanity, beauty, wisdom, and solace. This article outlines a literature class that uses comparatist strategies to introduce these three foundational religious texts as literary works.…

For Jewish Ethiopian refugees at the Tikvah summer camp in Gondar, Ethiopia, Jewish informal education keeps their dreams of Jerusalem alive while simultaneously reinforcing Israeli gatekeeping practices. The ethnic and religious ideologies underlying Israeli nation-building and statecraft surface in the campers' exterritorial encounter with…

Tensions across religious and LGBTQ concerns have played out in education for some time. In this paper, I make efforts to respond productively to this context by theorising what it might mean for young people in religious schools to dissent from the heteronormativity of religion in religious education (RE). To do this, I survey perspectives across…

The concept of Thirdspace was employed to explore the interface of Haredi religious perception and contemporary psychological notions, focusing on male Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) kindergarten teachers' perceptions of "self." A two years ethnographic study was conducted, based on interactions with 90 male kindergarten teachers and 13…

This dissertation seeks to understand how a work-based learning project develops the skills, attitudes, behaviors, and Jewish sense of self for three Jewish Federation professionals participating in a larger, 18-month professional development initiative focused on experiential Jewish education. Using case study methodology, this research also…

Within Orthodox Jewish early childhood programs, gender roles of the Shabbat Party promote heteronormative gender expectations that contend with values about children, teaching, and Judaism. Interviews with 15 educators suggested tensions between gender flexible attitudes and beliefs that gender unfolds naturally. Pretend play was considered a…

We know little currently about how new digital tools have effected changes in Jewish studies learning environments and processes -- although technologies play a central role in contemporary discussions of learning. This study aims to understand how learners collaboratively interpret Jewish sacred texts using informal online collaborative learning…

This article deals with the perceived professional and personal identity of Israeli public-school teachers of subjects related to Jewish culture who have immigrated from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Our research question was: What was the impact of the emigration from the FSU on the teachers' Jewish-Israeli identity construction, and how did…

Pedagogue's fallacy occurs when epistemological principles are applied by educators that in fact do not tell of, or explain, or help understand, the subject at hand. It is identified and introduced in this article to raise an important issue in the construction of pedagogical models of religious education: knowledge is reduced and/or distorted to…

This article investigates the genesis of a new model of religious education in the history of Jews using as an example Jews in Galicia during its autonomous period (1867-1918). At that time, it became necessary to organize instruction in Mosaic religion in public schools. No relevant experience had been previously acquired, and the vast majority…

This mixed methodology study explored the reasons that teachers in Israel are motivated to become school leaders, and the relative importance of the different discouraging factors that worked against such interest. A cross-national Israeli survey included 39 individual interviews, 2 focus groups of 25 teachers each, and a questionnaire completed…

In a recent volume of the "Journal of College and Character," Matt Mayhew and Alyssa Rockenbach presented their frameworks by which they have designed and utilized their IDEALS study over the past several years. In this present article, the authors contend that despite their rigorous research, the researchers and measurements oftentimes…

Jewish education in Israel's non-religious state ("Mamlakhti") schools is intended to support an open-ended, pluralistic dialogue surrounding the question of Jewish identity. The distinct features of Knowledge Building Communities (KBCs) set them apart as a pedagogical approach that is particularly suitable for achieving this educational…

Faith schools may play an important role in reproducing ethnoreligious identities, yet research into Jewish schools has tended to overlook students' personalised conceptualisations of faith. Instead, it has regularly utilised restrictive 'indicators' of ethnoreligious practice in order to gauge these institutions' effectiveness in 'strengthening'…

Faith schools are often perceived as restricting students' autonomy through inculcating a single religious ideology and compelling participation in collective worship. Based on interviews and focus groups with parents, students and senior staff, this article investigates how England's one pluralist Jewish secondary school has, in contrast,…