“A Golden Opportunity”: Understanding the Competing Values at the Core of Day School Growth in Los Angeles

Excerpt of the content: Jewish activist communities have historically been allies to communities of color in the fight for racial justice and equality in our country. Jews were among those who worked to establish the NAACP in 1909. In the early 1900s, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt, pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms." Historically, Jewish leaders stressed the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience in America, and emphasized the idea that both groups would benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of religious, ethnic, and racial restrictions. In more recent history, Blacks and Jews fought side by side in the Civil Rights Movement. The kinship and relationship between the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has been regularly and continually celebrated. What has been less often discussed is the relevance of the social circumstances that created and, in some cases, still sustains a rift between Black activists and white Jewish anti-racism activists. In the late 1960s, the birth of the Black Power movement shifted the emphasis in Black activist communities toward self-determination, self-defense tactics, and racial pride. While this shift was crucial to the evolution of Black consciousness and identity in America, the expansion from the singular nonviolence and racial integration approach espoused by King left many white Jewish activists with little input in the Black community and an anti-racism movement that seemed to be moving on without them. Click for larger view "Blacks and Jews fought side by side in the Civil Rights Movement," the author writes. Here, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth march alongside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. Since the 1960s, efforts at coalition building and solidarity work for justice between white Jewish and Black communities have suffered and never reached the pinnacle that was reached during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. The rapid decline of American anti-Semitism since 1945 (alongside the nation's continuing and pervasive anti-Black racism) and the increasing gap in accumulated wealth and education between Black and Jewish communities have widened the rift of perceived shared interests between Black and Jewish activists. Many of the civil rights struggles that joined Blacks and Jews in the middle of the last century--i.e., anti-lynching, desegregation, voter registration, etc.--were typically organized around divisions in society that easily identified injustices between persecutors and their victims (a division in which Jews could also identify as victims). Between the late 1960s and the present, much of the anti-racism work that has galvanized Black activists has shifted and come to be concerned more specifically with disparities in access, privilege, and power between those with and without white skin privilege in our country. Click for larger view Members of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue pray alongside Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith Jr. of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer. Disappointingly few synagogues nationwide engaged in similar expressions of Jewish-Black solidarity. A Weakened Coalition In 2013, the lack of deep and abiding connections between Black and Jewish communities of activists became apparent to me in the disparate responses I encountered to the events surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman. Here's a quick summary for any readers who need a reminder of what happened: in July 2013, after more than sixteen hours of deliberation, a jury of five white women and one Latina woman found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter. Previously, on a drizzly February night, Zimmerman had shot Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year-old, in a gated community in Sanford, near Orlando. Citing Florida's stand-your-ground law, Sanford police originally did not charge Zimmerman or take him into custody. Only after social media outrage and civil rights protests alleged racial profiling and discrimination did Governor Rick Scott appoint a special prosecutor, who brought the charges against Zimmerman six weeks after... Language: en

