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Trends in Jewish Education (477 items)To section archive
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The most surprising thing about this year of teaching on Zoom is that student exams got better. I don’t mean that student exams are better now than they were earlier in the year. I mean that they are better than they were before we moved to Zoom. Also, our classes have more students now than they did before the pandemic forced us into digital exile. My seminars and lectures in Jewish thought at Bar-Ilan University are full—indeed, all of the basic Judaism classes here are full—and our department of eight full-time faculty members has over 200 graduate students. Freed from social obligations, commutes, and the need to leave our home workstations, the eight of us are publishing more and better articles and books. We can also apply for more grants and attend more online conferences. By these external measures, then, the department of Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan is thriving.
Published: 2021
Updated: Apr. 13, 2021
This installment from Jewish educators–covering adult education (for the first time), day schools, and early childhood education—serves as both a reflection on the last 12 months in Jewish education, as well as a moment to pause and imagine what the future of Jewish education might look like moving forward. In many ways it is this challenge that has embodied the heroics of Jewish educators in the last year—being on call to serve the immediate myriad crises that the pandemic presented on a daily basis, while simultaneously, or at least in parallel, ensuring that the “new normal” of Jewish education would be an enhanced and improved version of its pre-pandemic state.
Published: 2021
Updated: Mar. 22, 2021
With all of its devastation and challenges, the past year shone a light on critical issues that many believe will, and should, deeply inform Jewish education beyond the pandemic. As continues to be evident from the contributions in this eJP series from leading figures, understanding our learners as whole people who need the benefits and support that good education offers remains a high priority for Jewish education. Whereas once many educators may have declared that the purpose of Jewish education was to make people more Jewish, we now hear that for Jewish education to be successful it must help to make individuals stronger versions of themselves and more integrated and influential members of the communities in which they live. What the following contributors emphasize is that whether it’s in classrooms, campsites, conference centers, or online, we are witnessing a Jewish education sector that has risen to the occasion of this pandemic, and in doing so also begun to pave a way for thriving Jewish education into the future.
Published: 2021
Updated: Mar. 21, 2021
The topic for this journal, making Jewish learning meaningful, touched raw nerves in so many people from an extraordinary range of the community. The response to the Call for Papers included submissions from community schools to Orthodox schools, formal and informal educators, academics, leaders in central agencies for Jewish education, classroom teachers, researchers, communal Rabbis, and school heads. The urgency of the topic demanded that we publish the double issue before you.
Published: 2021
Updated: Mar. 18, 2021