Search results for: Israel education

This study presents the first longitudinal data on American Jewish children’s thoughts and feelings about Israel, highlighting children’s development between kindergarten and second grade. Drawing upon interviews and photo and music elicitation exercises with Jewish elementary school students, the research examines both children’s conceptual understandings of Israel—what they imagine it to be—and their feelings toward Israel. The research finds that throughout the early elementary grades, children think of Israel as a place where both good and bad can happen—a duality that remains relatively stable over time. Yet their feelings about Israel change over time, as consistently happy emotions give way to a wider range of affective responses to Israel, including worry, fear, and sadness. This manuscript examines both children’s static conceptions of Israel and their changing feelings about the Jewish state, addressing the implications of these findings for elementary school Israel education and Jewish communal policy toward youth engagement with Israel.

The most significant educational initiative in the field of Israel-Diaspora relationship within formal education is twinning of diaspora based and Israel schools. The Jewish Agency’s Global School Twinning Network includes a wide variety of schools: Jewish and non-sectarian; schools from different Jewish streams; elementary, middle and high-schools; day and afternoon schools; schools from different sectors of the Israeli population, and more. To date, 650 schools in partnerships spanning the globe are engaged in active twinning programs.

American Jews, particularly those who are highly engaged in Jewish communal life, learn many stories about Israel’s past. They learn the story of Israel as the culmination of a heroic two thousand year struggle and about the waves of immigrants who came to the Holy Land with nothing and made the desert bloom. But when these stories are subjected to critical scrutiny, they may fail to hold up. This study analyzed 438 short narratives of the history of Israel written by Jewish American high school students attending Jewish day schools.

The recently launched TheIsraelBible.com adds gamification, Google maps, audio, video and interactive tools to a Hebrew and English presentation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The new mobile-friendly website stems from a print version of The Israel Bible published over the past two years by Israel365 and completed in October 2015. Its 20 softcover volumes include the entire 24-book canon (Tanakh, in Hebrew) along with original commentary developed by a team of 10 Israeli educators and tour guides.