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

Reviewed by: Down the Up Staircase: Tales of Teaching in Jewish Day Schools Elliot Goldberg (bio) Down the Up Staircase: Tales of Teaching in Jewish Day Schools, by Carol K. Ingall. New York, NY: The Jewish Theological Seminary, 2006. In 2003, The Jewish Theological Seminary published Barry Holtz's Textual Knowledge: Teaching the Bible in Theory and in Practice, the first volume of "The Jewish Education Series," which was established to bring serious works about Jewish education to print. The second volume followed in 2004, a collaboration of Grant, Tickton Schuster, Woocher, and Cohen about Jewish adult education. The third volume (the topic of this review) emerged in 2006 and focuses upon teachers in Jewish day schools. The recent boom in the Jewish day school world includes both an increase in the number of schools (the Avi Chai Foundation reports the establishment of at least 80 schools in the 1990s) and an increase in overall enrollment (a separate Avi Chai sponsored study reports a population increase of 12-15% in the non-ultra-Orthodox sector during the same time period). As a result, there is an increased demand for teachers in the day school system. Those closely involved with Jewish education know that well-trained, Jewishly literate, and committed teachers are hard to find. If our schools are to be well staffed, not only are strong pre-service programs needed, but schools need to develop in-service training to support and develop new teachers. Furthermore, schools need to implement programs that will ensure the retention of those who are most talented. [End Page 87] Carol Ingall's Down the Up Staircase: Tales of Teaching in Jewish Day Schools traces the development of three new teachers as they emerge from a graduate program at the Jewish Theological Seminary and assume their initial positions in Jewish day schools.* Given the promise of her subjects, whom she selected from her seminar for student teachers, Ingall hoped to develop a portrait of the struggles and successes of new teachers during their initial years in Jewish education and to provide rich qualitative data about their journey from novice to expert in the classroom. At the outset of her study, Ingall "anticipated that . . . the three would have their ups and downs [and that] their passion would wax and wane," but she did not imagine that "[w]ithin four years of their graduation, all three [would have] left teaching in Jewish day schools." Given the unanticipated outcome of her study, the subject matter of her research shifted: I wanted to know why they, with so much to offer, took the down staircase past the mezuzah and out the schoolhouse door, while others, albeit too few, manage to climb up from the ranks of beginners to become master teachers. Her account is written: (for) teacher educators . . . who might want to examine the pre-service programs that we offer our students; for administrators who hire novice teachers and fail to keep them; and for policy makers who fund Jewish day schools as the mainstay of a flourishing American Jewish community. Ingall's portraits are rich and insightful. Within, she weaves together reflective comments and concept maps that she collected in annual interviews with her subjects. As each chapter begins, the reader is introduced to a bright, articulate, and passionate beginning Jewish educator who, after the turn of a few pages, has become alienated from her chosen profession and, as a result, chooses to leave the school setting. The pain that accompanies this harsh reality is expressed by both subject and researcher and leaves its mark on the reader as well. The portraits are bookended by a survey of the literature regarding the transition of teachers from novice to expert and the essential components of teacher induction. Ingall's bibliography is extensive and current. It alone makes the work a useful resource for those who supervise and train new teachers and for those who wish to know more about the subject. Although the study focuses on Jewish [End Page 88] day schools, its implications are equally relevant for synagogue-based supplementary schools, which are also in need of strong teacher training, development, and retention programs. If the Jewish community is...

Impact of Culture, Race, Social Determinants Reflected Throughout New <i>DSM-5-TR</i>

A thriving Jewish day school is a vital cornerstone of a flourishing Jewish community. Particularly in communities with small Jewish populations, Jewish day schools are able to play roles that extend beyond the lives of their own student body, and they often serve as a hub for community connection and engagement. In July 2013, with a student enrollment of 27, a nationally recognized day school feasibility expert recommended that the Community Day School of New Orleans close its doors. The research problem I intend to study is my experience as leader of the K5 (renamed) Jewish Community Day School of Greater New Orleans, as it endeavors to achieve viability and strength. Although many recent studies focus on the sustainability of Jewish day schools, there is a gap in the literature about the journey of a school poised at the edge of the wave between viability and impossibility. This autoethnographic account of my experience will contribute to the growing body of scholarly literature on Jewish day school sustainability. Complexity leadership theory serves as the theoretical framework for this research project.

ABSTRACTThe following study describes the experiences of parents with a child with a disability in Jewish day schools. The findings suggest marked differences in the experiences of parents whose child was able to remain in the day school and those who left as a result of their child’s disability. In the latter group, the themes of loneliness and marginalization were common. Although parents hoped to feel included in the Jewish community—with Jewish day school an important expression of this desire and commitment—many found few appropriate programs and services and a general lack of awareness of and sensitivity to disability issues in the Jewish community.

About 350,000 Jewish children are currently enrolled in Jewish day schools, in every continent other than Antarctica. This is the first book-length consideration of life in such schools and of their relationship both to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. The book provides a rich sense of how community is constructed within Jewish schools, and of how they contribute to or complicate the construction of community in the wider society. It reframes day-school research in three ways. First, it focuses not just on the learner in the day-school classroom but sees schools as agents of and for the community. Second, it brings a truly international perspective to the study of day schools, viewing them in relation to the socio-cultural contexts from which they emerge and where they have impact. Third, it considers day-school education in relation to insights derived from the study and practice of non-parochial education. This cross-cultural and comparative approach to the study of Jewish schooling draws on research from the United States, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Europe, making it possible to arrive at important and original insights into parochial Jewish schooling. The book reveals conflicting conceptions of the social functions of schooling and produces insights into the capacity of schools to build community. It studies questions about faith-based schooling and the public good that today are as much questions of public policy as they are of academic inquiry.

