Section archive - Israel Education

In a response to a post by James Hyman in eJewish Philanthropy, Anne Lanski, the Executive Director of iCenter, describes the educational approach of iCenter, the Hub for Israel Education, and the practices and principles that animate all its work.

The Shalom Hartman Institute has recently launched iEngage – The Engaging Israel Project, a research and leadership center, whose iEngage website aims to be a web-based multimedia resource center for the distribution of the project’s growing corpus of materials, articles, adult education curricula and video lectures. The project’s goal is to encourage Jews to re-examine core questions connected to the Jewish State to re-define the relationship between the two communities.

With 11,000 participants this year – up from 3,000 in its inception year in 2004 – Masa Israel Journey has opened a new alumni division, and it has placed regional representatives in cities throughout the United States in partnership with local Federations.

The Naphtali Herz Imber Jewish Day School proudly proclaimed its commitment to Israel, yet many of its students experienced profound ambivalence toward the Jewish State. Why? The school was committed to a series of contradictory values which surfaced in its approach to Israel education. This article outlines three distinct yet interrelated tensions: tensions between an open exchange of ideas and a non-debatable loyalty to Israel; between pluralism and Zionism; and between inclusivity and expertise. It demonstrates how American Jewish students—when confronted with values in tension—struggled to make sense of Israel and their relationship to it.