Abstract: Teaching and education mirror what societies want to preserve, initiate, and pass along. Thus, the impact of teachers and school textbooks cannot be overestimated. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, to ensure high-quality textbooks, which convey balanced views as well as intellectual and unbiased approaches to the topics. The present study by historian and Holocaust education expert Dr. Melanie Carina Schmoll, PhD, offers a fresh approach to analyzing the subjects of Jews, Judaism, current Israel and the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in curricula and relevant textbooks. The study indicates the status of information, problematic content, or words in curricula and history textbooks used in the German province of North Rhine-Westphalia. Besides analyzing and just denouncing mistakes, the study also provides options for an exchange of difficult and/ or incorrect content in the textbooks. The study assists authors and editors to write and develop unbiased textbooks in the future.
Abstract: Depuis les années 1970, s’observe une « orthodoxisation » de la judaïcité mondiale, notamment en France, au Royaume-Uni, aux États-Unis ou en Israël. Ce mouvement est d’abord porté par des jeunes. Or, jusqu’ici, les études n’ont pas suffisamment abordé la conjonction de la globalisation, de la jeunesse et de la religion dans cette évolution. Cet article étudie la globalisation d’un courant juif orthodoxe, le mouvement loubavitch. Comment insère-t-il les jeunes dans une stratégie de globalisation ? Quels en sont les effets sur leur pratique religieuse ? Cette ONG confessionnelle est un important vecteur d’une « orthodoxisation » chez les jeunes. Elle investit de manière prioritaire dans la jeunesse, notamment par un système éducatif spécifique : il vise à favoriser l’intégration à la communauté loubavitch, par le biais d’une formation orthodoxe standardisée. Mais au sein du mouvement, les jeunes sont aussi des agents : ils sont promoteurs d’une orthodoxie juive globalisée.
Abstract: Aujourd’hui, le djudyó (judéo-espagnol) n’est plus transmis en France. Des associations, comme Aki Estamos, offrent aux personnes qui le parlent ou le comprennent la possibilité de suivre des cours de langue. Les participants, sans être des locuteurs à part entière, ne sont pas non plus des apprenants stricto sensu, puisqu’ils possèdent des compétences linguistiques acquises dans leur enfance. Dans leur cas, la dichotomie entre acquisition et apprentissage est inopérante. Il convient d’identifier les objectifs de ces locuteurs-apprenants, qui suivent les cours sans développer de nouvelles compétences langagières. Ce sont les mots et leurs sonorités qui montent alors sur le devant de la scène, délaissant la grammaire. Le cadre des cours constitue un prétexte pour retrouver une langue et un monde disparus. M’appuyant sur l’observation participante, j’esquisserai les profils linguistiques de ces participants pour tenter d’en comprendre la démarche.
Abstract: Faith schools remain a topic of debate in contemporary Britain. In 2017, faith schools accounted for 33.7% of state-funded mainstream schools. Faith schools differ from other state-funded mainstream schools in many ways. For example, they have the ability to control the content taught in their Religious Education and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) syllabuses and have control over their admissions arrangements. This project explores the impact Jewish schools can have on one’s adult beliefs, through a small-scale study. This study analyses online questionnaire responses from 25 participants aged 19-27. All participants in this sample attended the same Jewish secondary school in London, referred to as ‘School A’. The responses show that faith schools can have a significant effect on one’s adult beliefs, due to the ways in which they teach pupils about different religions, political ideologies, and sexuality. This was found to be mainly due to the perceived exclusion of other religious beliefs and opinions. Despite this, most of the participants still felt able to express themselves and their beliefs. Moreover, this study’s participants felt that their adult beliefs were more significantly impacted by their family and community, rather than by their school. The study’s findings highlight a need to improve the inclusivity of SRE teaching in Jewish schools. This project recommends that further research is conducted on the impact of attending a Jewish secondary school on an individual’s beliefs later in life, and whether this is also representative of all UK faith schools.
Abstract: This thesis argues that British orthodox Jewish women (BOJW) generate spaces within the British orthodox religious community to practice piety in a non-conformist fashion. The spaces they generate both enable BOJW to perform these interventions, as well as reflect back on the normative practices of the British orthodox community. In this way these pious practices inform, influence and shift what constitutes normative practice going forward. I ask what sort of agency accounts for these practices, and how these particular practices inform wider questions of agency. Some theories of agency have rendered the religious subject as repressed, and religious women as voiceless, sometimes invisible. Many religious subjects reject this traducing of their choices, and, instead celebrate opportunities for personal and communal religious agency and alternative performances. I consider these pious interventions through the ethnographic examination of three crucial areas of orthodox religious life: education, ritual participation and issues of leadership and authority. These three areas of investigation represent the most significant arenas of religious life within which BOJW negotiate their identities. During the eight months of fieldwork, I conducted twenty-one qualitative in-depth interviews; additionally, I examined material from local communal websites, synagogue-community mailings and advertising. My findings suggest that intelligibility, as a function of identity, plays a vital role in the ways in which BOJW navigate their way through their religious lives in their homes, communities and workplaces – such that it functions as sacred edifice, restrictive restraint as well as avenue for creativity. Contemporaneously, some of the BOJW interviewed stated that although there has been some shift in normative religious practice in their local synagogue-community, they also experienced backlash from local religious authorities who construed their performances as meta-acts of communal, political and social transgression, rather than acts of religious piety – precisely because they were pious acts performed by women.