About 350,000 Jewish children are currently enrolled in Jewish day schools, in every continent other than Antarctica. This is the first book-length consideration of life in such schools and of their relationship both to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. The book provides a rich sense of how community is constructed within Jewish schools, and of how they contribute to or complicate the construction of community in the wider society. It reframes day-school research in three ways. First, it focuses not just on the learner in the day-school classroom but sees schools as agents of and for the community. Second, it brings a truly international perspective to the study of day schools, viewing them in relation to the socio-cultural contexts from which they emerge and where they have impact. Third, it considers day-school education in relation to insights derived from the study and practice of non-parochial education. This cross-cultural and comparative approach to the study of Jewish schooling draws on research from the United States, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Europe, making it possible to arrive at important and original insights into parochial Jewish schooling. The book reveals conflicting conceptions of the social functions of schooling and produces insights into the capacity of schools to build community. It studies questions about faith-based schooling and the public good that today are as much questions of public policy as they are of academic inquiry.

Intensive Jewish education is seen as the most promising antidote for the assimilation of Jews in many countries—meaning the loss of Jewish identity and commitment—including in Israel. 1 Full‐day s...

Rediscovering Jewish Infrastructure: Showcasing Surviving Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Synagogues Mark W. Gordon (bio) This photographic essay illuminates a few of the ninety-seven buildings that were originally erected as synagogues in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still stand today. Calling attention to these structures illustrates how American Jews have maintained and preserved their houses of worship, while also showing how synagogues have been used for alternative purposes in changing urban landscapes. Often following trends in secular and ecclesiastical architecture, the look of US synagogues evolved over the decades. The Touro Synagogue, the only eighteenth-century Jewish house of worship still standing today, was designed in the Georgian style by noted Colonial architect Peter Harrison (figure 1). Beth Israel in Honesdale, PA is an example of the Greek Revival style, fashionable for houses of worship in the 1840s and early 1850s (figure 2). Romanesque Revival synagogues with round-arched windows became popular for several decades beginning in the 1850s as illustrated in Goldsboro, NC (figure 3) and Salt Lake City (figure 4), with Gothic Revival and Victorian styles in Leadville, CO (figure 5) and Charlottesville, VA (figure 6) becoming more common beginning in the 1870s and 1880s. Moorish Revival was used heavily for synagogues—but not much in secular architecture—from the 1860s to 1890s. Moorish synagogues often contained onion-shaped domes or minarets, horseshoe arches, and polychromatic decoration. One theory for their ubiquity is the nineteenth-century revival of Jewish popular and scholarly interest in the history of the Sephardic diaspora, including their Golden Age in Spain and Northern Africa.1 Additionally, congregations built Moorish buildings in part to differentiate them from Victorian-style churches.2 Examples of Moorish synagogues are those in Denver (figure 7) and Newark (figure 8). [End Page 563] At the turn of the century, synagogue architecture returned to the American architectural mainstream with a heavy emphasis on Classical Revival styles. The change is attributable to the interest in classical design at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and also to archeological discoveries of Galilean synagogues built during Roman times.3 This style was adopted by New York City’s Shearith Israel (figure 9). The small number of remaining nineteenth-century structures underscores the transitions that have taken place in Jewish life over the past 150 years. As Jews migrated out of small towns to large cities, and out of cities to suburbs, the religious spaces that they built have been purchased by new owners and used for new purposes. Historical preservationists, however, have built community support both within and outside the Jewish community in order to maintain these synagogues as emblems of the Jewish past. Those interested in learning more about nineteenth-century synagogues may consult the expanded web version of this article, its accompanying table, and a list of sources linked here (www.ajhs.org/rediscovering-jewish-infrastructure). The web table documents the location, style, and current use of all ninety-seven buildings originally erected as synagogues in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which are still standing. They are located in thirty-one states and the District of Columbia. This essay and the expanded web article are successors to articles published in American Jewish History in 1986 and 1996 (Volume 75, no. 3 and Volume 84, no. 1), which described ongoing efforts to identify and showcase these buildings. [End Page 564] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jeshuat Israel’s Touro Synagogue of Newport, RI was built from 1759 to 1763 in the Georgian style. One of the oldest extant Jewish houses of worship in the Western Hemisphere, the synagogue was closed during much of the nineteenth century as the local economy declined and the Jewish community dispersed to other cities. It reopened in the 1880s. Photo by Mark W. Gordon. [End Page 565] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Beth Israel in Honesdale, PA completed its Greek Revival synagogue in 1856. Unusual for a purpose-built Jewish house of worship, the roofline features a steeple, which municipal officials required to grant approval of a building permit. Photo by Mark W. Gordon. [End Page 566] Click for larger view View full resolution...

