Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education

What have we learned about Jewish learning in the past, where are we today, and what do we still need to learn for the future? Join MCSJE for this special Spotlight Session in honor of Brandeis University’s 75th anniversary, at which Brandeis scholars of Jewish education share some of the most important developments in the field of Jewish education and why they matter for the flourishing of indivi...

Beyond lifting the spirits of teachers and students, play in Jewish education spaces can also shape moral development and character. Drawing from his new research , Judd Kruger Levingston shares how teachers and administrators can cultivate "a moral ecology of play" in classrooms, hallways, gathering spaces, and playgrounds. In this session, Levingston speaks about ways in which a wide v...

Most histories of American Jewish education deride 19th-century Jewish Sunday schools. But when Laura Yares looked more closely at the curricula, the operative philosophies and the experiences that students and teachers had in these schools, she found that they did important cultural work. In this session, she discusses her recent book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Centur...

In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Jewish educators and educational institutions started talking about “vision” in a new way, prompted by the efforts of the Mandel Foundation and especially its influential leader Seymour Fox. For many, the publication of Visions of Jewish Education (2003) was a landmark event in the field. Jon A. Levisohn discusses a forthcoming article in which he analyzes how Fox...

In the past, Jewish families, like many others, offered girls fewer educational opportunities than boys. But that has not been the case for some time now. In her recent scholarship, Ilana Horwitz demonstrates the ways that girls raised by Jewish parents complete more years of college and attend more selective schools than girls from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds raised by non-Jewish parents...

Mahloket—that is, dispute or principled debate—has long been celebrated as a Jewish ideal, not only within Jewish texts (where sages debate laws, interpretations and principles) but within the practice of engagement with those texts (where, for example, students might engage in debate about laws, interpretations or about principles). What does Mahloket look like at its best? How does Mahloket func...

Children’s ideas about the world are rich, nuanced, sometimes amusing and surprising, and for Anna Hartman , always fascinating. In this session, she shares her doctoral research in the field of early childhood Jewish education, in which she explores the theories about Judaism that are held by young children, and provides a window into their process of exploring and participating in Jewish life. O...

Jewish day schools expend significant time and energy in teaching Torah. But what are they trying to accomplish in this work? In this session, Ziva Hassenfeld discusses her soon-to-be published research on students’ learning to read Torah, in order to argue that Jewish day schools can induct students into a way of reading texts that will serve them in all endeavors, from their academic studies to...

In this session, Judah Cohen discusses his recent article on the crucial role that Debbie Friedman played in making song leading a core part of the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE). He also addresses the changes in Jewish education that resulted from this alliance, and why it still matters. Originally recorded: 11/17/22 At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the f...

Holocaust education is a staple of Jewish day school education. What messages do day school students take from this education? In this session, Meredith Katz discusses her recently published study , which explores how a group of day school kids navigated questions of particularism and universalism, and how Holocaust education helped them to see themselves as civic actors in the broader community....

Adult Jewish learning is flourishing in synagogues, JCCs, board tables, leadership cohorts, service cohorts, and of course, online. This session is an occasion to talk with a group of experienced educators about what they learned from their studies of adult Jewish learning opportunities—who the learners are, why they participate, what happens, and how they grow or develop through the experience. I...

Rabbi Professor Jane Kanarek (Hebrew College), Rabbi Avi Killip (Hadar), Professor Barry Wimpfheimer (Northwestern), Sara Wolkenfeld (Sefaria), moderated by Professor Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University). For decades following its invention in 1923, Daf Yomi was practiced by experienced, mostly haredi Talmud scholars, and criticized by many as well. Over time, the practice grew in popularity in that...

Israel has long occupied a prominent place in the lives and imaginations of American Jews, serving as both a symbolic touchstone and a source of intercommunal conflict. Sivan Zakai's book, My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel , is based on the major findings from her research project with MCSJE on Children's Learning About Israel . This project is t...

What can we learn from carefully crafted portraits of nine well-regarded Jewish day schools that vary in size, location, sponsorship, ideological orientation? How do these schools go about their work and how do school leaders respond to the pressing challenges that day schools face in the 21st century? Authors Alex Pomson and Jack Wertheimer share highlights from their 2022 book, Inside Jewish Day...

The Jewish overnight camping industry was on the verge of major changes in the late 1980s, when Shelly Dorph became the head of the Ramah National Commission. Jonathan Krasner discusses the case of Ramah and how it reflects on the challenges and opportunities that Jewish non-profit summer camps faced in the 1990s and early 2000s, and what it means for Jewish camps today. Originally recorded: 10/14...

What happens when young adults visit a Jewish museum? What do they learn about Jews and Judaism, and how are they changed by what they see, touch, hear and feel? In this talk, Laura Yares discusses findings from a pre-pandemic study of 30 young adult visitors to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and describes the rich learning that can occur in episodic, leisure time...

How does a Jewish theater company draw upon Jewish history to wrestle artistically with universal human questions? How do they weave new narratives through the work of interpretation? Miriam Heller Stern , in recent work published as a chapter of the edited volume Portraits of Adult Jewish Learning: Making Meaning at Many Tables , addresses these questions and analyzes how the model of a creative...

What can we learn about society, people's relationship with Israel, Jewish people, and themselves, through Hebrew accents? Possibly quite a bit! This conversation focuses on Sharon Avni's recent work on how the everyday acts of speaking, learning, and engaging with Modern Hebrew inform our understanding of contemporary American Jewish life. Originally recorded: 3/10/22 At the Mandel Cent...

The term "Jewish education" is used to refer to a broad array of practices, approaches, and institutions. Ari Kelman has written a new book, Jewish Education , forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in its Key Words in Jewish Studies series. The series includes books designed to "provide clear and judiciously illustrated accounts of terms currently in use and to chart histories o...

Most analyses of Jewish education, like most analyses of general education in Western, liberal society, emphasize the individual student. But some communities approach education very differently. Mijal Bitton discusses her research into how the Syrian Jewish community educates its members, formally and informally, to maintain bonds of commitment. Originally recorded: 5/4/22 At the Mandel Center, w...