Abstract: In liberal democracies, fundamental rights and freedoms can conflict, and if they do, it is not always clear which right the state should prioritize. Should the right of parents to choose education in line with their own convictions prevail, or should the right of children to be prepared for a future life in a liberal democratic society be given more moral weight? While the former might lead to establishing and subsidizing orthodox religious schools, the latter implies “liberal”, “autonomy-facilitating” education. In order to make this tension concrete, we focus on a case study of an ultra-orthodox Jewish (Haredi) school in Flanders (Belgium), where “controversial issues” are excluded from the curriculum and where education is not fully in line with the core principles of “liberal education”. Subsequently, we explore the legal educational context in liberal democracies, with a particular focus on the freedom of religion and education. Then, we scrutinize several arguments for or against ultra-orthodox faith-based schools. We conclude that there are no convincing arguments for state support for these kinds of schools and that the recent Flemish policy of homeschooling might be a reasonable alternative, wherein a balance is found between children’s rights and parental rights
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: This article addresses the issue of teaching Judaism for students in the teacher-training programme and those training to become clergy in a Swedish milieu. A major challenge in the secular post-Protestant setting is to pinpoint and challenge the negative presuppositions of Judaism as a religion of legalism, whereas the student’s own assumption is that she or he is neutral. Even if the older paradigms of anti-Jewish stereotypes are somewhat distant, there are further patterns of thought which depict Judaism as a ‘strange’ and ‘legalistic’ religion. Students in the teacher-training programme for teaching religion in schools can in class react negatively to concepts like kosher slaughter, circumcision and the Shabbat lift. Even if the explanatory motives vary, there is nonetheless a tendency common to ordination students, relating to a Protestant notion of the Jewish Torah, commonly rendered as ‘Law’ or ‘legalism’. This notion of ‘the Law’ as a means of self-redemption can, it is argued in the article, be discerned specially among clergy students reading Pauline texts and theology. This analysis shows that both teacher-training and textbooks need to be updated in accordance with modern research in order to refute older anti-Jewish patterns of thought. As for the challenge posed by the simplistic labelling of both Judaism and Islam as religions of law, the implementation of the teaching guidelines concerning everyday ‘lived religion’ enables and allows the teacher to better disclose Judaism, Christianity and Islam as piously organised living faiths rather than as being ruled by legalistic principles.
Abstract: The fight against antisemitism through the means of education should begin from as early an age as possible. Various informal, educational projects exist that work towards this goal, using a number of different methods. However, these projects often operate separately and on an ad hoc basis in educational institutions, hence they lack an overarching concept or idea for the students. This makes the projects less efficient, and their short and long term impact becomes more difficult to evaluate. Generally speaking, Jewish history and religion are not part of the national curriculum in secondary schools. In the rare cases when aspects of Judaism are taught, the main focus is on the Holocaust, which often has a negative and counterproductive effect. For this reason, the main objective of the New World project was to educate students on topics such as Hungary’s role in the Holocaust (which is still not fully accepted by Hungarian society), prejudices, radicalisation and Jewish identity.
With the professional leadership and support of the Tom Lantos Institute, a complex educational project was realised. Its components build on each other, following a single line of thought: it incorporates the performance of the play New World, a subsequent drama-based pedagogical session and finally, 2-3 weeks later, an informal educational class led by the Haver Foundation. Each step of the programme was evaluated using a variety of methods such as mini-interviews, participants’ reports and questionnaires. Following a short literature review, this report intends to give a summary of the concept, structure, conclusions and results of the project. The report is dedicated to participants and leaders of similar initiatives, as well as to a wider audience of individuals interested in the topic.