Abstract: The indoctrination charge has been levelled at religious studies teachers who teach controversial propositions as fact (see for example Snook, 1972; Hand, 2004). On this view, indoctrination takes place when the process which brings children to believe controversial propositions bypasses their rational autonomy. Taking into account the above argument and the proposed responses, my study goes beyond the arena of normative philosophy and looks at teachers’ conceptions of their role, asking whether they experience tensions between their mission as religious studies teachers and the values of the Western, liberal polity in which they live. I focus on a unique subset of Orthodox Jewish schools, where the schools’ religious ethos appears to be at odds with many of the parent body who are not religiously observant, and I ask to what extent religious studies teachers take parental wishes into account in choosing what and how to teach their subject. Using grounded theory methods in a critical realist paradigm, field work takes the form of in-depth interviews with religious studies teachers in the above group of schools. Working from initial codes to higher levels of theoretical abstraction led to clear findings on teachers’ conceptions of their role and their response to the indoctrination charge. For the purposes of their role at least, religious studies teachers describe religion using the language of the market and getting pupils to “buy-into the product” rather than necessarily to believe its propositions as true. As a corollary to this, participants see autonomy as having to do with choice, rather than with rationality, suggesting that while scholars, in their critique of religious nurture view a rationalist conception of autonomy based on Kant as the dominant paradigm, in the real world (of my research field at least) a more existentialist Millian conception sets the terms of the discourse.
Abstract: Jewish education is at a critical juncture. The experience of Covid-19 has shaken and tested our schools, youth movements and our communal infrastructure. As a community, we have risen to the enormous challenges across the sector.
The question facing educational leaders is how do we ‘build back better’? In June 2021, LSJS and UJIA convened an on-line symposium for Jewish educational leaders, providing a collaborative space to consider that question and develop long-term strategic solutions. Headed by Joanne Greenaway (Chief Executive, LSJS) and Mandie Winston (Chief Executive, UJIA), a steering group from across the Jewish educational sector led this project (see
appendix one).
Drawing on current international research on post-pandemic recovery and opportunity, we shared ideas and emerging models of success, captured learning from our lived experiences and considered how to use them to drive change. We started a critical process which we have subsequently built on to set a new, bold agenda for Jewish education, which crucially, has brought together both the formal and informal education sectors working with up to 25 yearold Jewish young people.
We addressed the unique aspects of Jewish education, in which the interplay between home, school and community is so critical to success. We also needed to understand unique opportunities, like the potential role of our active youth movements and how best to harness it.
Our focus has been twofold. First, we have been considering what is the best Jewish educational response to the cost of Covid, with its psychological impact on our young people and learners. It has placed an enormous stress on teachers, informal educators and all who work with young people in our community. Meanwhile, we have also addressed the lost learning experiences, including two summers of limited engagement and no school Israel trips or Youth Movement Israel Tours.
Second, how do we create opportunity out of the crisis? How might we re-envision our educational organisations? How can we harness the opportunities afforded by new technology and what are its limitations? How have we been impacted by greater global connectedness? How have our young people’s attitudes to learning shifted and what does that mean for the way in which we teach and engage them? How do the informal and formal education sectors
complement or duplicate each other? Are we best supporting and valuing the teachers and educators we entrust with our children and what status do they have in our community?
Abstract: Анализируются проблемы изучения современного иврита в Российской Федерации. В частности, отмечается, что иврит — язык, изучение которого еще совсем недавно было запрещено или, по крайней мере, весьма ограничено, в настоящее время изучается на всех образовательных уровнях и в самых разнообразных форматах. Иврит преподают на различных языковых курсах, в том числе при разных еврейских организациях, а в последние годы появляется все больше курсов и частных групп, предлагающих пользующуюся все большим спросом услугу изучения иврита в онлайн-формате. В целом, за последние 30 лет в России создана собственная школа преподавания иврита, осуществляется активная научная деятельность, проводятся международные конференции, издается собственный журнал.
