Search results for: Schoem David

David Schoem reflects on his research study from 30-plus years ago, published as Ethnic Survival in America: An Ethnography of a Jewish Afternoon School (1979, 1989). Schoem points to the continuing importance of giving greater focus to meaning-making, relational identity, and deep community. Schoem argues that through a renewed focus on engagement with American pluralism the role of afternoon schools can stand out as distinctive, not lesser than, day schools. He questions the Jewish institutional commitment for the large cohort of American Jewry who fully embrace both their Jewish and American identities by many of the very educational and rabbinical leaders of these congregational schools. Finally, he praises and challenges Jewish educational researchers to explore more broadly and critically.