Section archive - Formal Education

Jewish day schools offer many experiences meant to foster the Jewish development of students. However, these experiences are at risk of being disconnected from one another, complicating a comprehensive approach to addressing issues of identity. This article uses a constructivist approach to identity development to frame the challenges posed by such a fragmentation. Observations of pluralistic Jewish day high schools are brought as illustrations. The author discusses an approach of scaffolded reflection as a way to integrate the identity—enhancing experiences in which a student participates.

After 50 years without organized Jewish educational options, parents in the Serbian capital of Belgrade are ecstatic following this summer’s grand opening of a preschool by the country’s resident Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries. Eight children currently make up the preschool’s inaugural class, but there are plans for larger classes in the future.

A novel program, Hitchadshut, aimed at enhancing Jewish identity in public schools is showing significant success after a two-year pilot in Holon, Israel, ahead of expansion to additional cities.The program, established by the Panim non-profit organization and the Legacy Heritage Foundation, has set out to rectify a key problem of the Israeli educational system, the lack of discourse on Judaism and the significance of being Jewish.

In this article, Lifsa Schachter, professor emeritus of education at the Siegal College, shares some of her ideas on a range of questions such as: What are the best ways to teach Hebrew? What are ambitious, but reasonable goals for Hebrew language learning supplementary schools? What constitutes literacy? Her ideas emanate from the research literature on second language acquisition, as well as from her own experiences and experiments designed to make a difference in the domain of Hebrew language learning.