JEWISH TEXTS, EDUCATION AND IDENTITY: INSEPARABLE

Abstract

The study of traditional Jewish texts is perhaps the single most critical and engaging activity in Jewish education. Students spend the greater part of their classroom time delving into this source material, much of it ancient, some of it recent, in order to gain a better understanding of their heritage and how it relates to them in profound and in routine ways. Jewish educators are deeply aware of the importance of textual study in the curriculum, and it is their concern and their children's needs that were addressed by the 1987 Conference on Jewish Texts, sponsored by the Melton Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. More than 20 educators and psychologists were invited to Jerusalem from widely scattered sites, mostly North American and Israeli, to attend a series of meetings where some presented and all discussed the papers that appear in the present volume. The statements range in substance from the philosophical to the pedagogical and from the original to the traditionally derivative interpretation of textual sources in educational contexts. All are intended to bring a fresh perspective on issues that are as old and vital as Jewish education per se.