Asian Indians were the first South Asians to immigrate to the United States in the late 1800s and are currently the largest ethnic group of South Asians living in the United States. Despite this the literature on perceived ethnic and racial discrimination experiences among this group is relatively understudied. The documented experiences of Asian Indians who either recently immigrated from India or were born and raised in America pose an important question: what are the experiences of perceived discrimination among Asian Indians living in America, particularly among younger populations who are continuing to develop their racial and ethnic identities? The current study utilized phenomenological methodology to explore the experiences of nine Asian Indian American adolescents' (ages 12–17 years). Data were collected via semi-structured interviews to assess participants' experiences of ethnic and racial discrimination and identity development. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes and subthemes among the participants' responses. Asian Indian adolescents living in the United States report experiencing discrimination at a young age. It is also evident that Asian Indian youth experience significant challenges when developing their sense of ethnic and racial identity while living within the United States. Findings document the racial and ethnic discrimination that Asian Indian adolescents living in the United States may experience from a young age. Importantly, these discrimination experiences are occurring as Asian Indian adolescents are developing their racial and ethnic identities. This study provides insight for future research, which is necessary to fully understand the experiences of Asian Indian adolescents.

BRAZILIAN RACE RELATIONS: A CHANGING CONTEXT Jerry Dávila University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In 1977, First Lady Rosaylnn Carter visited Brazil and met with President Ernesto Geisel to express the Carter Administration’s concern over the military regime’s human rights violations. Geisel responded by invoking the official discourse about Brazilian race relations: “The fact that better than any other reflects the profound Brazilian respect for human rights is the absence of racial and religious prejudice. Brazil is really perhaps an example to the world, with its multi-racial society coexisting in harmony. We have legislation that has been in place for many years, and which severely punishes any racist tendencies. We are a free country that respects freedom.”1 The absence of political democracy was of no matter, for Brazil was a racial democracy. Geisel’s words reflected a context in which Brazilian authorities, prominent intellectuals and broad segments of the public believed racial discrimination and racial inequality were foreign problems. For generations, the scholarship on race in Brazil worked to challenge that perception by systematically mining demographic data, as well as producing studies on employment, political organization as well as social and institutional histories that revealed widespread racial inequality and discrimination. That scholarship has contributed to a powerful change in Brazilian racial politics . Geisel’s remarks were commonplace in the twentieth century, yet they are inconceivable in the twenty-first. Those of us interested in Brazilian race relations find ourselves working in a changed landscape. There is no longer a need for scholarship that asserts the existence of racial inequality, and it is no longer helpful to ask why Afro-Brazilians did not mobilize for racial justice in the manner of African Americans. The changed context places new demands on our work, such as understanding the public and private life of Brazilian racial values; tracing the sites of negotiation by which black Brazilians have navigated race relations; and conceptualizing Brazilian racial politics not in the frame of an absence of mobilization, but as elements of a successful movement of mobilization. In this respect, we are aided by George Reid Andrews’ admonition that the US is a less helpful point of comparison for the Brazilian experience than is Latin America: compared to the rest of Latin America, we are struck but the high degree of race-based political mobilization.2 The changes afoot in Brazilian racial politics are rooted in the transition to democracy that began in the late 1970s. Black political organizations, like the Movimento Negro Unificado founded in 1978, emerged as one of the C 2012 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 The Latin Americanist, December 2012 points of opposition to military rule. Amid the transition, federal, state and local governments became responsive to pressure from these groups. For instance, President José Sarney created the federal Fundação Palmares in 1988, charged with promoting Afro-Brazilian culture (an uncontroversial mandate) as well as the “social, economic and political” experiences of Afro-Brazilians (this was new ground for a federal office).3 Similar state offices were created in São Paulo in 1986 and Rio de Janeiro in 1991. The 1988 Constitution offered legal protections to the descendants of quilombo communities, and the Fundação Palmares gained latitude to provide title to the lands claimed by quilombolas. The new constitution also provided protections against racial discrimination. In 1990, an observer regarding these changes would have seen something new, wrapped in much that was old. After all, racist acts had been legally banned by the 1951 Afonso Arinos Law. As far back the 1934 Constitution , “privileges and distinctions” based on race have been illegal. The National Security Law decreed by the military dictatorship in 1967 made racial discrimination punishable by military tribunals. The military regime’s 1969 National Security Law, toughened after the protests of 1968 and the promulgation of Institutional Act No. 5, added minimum sentences for practicing discrimination. Cloaked in this enlightened jurisprudence, it was a simple matter for President Geisel to assert Brazil’s moral superiority over the United States with regard to race relations. In his defense of Brazilian racial democracy, Geisel went so far as...

