This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's essay titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author considers herself as the embodiment of an informal Jewish education practitioner now responding to Reimer's educational theory about the work she has spent her adult life…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." In his article, Reimer laudably seeks to concretize the often ambiguous goals of informal Jewish education. To build his case, he points to the work of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi to…

Although paired study ("hevruta") has been a part of Jewish learning and an essential aspect of rabbinic education for centuries, over the past decade it has become an increasingly formalized vehicle in the training of rabbis in non-Orthodox seminaries. Little research has focused on its organization and process and what role it plays within the…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author discusses the "role" of teacher, which includes: engaging students in an academic subject each teacher has mastered, mentoring a particular small group of students about the…

The following is a translation of the introduction to "Medabrim Chazon" (Jerusalem: Keter, 2006), the Hebrew translation of "Visions of Jewish Education," edited by Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, and Daniel Marom (Cambridge, 2003). "Visions of Jewish Education" is an effort by leading scholars to improve the quality of Jewish education through…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's essay titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." Learning from experience, Joseph Reimer maintains, lies at the heart of informal Jewish education. Learning, Reimer explains, entails "going deeper": becoming immersed in the activities,…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's essay titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." In his essay, Reimer has presented an approach to understanding informal Jewish education. He drives home the point that many formal educational theorists have posed regarding the validity…

Successful career development involves balancing the values and expectations held by oneself and by others regarding one's position and the roles played as part of the position. Due to the nature of their work, rabbis face special challenges with regard to balancing professional roles and expectations. Results from a study of Conservative rabbis…

This article notes a profound connection between the philosophy of Jewish law (halakhah) and the research of meta-halakah on the one hand and the philosophy of education on the other hand. The connection is, in principle, exemplified through an encounter between the educational philosophy of Joseph Schwab and the Jewish law (halakhic responsa…

In this article, the author shares a few points of clarification to amplify the argument he puts forth in his article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author argues that socialization and education are two social processes that often overlap and reinforce one another. The purpose of…

Members of the clergy provide a great deal of counseling. How did this come about? How are they prepared for this role? In what capacity is this role played by rabbis? Do rabbis feel their training is adequate for what they are called upon to do? What are the implications of this for both education and professional development of rabbis? This…

The concept "informal education" is receiving new attention in Jewish education. That is a welcome development since this is an important idea in Jewish life. However, these developments are accompanied by a plethora of loose and sloppy use of terms, concepts, and ideas. Joseph Reimer's article, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals…

This article deals with a recurrent situation in congregational schools, in which parents lobby for a reduction in the number of days per week of instruction. Following two similar studies by Joseph Reimer, the article utilizes the theoretical construct of a "social drama" as a frame for the recounting and analysis of a recent occurrence of this…

Contrary to the view that socialization ought to precede education, in this article the author suggests that social and emotional dimensions are always present in religious, educational, moral, and aesthetic collective experience. In educational settings, socialization is part of the intentional process of creating a community of learners and is…

This article explores the possible contribution to Jewish education found in the resources of Judaica scholarship. It begins by exploring the complex and often uneasy connection between the world of the university and the world of education and then offers an alternative to this tension by suggesting ways that Jewish subject matter scholarship…