Section archive - Informal Education

During the last week of August, 2009, 170 men, women and youngsters gathered at the Berkshire Hills Emanuel Adult Vacation Center in upstate NY, for a week of Yiddish camping. The Yidish-Vokh (Yiddish Week), sponsored by the Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish organization for more than thirty years, continues to attract Yiddish lovers looking for true Yiddish immersion experience. The heterogeneous group of campers enjoyed lectures, sports, folk dancing, discussions, singing around the campfire, reading groups, an amateur talent show, concerts, films, and special events all in Yiddish. Some participated in the Yiddish classes for advanced beginners.

The author explores the meaning of informal Jewish education and examines its significance for contemporary Jewish life. He argues that informal Jewish education is not confined to a place or a methodology but rather is a well-defined philosophy of how people should be educated, what the goals of Jewish education are, and what its contents should be. He urges a recognition of the seminal contribution informal Jewish education can make.

The New Jewish Filmmaking Project (NJFP), a program of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, produces documentary films that reflect the perspectives of the generation of Jews coming of age in America today. Since 2002, 48 teens have participated in the NJFP under the tutelage of the noted film professionals at San Francisco's Citizen Film documentary production company.

In this article, the authors investigate the paradox of fundamentalists who are the ones to embrace a highly modern narrative and that it is the modernists who oppose it by portraying the educational efforts of the Chabad Movement to introduce young Israeli trekkers in Southeast Asia, from secular, Zionist backgrounds, into a religious lifestyle.