Section archive - Trends in Jewish Education

In a post on the Torah Aura blog, David Bryfman, Director of the New Center for Collaborative Leadership and Teen Engagement at The Jewish Education Project, addresses the pressing question raised by many Jewish educators: How can we make Hebrew School more like summer camp? He answers by outlining a few principles of good learning that make camps so successful which should be adopted in complementary Jewish education: Learner-Centered Education, Experiential Education and Positive Jewish Role Models. But beyond these, he challenges complementary schools to empower their students, allowing them to create their own learning experiences and eagerly participate in them.

A new report presented to the Israeli Council of Higher Education warns of a grim future in the field of Jewish philosophy studies, following a drastic decline in research funds and the number of faculty members in the field. While the global interest in Jewish thought has been surging, Israeli universities opt to invest funds in more lucrative departments. The report, authored by a committee headed by Prof. Daniel Dahlstrom of Boston University, was presented to the Israeli Council of Higher Education, which accepted its recommendations.

Peter Eckstein reflects in this blog post on the Conservative Movement's Jewish Educators Assembly 39th Annual Conference which centered on 'From Sinai to Cyberspace: Exploring the Impact of Technology on Jewish Education'. After recapping some of the program highlights that the 200 educators experienced, he raises some important questions about the direction in which Jewish education is headed in the second decade of the 21st century.

In the presentation “U.S. Jewry 2010: Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Population,” given at the Association for Jewish Studies meeting in Boston on December 20th, Professor Leonard Saxe reported that rather than declining, the Jewish population has been increasing since 1990. NJPS 2000-01, the last national Jewish population study sponsored by the United Jewish Communities (currently, the Jewish Federations of North America), found that the U.S. Jewish population had declined by 300,000 during the 1990-2000 period. Saxe and his colleagues found that the Jewish population has actually risen from about 5.5 million individuals in 1990 to an estimated 6.5 million as of 2010, an increase of nearly 20%.