Abstract: Emma was born in 1956. Her parents survived the Holocaust with the help of false documents and their Slavic appearance – goes the family legend. Emma was brought up by her parents, according to communist principles. She is already 17 when she first learns from her aunt that she is Jewish. She meets her husband, Ben, a Nigerian, in 1976, and they leave for Nigeria. A year later Emma returns alone, pregnant, and from then on, her relationship with Ben is almost completely cut off. In 1990, Emma sends her child to a Jewish school. The analysis of the narrative interview reveals that for Emma, the meaning of choosing a stranger from a different culture was to get rid of a stigma. The presence of the colored child born from the relationship comforts her – if she manages to hide the Jewishness of the child, this covers her Jewishness as well. Along with this, she seems to be trying to protect her son from her identity problem: the color of his skin gives clear evidence of who he is and where he comes from. A decade later, she changes her strategy: now she wants the hidden stigma to be revealed and seen. And once more she uses her son to achieve this: if her son attends a Jewish school, he becomes Jewish. And if he is Jewish, that means that she too is Jewish.
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: Stereotypy o Romech a Židech v české společnosti. Jaké jsou a jak s nimi pracovat?
Jak funguje vzdělávání proti předsudkům v českých školách a jaké jsou příklady dobré praxe?
Tým ze Sociologického ústavu Akademie věd na datech z posledních let ukázal, jak jsou v české společnosti rozšířené stereotypy o Romech a Židech. Jedním ze zjištění je, že menší předsudky vůči Romům mají lidé, kteří se s nějakými Romy osobně znají.
Škola je jedním z nejdůležitějších míst, kde je možné pozitivně ovlivnit postoje mladých lidí. Tým Ústavu pro studium totalitních režimů se proto ptal učitelů a lektorů, jaké jsou jejich zkušenosti se vzděláváním k toleranci. Nabízíme doporučení, jak pomoci školám efektivně oslabovat předsudky.
Zjistili jsme, že předpokladem úspěchu je spolupráce celé školy. Další úspěšnou strategií je podpora setkávání žáků z různých sociálních skupin. Je rovněž třeba podporovat vzdělávání učitelů tak, aby dokázali ve třídě zvládat debatu o kontroverzních tématech.
Výsledky výzkumu jsme shrnuli do závěrečné zprávy, v níž najdete:
Kvalitativní i kvantitativní shrnutí současné praxe vzdělávání pro toleranci, realizovaných programů a jejich podpory.
Naše doporučení pro donory, jak efektivněji nastavit projektovou podporu, a pro školy a pedagogy, jak s předsudky ve škole lépe pracovat.
Rozsáhlou studii o postojích české společnosti vůči Romům a Židům.
Abstract: This paper shows how from the start of the modern era to today, Jewish education always depended on the successive identity types to which the Jewish minority in France chose to belong. Following the heder of Jewish groups under the Ancien Régime, the consistorial schools followed Emancipation in the face of a concomitant and difficult challenge, namely promoting Jewish individuals in the community while acknowledging each individual’s religious specificity. Primarily a favorite means of regeneration for the poor and immigrants, this means of improvement reached the end of the 1930s in an unhappily weakened state as a result of the success of assimilation and the social secularization of society in general. Between the two world wars but mainly on the eve of World War Two, weaknesses began to appear in French Judaism as a whole along with yearnings for a more religious dimension of Jewish identity as well as a more favorable perspective on Zionism, even if many remained convinced Israelites. These yearnings were manifested in the emerging youth movements, mostly the French Israelite Boy Scouts, and the creation of the Maimonides College in Paris, which during the Occupation, experienced favorable conditions for their growth and the birth of new structures. However, this renewal was transient. Not until the 1960s and even more so in the 1970s did the development of Jewish educational opportunities flourish. The collapse of the French Israelite model was the fundamental cause of this new growth.
Abstract: Communal anxieties about the possibility of an inadequate supply of secondary school places in Jewish schools in London have, on occasion, run high, and have occurred against a context of demographic changes and an increase in preference for Jewish schooling. These seemingly unpredictable dynamics have made planning very difficult and this new study helps to bring some empiricism to the table.
This statistical study, authored by JPR Senior Research Fellow, Dr Daniel Staetsky, and supported by Partnerships for Jewish Schools (PaJeS), uses an empirical approach to predict future levels of demand for mainstream Jewish secondary schools in and around London. Using Local Authority data to examine applications and admissions from 2011 to 2018, it projects forward to the academic year 2022/23 in order to support future planning.
