This paper provides a response to B. Davis' and H. Alexander's article "Israel Education: A Philosophical Analysis," (EJ1384540) published in this same issue of the Journal of Jewish Education. The authors provide a valuable conceptual map of six distinctive, sometimes intersecting and sometimes conflicting ideologies and purposes that…

In their new study, Benji Davis and Hanan Alexander propose a conceptual taxonomy of six types of Israel education. But it is not at all clear that the different types of Israel education are associated with different pedagogies, or indeed, whether they are significantly distinct from each other. Davis and Alexander also propose their own version…

In this paper, we present data from the most recent wave of the "Longitudinal Study of Young Jews Raised in Conservative Synagogues." Participants were part of the b'nai mitzvah class of 1994-1995 (or, the year 5755 in the Hebrew calendar) and members of Conservative synagogues in the US and Canada. Approximately 400 panel members took…

A qualitative study focusing on arts-based learning in Israel education was conducted at a community Jewish high school in North America. Building on studies that have shown students are able to simultaneously love and critique Israel, the purpose of the study was to assess whether producing creative work led to creative solutions to contemporary…

Studies of Jewish day schools' websites regarding opportunities for students to engage in physical activity (PA) have not been published. We analyzed the content of 516 North American Jewish day schools' websites in 237 cities to ascertain mentions of sports (i.e., interscholastic) and PAs (e.g., intramural sports, PA clubs) and to determine how…

The values that begin to solidify during adolescence can be steered by experiential education programs designed to inculcate a set of attitudes and behaviors in their participants. One such program, Jewish Youth Philanthropy, socializes adolescents into recognizing the importance of donating both to Jewish causes and within a Jewish framework.…

This "think-aloud" study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates that students use a variety of sense-making strategies as they read about the past, many of which fall beyond the boundaries of critical historical…

Naming a discipline is a key component in both the shaping and unpacking of its development. Still, little attention has been devoted to studying the ways in which this process has influenced Israel Education. Based on a long-term ethnographic study, this article presents Israel Education name choices and discusses the manner in which this naming…

In this article we analyze moviemaking as a unique pedagogy that is used in a preservice semester in Israel program for the preparation of Israel educators: Students create their own short films about an aspect of Israeli society and/or their relationship with it. We analyze the students' movies, together with students' reflective papers about the…

In the field of second/foreign language teaching, needs analysis is widely recognized as an essential step in curriculum design and program evaluation. A needs-based approach to Hebrew language education has been advocated by a number of researchers and educators. In a study that employed interviews and surveys, the Hebrew language learning needs…