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…

For Jewish Ethiopian refugees at the Tikvah summer camp in Gondar, Ethiopia, Jewish informal education keeps their dreams of Jerusalem alive while simultaneously reinforcing Israeli gatekeeping practices. The ethnic and religious ideologies underlying Israeli nation-building and statecraft surface in the campers' exterritorial encounter with…

Many American Jewish day schools, where most staff and students adhere to Ashkenazic traditions, perpetuate the normativity of Ashkenazic practice and culture, both reflecting and reinforcing the status of Sephardic communities as "minorities within a minority." This article draws on Sephardic adults' recollections of the…

The article summarizes a study that examined the perspective of kindergarten children on Holocaust Remembrance Day as expressed in the discourse events of children with kindergarten teachers and early childhood education students during Holocaust Day in state kindergartens in Israel in a variety of localities. The article focuses on the…

What are students' perceptions of havruta learning after osmotic socialization? This osmosis is achieved solely by observing and emulating behaviors from other havruta learners. Perceived benefits include improvement of thinking and social skills and correcting misunderstandings, whereas challenges include the limitation of one's freedom and a…

Research on Jewish day schools has long focused on the challenges they face in managing the tension between the "Jewish" and "general" components of their "dual curriculum." Interviews with 34 graduating seniors of a private, community Jewish high school found that students experienced another dual curriculum within…

A survey of online adult Jewish learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some key elements that have drawn learners aged 65-75 to continued online study. These key elements may play a role in future learner choices and, therefore, might be considered by adult Jewish learning providers in the post-pandemic period. The shift to online…

In this essay, I explore Jewish composer/singer/liturgist Debbie Friedman and her time in Houston (1978-1984) as a crucial moment in the history of Jewish education. Working as a music educator in two area synagogues, Friedman negotiated a changing environment as cantorial training rose to become a mark of communal musical authority. She…

The authors taught students in an Executive Master's program in Jewish education how to recognize and manage Enduring Dilemmas, situations in which two prized Jewish values stand in tension with one another and cannot be enacted simultaneously. They explore how these educators draw on the leadership practice of Managing Enduring Dilemmas in their…

The use of technology in part-time Jewish schools during the pandemic and beyond has, with few exceptions, been limited to Zoom, a communications platform that works best for frontal teaching and small group discussion. This study focuses on two Jewish educators whose Technological Pedagogic Content Knowledge enables them to deploy a variety of…

Abram S. Isaacs (1852-1920), editor, intellectual, university professor, and rabbi, was a moral educator dedicated to making American Jews more knowledgeable and more virtuous. His role model was his father, who founded and taught in the Jewish day school that young Abram attended. While embracing the blessings of American life, Isaacs was deeply…

This article presents a cognitive semantic investigation into the concept of the "Chosen People" in Israeli ultra-Orthodox anthologies. The article opens with a historical-theological review of chosenness and its distinctly separatist stance. The study, based on the understanding that "nationality" is a multilayered concept,…

This conceptual paper lays out an approach to teaching biblical Hebrew in American day schools. This paper builds on extant work in the field of Jewish education on teaching biblical Hebrew and offers day school educators a theory of language instruction for teaching biblical Hebrew.

This study explored the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Jewish lives of teenagers in Jewish schools in the UK. We found that young people have been thrown back on the resources they locate under their own roofs. For some, it has resulted in a thin version of Jewish life and a sense of disappointment. For others, the Jewish resources at home…