Dr. Tova Perlmutter, lecturer and pedagogical tutor in Jewish History at Levinsky Teachers College and staff member of MOFET International's Jewish Teacher Educator Community, shares the rationale and approach of the MOFET Jewish Leadership Seminars in Israel. Every year tens of educators and educational administrators participate in seminars lead by Tova, enriching their professional & personal identities and skills.

Thanks to the new Inclusion Training Guide for Jewish Summer Camps, a co-branded project of the Ramah Camping Movement and the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC), navigating real-life situations likely to arise at camp just got easier. The guide became available in May 2015, 2015 – in time for the upcoming camping season – for use by everyone in the camping world and beyond.

In this article I investigate how one group of teachers deliberated about Israel education with the intention to “modify the myth” as they engaged in curriculum reform. I begin from the idea that curriculum development should be an in-house endeavor that encourages faculty to embrace their roles as curricular decision-makers. Participants readily shared insights and suggestions from personal experiences and practices and explored goal language for teaching a critical Israel. However, moving from individual reflection to practical decision-making proved complicated due to factors stemming from personal and professional identities, school structure and culture. I consider implications for harnessing teacher potential as Israel education curriculum developers.

A commitment to empathetic understanding shaped the field of religious studies; although subject to critique, it remains an important teaching practice where students are charged with the task of recognizing, and perhaps even appreciating, a worldview that appears significantly different from their own. However, when the focus of the course is historical trauma there are significant epistemological and ethical reasons empathetic understanding may not be our best pedagogical strategy. Drawing primarily on my experience teaching a general education class “The Holocaust and Its Impact” at California State University, Bakersfield, I advocate replacing empathetic understanding with engaged witnessing as a pedagogical framework and strategy for teaching traumatic knowledge. To make this case, I delineate four qualities of engaged witnessing and demonstrate their use in teaching about the Holocaust.

Cyber Camp is a summer camp for religious girls who have completed 9th grade. The campers will enjoy a wonderful fun camp experience integrated with Jewish values and an opportunity to learn about the world of technology and computer cyber skills. Cyber camp will be holding two 7-day long sessions (July 6-12 and July 13-19, 2015) at the Maayan Charod Guest House with Shabbat at Midreshet Hagolan in Chispin.

This paper discusses potential strategies and sources for approaching uncomfortable topics and reviews the challenges facing teachers who choose to do so with the topic of genocide as an example. Using a variety of techniques, including graphic organizers, political cartoons, comic books and graphic novels, films, children's and young adult literature, paintings and photographs, podcasts/audio files, exhibitions, Web Quests, and game-based learning, teachers enable students to develop multiple perspectives about tragic events. A section on reparations and transitional justice suggests some positive ways to conclude such a unit.