It is a follow-up to previous work in this area, and it draws on observations from the field that allow us to assess the accuracy of that work and to extend our projections further into the future.
The study concludes that current levels of provision will be sufficient if the demand in the next four years remains at today’s levels. Whilst this is a possibility, two of three possible scenarios presented in the report suggest an increase in demand, at a level in which about fifty additional places will be required across the entire Jewish secondary school system in London. Given this projected scale of increase, the report recommends that schools should develop some flexibility in capacity to satisfy the increasing demand. That might mean preparedness to open an extra class, as and when required, rather than to open an entirely new school.
Abstract: A partir de las experiencias de enseñanza a grupos de aprendientes extranjeros de la escritura aljamiada del judeoespañol, se propone una revisión de los siguientes temas: 1) La pertinencia de la enseñanza de variedades lingüísticas (/dialectales) del español a extranjeros, especialmente cuando estas variedades son reducidas o prácticamente arcaicas, como en el caso del judeoespañol. 2) La relevancia de los aspectos culturales en la motivación para el aprendizaje de español. 3) La metodología de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la escritura, desde nuestros conocimientos de aprendizaje lectoescritor infantil.
Los resultados de la experiencia docente, y el análisis evaluativo de los procesos, sugiere los siguientes resultados: 1) La enseñanza del judeoespañol y variedades lingüísticas del español puede poseer interés, incluso hoy, si bien a destinatarios reducidos y con competencias lingüísticas elevadas, como complemento al aprendizaje general de la lengua. 2) Estos destinatarios se encuentran motivados hacia el aprendizaje de esta variedad del español, principalmente dentro de un racimo de intereses en los que los contenidos culturales y lingüísticos se encuentran fuertemente imbricados. 3) Los avances en enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lectoescritura en los niveles educativos de Infantil y Primaria proporcionan herrmientas metodológicas aptas para su aplicación en la enseñanza de la lectura y escritura a adultos
Abstract: Produced by JPR on behalf of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and authored by JPR Executive Director, Dr Jonathan Boyd, this statistical bulletin contains data on Jewish school enrolment in the UK for the academic years 2015/16 to 2017/18. It is intended to help community educators and policy makers monitor changing trends over time and to inform thinking about the development of the field.
The report confirms and adds to our existing understanding of enrolment, demonstrating again that more and more Jewish children are going to Jewish schools. The actual number has risen from about 5,000 in the 1950s to close to 35,000 today, a period which, by contrast, has also seen the UK Jewish population as a whole decline by about 30%. The most acute numerical increase has occurred over the past twenty years or so, with the total more or less doubling from about 17,000 in the mid-1990s to the level found today.
Amongst the key findings in the paper:
There were 34,547 Jewish children studying in Jewish schools in the academic year 2017/18.
This represents an increase of 3,633 children, or 11.8% since the last figures were published for the academic year 2014/2015.
This increase can be observed in both the mainstream and strictly Orthodox sectors: the mainstream sector had 1,666 more Jewish children in 2017/18 compared to 2014/15; the strictly Orthodox sector had an additional 2,367 children over the same period.
58% of Jewish children in Jewish schools are in strictly Orthodox schools; 42% in non-strictly Orthodox or ‘mainstream’ Jewish schools.
Three quarters of all Jewish children in Jewish schools are in the Greater London area or South Hertfordshire.
Enrolment in strictly Orthodox schools continues to increase dramatically over time, increasing by an estimated 166%, or over 12,000 children, since the mid-1990s.
The annual growth rate of the strictly Orthodox sector is estimated to be about 4.3%, compared to 3.1% in the mainstream sector.
The growth of the Jewish school sector is a reflection both of high fertility levels in the strictly Orthodox part of the Jewish community, and a growing interest in Jewish schooling within the more mainstream part of it. UK Jewish community leaders have focused considerable attention on Jewish schooling in recent years out of concerns about declining levels of Jewish knowledge and engagement. However, as these schools have developed, considerable attention has focused on general academic quality which has helped to attract higher numbers of pupils. In turn, as the choice of Jewish schooling has become more common, it has also grown in acceptability, pushing up numbers still further.
