Section archive - Trends in Jewish Education

Researchers have been demonstrating interest in doubts regarding religious faith for thirty years. The current study goal was examining differences between three groups of religious male adolescents in Israel, regarding faith identity, doubts in religious faith (past and present), religious behavior, and the connection between them. Three questionnaires were answered by 472 religious Israeli male 9th, 10th, and 11th graders, regarding faith identity, religious behavior, and faith doubts. A MANOVA indicated significant differences between the groups for all research variables. Separate regression analyses for each age group for predicting faith identity according to doubts, produced very different pictures. Tenth grade seems the most important crossroads in forming religious identity.

During the 1990s, Jewish communal leaders in Britain reached a consensus that Jewish education, in the broadest sense, was the principal means of strengthening Jewish identity and securing Jewish continuity. This belief motivated considerable investment in communal intervention programs such as Jewish schools, Israel experience trips, and youth movements. Twenty years on, it is pertinent to ask whether, and to what extent, this intervention has worked. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s (JPR) 2011 National Jewish Student Survey contains data on over 900 Jewish students in Britain and presents an opportunity to empirically assess the impact such intervention programs may have had on respondents’ Jewish identity by comparing those who have experienced them with those who have not.

For American Orthodox Jewish girls, Bais Yaakov schools became the primary location of socialization. School administrators clearly articulated curricular learning as secondary to the primary goal of socializing girls to embrace Orthodox Jewish roles and observances. In the 1960s–1980s, disturbed by new trends in society, school leaders imposed new rules and policies, redefining proper Orthodox girlhood. They emphasized modest dress, and restricted coed fraternization and popular culture. Girls engaged in this socialization process and expressed agency in different ways. This resulted in the creation of a hybrid American Orthodox youth culture. While at times they resisted, ultimately girls accepted the values and observances school leaders advanced.

Members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement and Jewish financial entrepreneurs undertook an active, conscious project to effect significant transformations in the Jewish habitus in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A symbiotic relationship allowed these groups to disseminate a new vision of Jewish society through multiple mediums including, as this article examines in particular, a new Jewish educational system and new educational texts written for children and young adults. With guidelines on daily practices including personal hygiene, dress, language, leisure, and interactions with one’s surroundings, these texts reached not only their intended audience but the parents’ generation as well. What should one do after getting up in the morning? Should one wash, and, if so, when? How should one behave at the table? How should one dress, or employ one’s leisure time? These and others are among the daily practices that organize a person’s life. They are not spontaneous actions; rather, they derive from social norms and cultural codes that characterize a particular social group and distinguish it from others. To put it another way: they comprise the habitus of a specific individual and the social group to which he or she belongs. This article examines for the first time the changes in the Jewish habitus that resulted from significant transformations within Jewish society in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the active role played by a new Jewish educational system therein. Changes of this sort are generally inconspicuous and latent; this article, however, points to an intentional and marked effort toward transforming the Jewish habitus via the active help of the educational system made by two key groups: members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement (Maskilim), and the Jewish financial elite of the time. It examines the realities and motivations that spurred both groups to action, the synergistic relationship that existed between them, and the methods each employed.