Section archive - Trends in Jewish Education

The return of religion and religiosity, on almost all social, cultural, and political fronts, has informed the academic agenda of the last decade. It is marked by a growing scholarly use of the concept of the “postsecular.” Against this background, this article brings the concept of the postsecular to bear on the transformation of contemporary Jewish national education in Israel. Its main argument is that the arrangements currently on display between secular and sacral notions in national Jewish education illustrate the rise of a new theocratic vision for Israel. This neoreligious thrust challenges the former interplay between secular and religious notions, which has served as the basis for Jewish national (i.e., Zionist) education. The article also places the notion of a postsecular emergent society within a particular social and political context, pointing to a broader and much richer phenomenon than hitherto suggested.

This book sheds new light on the life and work of Janusz Korczak, the twentieth century humanist moral educator and path-breaking social-pedagogue who is generally unknown in the English speaking world. In the two orphanages he led in Warsaw Poland. Korczak developed an innovative array of educational practices that motivated children from broken families suffering from serious social-interpersonal pathologies to re-form themselves during the five to seven years they lived in the orphanage.

Over the last year, The Jewish Education Project, has embarked on several research studies that had their own rationales, objectives and discrete findings. Our presentation at the NRJE brings together four separate research projects commissioned and/or conducted by The Jewish Education Project spanning 3 often distinct age groups in Jewish education (0-5 yrs; youth; and teens).

Business ethics educators have been encouraged to cultivate students’ character, but have received meager instructions for doing so. Additionally, there has been insufficient focus on equipping students with the tools they need to foster their ethical development after completing our courses. In this paper, it is argued that the Jewish spiritual practice of Mussar, whose premise is that individuals can become better versions of themselves by repairing their character traits, can inform business ethics instruction.