Section archive - Formal Education

There is a change brewing in congregations across North America, one that is dramatically shifting the narrative of children’s experiences with Hebrew learning and Jewish education. Education directors have begun sharing stories of renewed energy in their buildings and of children who are excited to learn, especially Hebrew. This change is not about tweaking the traditional Hebrew learning model in part-time/synagogue settings. We have done that for years and it hasn’t worked. This is not about increasing Hebrew learning time. Over the years, “more of the same” has closed our students’ hearts to Hebrew as they spend four to six years on low-level prayer decoding/reading practice and review. This IS about changing foundational Hebrew learning assumptions that have shaped Hebrew education in synagogues for decades.

This article aims to describe the development of a curriculum framework for prayer in UK centrist orthodox Jewish primary schools. This process began in 2011 and continues in an ongoing way. This is the first time that there has been a communal effort across Jewish schools that focuses on this area of the curriculum.

This article presents original qualitative research applying paired text study, havruta learning, to the secular college classroom. I adapted this method to a first-year seminar in a public university and found that students perceived that havruta improved their abilities to verbalize their understandings through reading text aloud and debating one another, opened their eyes to new perspectives, engaged them in argumentation, and empowered them to take charge of learning.

The history of Jewish day schools in Los Angeles can provide lessons that are widely applicable to the future of Jewish education. The number and variety of non-Orthodox day schools in the city surged in the late 1970s through the 1990s, creating the contemporary landscape of day schools. However, it is the first few schools, established before the number of day schools exploded due to court-ordered busing and other factors, that illustrate an important lesson for the future of day schools in Los Angeles and across the country.