Indirect Tax Incidence in Madagascar: Updated Estimates Using the Input-Output Table

Inspired by the power of having specific health data for one's own community, leaders of the Jewish community in Chicago undertook the steps necessary to conduct a similar survey within the most densely populated Jewish neighbourhoods. This unique survey, the Jewish Community Health Survey of West Rogers Park and Peterson Park identified many health issues within the community. Of these, childhood obesity was selected by community members as the most important problem to address because it was found to affect a large percentage of children and because it foreshadowed serious health consequences for the future. This chapter presents additional details about childhood obesity in this community, including age and gender differences and possible determinants. It then describes the rates among children in Jewish day schools in Chicago. This intervention, the Jewish Day School Wellness Initiative, has produced substantial changes within the schools and students of the Associated Talmud Torah school system over a four-year intervention period.

Reviewed by: The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950 – 2010 by Ellen Eisenberg Jeanne Abrams (bio) The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950 – 2010. By Ellen Eisenberg. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2016. 336 pp Regional histories help broaden our understanding of the wider American Jewish experience beyond the East Coast. The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950–2010, is, therefore, a welcome companion to Ellen Eisenberg’s earlier book, Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849–1950 (2015). In that volume, Eisenberg examined the stories of the state’s Jewish pioneers and later residents from the perspectives of commerce, politics, social welfare, and interethnic and interracial relationships. Like Jewish citizens throughout the West, Jews in Oregon often arrived during the region’s formative years. Early arrival frequently conferred respected pioneer status on Jewish westerners that allowed them to enter business, politics, and civic endeavors with more ease than they had encountered in Europe and other areas of the United States. While there were some incidents of anti-Semitism, Jews were generally accepted as full members into the broader Oregon community, viewed as “white” residents in frontier communities that included Native Americans and Asians. In The Jewish Oregon Story, Eisenberg explores the transformation of Jewish identity in the state post-1950 and the influence of Jewish ethnicity in tandem with the progressive ethos that has come to be associated with the state of Oregon. The American West has always loomed large in the American imagination, and this phenomenon again took center stage in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as young, well-educated adults from a variety of ethnic and religious groups moved to Oregon, part of a general migration to the Pacific West. According to Eisenberg, starting in the 1970s, they were attracted to Oregon’s increasing “reputation for progressivism, thoughtful development, and an environmental ethos” (xv). Early Jewish residents of Oregon populated hamlets throughout the state, but today’s Jewish population is centered primarily in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, though some smaller communities experienced a revival beginning in the 1970s. This population influx included younger Jews who helped boost Oregon’s modest Jewish population of only around 9,000 in the late 1970s to an estimated 36,000 in Portland [End Page 405] and over 40,000 statewide in 2010. Throughout the book, Eisenberg emphasizes the theme of dramatic change and reflects on how national trends in both the general and Jewish American communities centering on the subjects of liberal politics, enlarged roles for women, environmentalism, increasing secularism, and diversity interacted with the local Oregon progressive outlook and the traditions of the earlier Oregonian Jewish community. Given Oregon’s reputation for progressiveness, it is unsurprising that a plurality of Jews in Portland who were surveyed in 2009 asserted that “promotion of civil rights and tolerance” should be the highest priority for the local Jewish community (161). Between 1950 and 2010, Oregonian Jews moved toward stronger focus on broader external rather than specifically Jewish issues. As a result, early united support of Israel and the plight of Soviet Jewry and other Jewish causes of the 1960s and 1970s, when the Jewish community had “turned inward,” began to fragment in the late 1980s (xv). Eisenberg contends that in this trend Jews in Oregon was somewhat ahead of the curve within the American Jewish community. In terms of religion, Eisenberg asserts that “Even with the addition of the Orthodox congregation in Eugene and the expanding Chabad presence, the affiliation choices of Jewish Oregonians tend firmly toward the progressive/liberal end of the Jewish spectrum, and set them apart from Jews in other regions” (231). The last chapter in the book centers mostly on the diverse Jewish religious experience available in the state, with an emphasis on the Jewish renewal movement. Eisenberg is an engaging writer, and she incorporates the skills of a trained historian with good use of both primary and secondary sources, including a large collection of oral histories that help enliven the narrative. However, writing about recent history is often a tricky enterprise, and sometimes the book reverts to a celebratory style highlighted by generalized platitudes. For example, at the end of Chapter Two, titled “What Happened to Old South Portland,” the...