Section archive - Trends in Jewish Education

At the beginning of the summer, the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators brought together 17 successful Day School educators, rabbis and administrators to think more deeply about the critical area of prayer in day schools. This six-day intensive symposium, entitled Aleinu Le’shabeach, drew a diverse group from Community, Orthodox and Conservative schools spanning grades K-12. There were many takeaways from this program. However, we want to focus on what we saw as the central and most significant finding: the need to develop and professionalize a field of tefilah education. All the rest is commentary.

It isn’t really the 25th anniversary of what came to be called the “Jewish continuity” endeavor in North America. The first Continuity Commission was established in Cleveland before the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey was mounted; and the first results of the 1990 NJPS – including the alarm-ringing, hand-wringing statistic of a 52% intermarriage rate – didn’t appear until the calendar had turned. But, 1990 is a convenient enough date to mark the beginning of a significant effort that has unfolded over the past two and a half decades aimed at strengthening Jewish identity and engagement among American Jews, many of whom, it was argued then and since (viz. the reactions to the 2013 Pew study) are in danger of or are already being lost to Jewish life as active participants.

Contemporary Jewry is proud to announce a Call for Papers for a special issue focusing on education. Guest edited by Professor Ari Y Kelman (Stanford University), the special issue will feature articles and studies that take a social scientific approach to scholarship at the intersection of Jewish Studies and Education. As the only academic journal dedicated to publishing social scientific research about Jews, Contemporary Jewry invites proposals that engage with educational phenomena within broader social, cultural, religious, or political contexts.

Gleanings is the eJournal of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education of The Jewish Theological Seminary. This first issue of volume 2 of Gleanings focuses on Godtalk in classrooms, camps and other Jewish educational settings. Please join us in the conversation about this important issue.