Section archive - Education & Administration

The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies is proud to announce the awarding of a two-year grant from The AVI CHAI Foundation. The grant will provide support and direction to day schools and other Jewish educational institutions in the area of tefilah (prayer) through the Pardes Tefilah Education Initiative.

Nishma, a one-year-old sociological and market research firm, published a new study titled “The Nishma Profile of American Modern Orthodox Jews.” While the survey attempts to present an objective view of the Modern Orthodox community’s thoughts on religious life, the results provide instructive, and perhaps unintended, information about the respondents’ financial, rather than social or religious, concerns. Some observers have sought to focus on the answers it gives to potentially divisive questions about women in Orthodoxy, referring specifically to the “schism” about women serving as rabbis. However, the starker results of the survey reach a conclusion that, by far, unites all factions of the Modern Orthodox community. That concern is, in fact, how to support children and pay tuition for them to attend Jewish schools, how to keep kosher in a world with increasingly rising costs, and how to survive in increasingly expensive neighborhoods.

This article investigates the rationales and activities of nine nonprofit intermediary organizations operating in Israeli public schools, under similar missions of promoting school entrepreneurship. I apply a multiple case study qualitative methodology with in-depth interviews and complementary content analysis to investigate how those intermediaries operate and thrive. I depict how the concept of school entrepreneurship is formed and facilitated and reveal how state policy and intermediaries’ activities interact and shape schools’ realm, as shown in three specific paradoxes emerging from my analysis.

Green construction is gaining foothold among professionals, decision makers and the broader public. However, its success depends on a clear minded analysis of its pros and cons based on critical assessment, including cost-benefit analysis. This paper makes a first attempt at such an analysis of some of the first green sustainable schools in Israel. It deals with a limited sample available, as well as diverse rating systems which the different architects have chosen to comply with.