Search results for: Avni Sharon

For all of the six years that Sarah Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and I spent researching and writing about the use of written and spoken varieties of Hebrew at American Jewish overnight camps, we never imagined that as our book Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps was coming off the printing press we would be facing a situation in which most of these camps were making the painful decision to close for the summer of 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we had some inkling around Passover that camp leadership was grappling with the implications of the virus’s severity, there was still a glimmer of hope that if anyone could figure out a creative way to keep camps open and safe, it would be Jewish overnight camp directors.

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, in which students are taught language and academic content in English and a partner language, have dramatically grown in popularity in U.S. schools. Moving beyond the teaching of Spanish and Chinese, DLBE programs are now being offered in less commonly taught languages and attracting new student populations. Based on qualitative research conducted in a New York City public middle school that recently began a Hebrew DLBE program, we found that this program, in its inception and design, challenges traditional definitions of DLBE and offers new understandings about bilingual education for the 21st century.

This article examines the ways in which Hebrew education was construed in the United States by tracing the Hebrew ideology debate of the early and mid-1900s, when dramatic changes were made to modernize Jewish schooling and its place within American society. Focusing on the Hebrew learning ideologies and educational philosophies of Samson Benderly and his followers, it examines how the Ivrit b’Ivrit movement – teaching Jewish content in Modern Hebrew – re-conceptualized Hebrew education not only as a form of language acquisition, but as a means of defining and giving shape to American Judaism for the Jewish immigrant community at that time.

This article sketches the trajectory of Hebrew education in the United States from the early 1900s to the present. Attending to the historiography of Hebrew education, it shows how current curricula and pedagogical approaches have been stamped by historical considerations and language ideologies, how goals and strategies have changed (or remained the same) over time, and how the evolution of the field has been driven both by internal dynamics within the Jewish community and by changes in the broader social and political context of the United States. It concludes with a framework for constructing a meaningful research agenda for the future.