Abstract: Paideia - the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden was created in 2000 as an academic and applied institute of excellence, with the mandate of working for the rebuilding of Jewish life and culture in Europe, and educating for active minority citizenship. It does this through offering an intensive one-year educational program in Jewish Studies directed at future leaders of Jewish life and inter-cultural work. Each year 20-25 participants attend the program, from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds and a variety of European countries. In addition to the one-year Jewish Studies Program, Paideia has also developed activities for its graduates including alumni conferences, educational weekends and Project-Incubator, a two-week summer program to support projects and social innovation across Europe. Project-Incubator was introduced as a follow-up program for alumni, but has expanded its target group beyond graduates. Since its introduction in 2006, the program has developed over 100 different projects. After several years of activity, Paideia decided to conduct an evaluation study to provide a systematic overview of the program's contributions and achievements, and identify unmet needs. The evaluation comprised a follow-up study of all graduates from 2002-2009. This reportpresents the findings of that study. The study findings showed that graduates view the Paideia program as very successful and feel that it contributed to them to a great extent. It was found that all graduates continue to be involved in Jewish activities in their countries of residence. Most report that the program has had an important impact on their professional-life career, on their pursuit of Jewish Studies and on their involvement in Jewish community activities.
Topics: Educational Tours, Israel Tours, Main Topic: Education, Jewish Education, Jewish Identity, Israel Attachment, Israel Education, Israel Experience, Teenagers, Youth, Interviews
Abstract: Jewish social justice education is an active and growing field of practice, encompassing a diverse range of agendas and practices: teaching Jewish texts and values around issues of refugees, human rights and environmental justice; organising members of the Jewish community to oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories and support the Israeli Left; advancing gender equality and LGBT+ inclusion within the community through informal education and training; engaging Jewish students in volunteer service-learning projects to alleviate poverty in the developing world; building inter-faith coalitions to work on local agendas such as housing, crime and healthcare; encouraging a culture of charitable giving and volunteering among Jewish young people; and mobilising Jews in the national and international political arenas around issues such as gun violence, climate change, immigration, hate crime and antisemitism. Yet Jewish social justice education remains an under-researched and under-theorised phenomenon. This theoretical lacuna has practical implications for the thousands of educators and activists across the world who are attempting to achieve social justice ends through the medium of Jewish education but have no well thought-out rationale as to what this might mean and, consequently, cannot know if it has any chance of success. This thesis explores possible theoretical foundations for Jewish social justice education by creating a hermeneutical dialogue between Freirean critical pedagogy, Catholic models of social justice education, Jewish social justice literature and interviews with thinkers and practitioners who consider themselves to be part of the Jewish social justice education enterprise. After drawing out and analysing the philosophical, political and educational themes that emerge from this dialogue, I propose three possible directions a coherent normative theory of Jewish social justice education could take: ‘Jewish politics in a renewed public sphere’, ‘Jewish education for relational community building’ and ‘Jewish critical pedagogy for cultural emancipation’.
Abstract: Artykuł prezentuje działania edukacyjne i społeczno-kulturalne o cha-rakterze inkluzywnym prowadzone w Polsce dla społeczności żydowskiej przez jej członków i członkinie zrzeszonych w Stowarzyszeniu Żydowskim Cukunft. Jako świecka organizacja Cukunft w swoich działaniach bazuje na żydowskich wartościach religijnych i kulturowych, z którymi zwraca się zarówno do spo-łeczności żydowskiej, jak i nieżydowskiej (świeckiej, katolickiej, protestanckiej i muzułmańskiej). Dzięki takiemu nowatorskiemu podejściu Cukunft stara się poruszać ważne kwestie społeczne, jak stereotypy, uprzedzenia, dyskryminację i wykluczenie ze względu na wyznanie, afiliację religijną, pochodzenie narodowe i etniczne, wiek, płeć, orientację seksualną i status społeczny. Celem tych działań jest wspieranie polskiego społeczeństwa obywatelskiego otwartego na różnorod-ność i bogactwo kulturowe Polaków należących do różnych grup mniejszościo-wych oraz aktywne przeciwdziałanie wszelkim formom rasizmu, antysemity-zmu, ksenofobii i wykluczenia społecznego. Tego typu podejście w żydowskiej edukacji religijnej pozwala podtrzymać pamięć o żydowskich wartościach kultu-rowo-religijnych i nadać im nową, uniwersalną jakość. Dzięki temu są one nadal obecne w przestrzeni społecznej. Słowa kluczowe: dialog religijny, dyskryminacja krzyżowa, inkluzywność reli-gijna, judaizm, wykluczenie, Żydzi W opracowaniach naukowych dotyczących współczesnego życia żydow-skiego w Polsce przyjęło się uważać, że wraz z upadkiem komunizmu po 1989 roku nastąpił dynamiczny rozwój polskiej społeczności żydowskiej, określany mianem żydowskiego odrodzenia (Jewish Revival) 1. Dowodem tego 1 Tematyką odrodzenia żydowskiego w Polsce po 1989 roku od wielu lat naukowo zajmują się m.in.
