Jewish Schools spend a significant amount of time on the teaching of Halakha--Jewish Law, custom, and ritual. The practice is most prevalent in Orthodox schools, although in truth all Jewish schools spend some time on the instruction of this discipline. Schools differ widely as to the approach they take in the teaching of Halakha, and this…

In this hybrid ethnographic case study, I explore how a cadre of Israeli-American parents in Los Angeles navigate the local Hebrew education landscape to seek linguistic resources for their children. I examine how participants envision Hebrew learning and determine the roles of Jewish, Israeli-serving, and public schools in transmitting Hebrew…

This study explores how Latin Jewish families navigate their intersecting identities as they make educational and other socialization choices for their children regarding heritage language and culture. Using a qualitative approach, the study focuses on six women, all mothers of young children living in San Francisco/Bay Area, who have chosen to…

In the wake of COVID, the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute (MTEI) faced essential pedagogical challenges in creating learner-centered, relational, and inquiry-based Jewish text study in an online synchronous space. In fall 2020, we offered an online adaptation of a line-by-line method for text study to understand the way this pedagogy invites…

This article reports on students' and faculty members' experience of their pluralistic Jewish day school's educational mission to nurture students' Jewish identity exploration within a broader social and cultural world. It articulates these stakeholders' perceptions of the ways teaching and learning of Jewish values, customs, and knowledge are…

What does it mean to be a Jewish girl today and how do Jewish adolescent girls navigate their identity? The study that I undertook is exploratory and designed to understand how three girls, who are recent day school graduates, experience the process of identity development as they begin high school. While the sample is small, the study reveals new…

This case study is an investigation of the teaching and learning of a teacher in the congregational school of which the author was the director, whose classroom practice was strongly reflective of relational learning theory. It explores the pathways through which this teacher was in turn supported in learning and teaching by relationships with…

The aim of the research is to investigate a Montessori pedagogic approach, enabling a Jewish school to be part of the Chinese international-school system, while fostering Jewish identity. We conducted semistructured interviews with principals (2), teachers (8), parents (12), and students (10) and recorded class observations (8) over two visits.…