Informal Jewish Education Research Articles

Eat, Pray, Wait: The Informal Israeli Jewish Education of Ethiopian Youth Awaiting Aliyah

ABSTRACT 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 Israel’s vision of an “ideal” Jew. Through a collaborative, community-based approach, this study provides a holistic representation of Tikvah as a world suspended between Israeli socialization and informal Jewish education, exposing the distance between the diverse traditions and identities of Jews across the world and Israel’s reconfiguration of what it means to be a “Jew.”

Experiential learning and values education at a school youth camp: Maintaining Jewish culture and heritage

In our post-modern, globalised world, there is a risk of unique cultural heritages being lost. This loss contributes to the detriment of civilization, because individuals need to be rooted in their own specific identity in order to actively participate in community life. This article discusses a longitudinal case study of the efforts being made by Australian Jewish schools to maintain Jewish heritage through annual experiential religious education camps, coordinated in a programme called Counterpoint. The researchers’ aim was to analyse how a school youth camp can serve as a site for socialisation and education into a cultural and religious heritage through experiential learning and informal education. During research trips which took place over several years, interviews enabling insights into the process of experiential education were conducted with a total of three different Directors of Informal Jewish Education, two Jewish Studies heads, five participating teachers, seven youth leaders, as well as seven student focus groups. In their analysis of the semi-structured interviews, the authors of this article employed a grounded theory approach using a constant comparative method, which enabled a more nuanced understanding of the main phenomenon investigated. Over the years, they were able to observe two philosophical approaches, one of which focused more on socialisation, with immersion into experience, while the other focused on education, with immersion into Jewish knowledge. Their findings reveal that some educators aim to “transmit” knowledge through “evocation”, with the students involved in active learning; while others focus more on students’ “acquisition” of knowledge through transmission. Experiential learning activities were found to be more meaningful and powerful if they combined both approaches, leading to growth.

Experiential Jewish Education Has Arrived! Now What?

Experiential Jewish education has been experiencing a time of growth, during which theory development, research, and practice have established a strong voice for the construct. Much of the focus to this point has been on definitions (particularly the distinction between experiential and informal Jewish education) and on outcomes of settings often associated with an experiential Jewish education (EJE) approach. Along with increased understanding of EJE comes the potential to explore a more nuanced set of questions about the nature of educational experiences. This point of development of the field also raises question of the relationship of EJE and the broader field of Jewish education.

EDUCATION FOR JEWISH PEOPLEHOOD IN AUSTRALIA

Jewish peoplehood is a multi-dimensional complex construct that cannot be reduced to religious identification alone but is comprised of four distinct dimensions: collective belonging or identification with the Jewish people; Jewish cultural capital or familiarity with the cultural knowledge, language, customs, and rituals that makes a Jew feel comfortable anywhere in the Jewish world; Jewish responsibility or commitment to the welfare of other Jews; and interpersonal attachment or personal connection with other Jews. This paper evaluates the independent impact of Jewish schooling, informal Jewish education, and Israel visits within the non-denominational traditional and secular streams of Australian Jewry via a multivariate secondary analysis of the 18–44-year-old group of respondents in the Australian Gen08 national survey of Australian Jewry (N=2330). It argues that educational intervention is significant, irrespective of what kind of home in which the child is raised. Adopting the paradigm of Jewish peoplehood, we find that while day schools enhance Jewish ritual practice and other cognitive measures—such as learning Hebrew (Jewish cultural capital), youth movement participation and visits to Israel are the principal drivers of Jewish community activism (interpersonal attachment) and thus Jewish commitment and belonging (Jewish responsibility). Young Australian Jews appear to choose how they reinvent different forms of Jewish belonging as old forms wax and wane. Their multiple identities lead to variant emphases on the synagogue, community involvement, and attachment to Israel—as well as increased commitment to the local community and citizenship. Jewish education thus plays an important role in sustaining collective belonging to the Jewish people.

Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education

Why has it been so difficult to define the goals of Jewish informal education? Often informal educators define their work in terms of the goals of Jewish socialization. Those terms have worked to attract funders' support, but also limited the educational creativity of this field. This article argues for a dual defining of goals: socialization and educational. Defining the educational goals leads to considering the works of Cremin, Peters, and Csikszentmihalyi who disentangle the enterprise of education from the broader sweep of socialization. Viewed apart from its socializing functions, informal Jewish education becomes the moment for going deeper and experiencing our Judaism in its full creative potential. A camp music program is offered as an example of how these two goals can operate together, but lead in distinct directions.

Education within Our Faith Communities: What do we Learn and what do we Teach about Ourselves and about Others?

I do not think that I had the best introduction to interfaith dialogue. I studied Christianity at school and at university. I was overprotected at the first and overexposed at the second. At school, our wonderful Catholic teacher avoided the so called 'difficult' chapters in the Gospels so as to protect her five students (three of whom were Jewish) or maybe herself. On the other hand, my university lecturers taught the 'Old Testament' with assertions such as 'Judaism is morally invalid'. These experiences strengthened in me a destructive understanding of the religious world as consisting of only Christians (the Faculty was then a Protestant-only zone) and Jews (as Christ-killers). You will not be surprised to know that after receiving my Divinity degree, I did not go anywhere near Christian studies for another thirteen years! I moved to Jerusalem at twenty-two and there I worked in informal Jewish education with young adults. I worked with eighteen-year-olds and adults. I taught Jews from the diaspora and Israel, and Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian. In Israel and in the Palestinian Autonomous Areas, I taught Judaism, youth leadership skills, tour guiding skills and dialogue facilitation. Today it is clear to me how limited my experiences have been and how my views have been shaped by those interactions. Now I am a rabbinic student in London and so for the next few years, my educational energy is primarily focused on being a mother to our children, Tali, Natan and Ella. Being a parent has sharpened every educational dilemma I have ever considered. How I long for the security of a limited one and a half hour session!

Grounds for cautious optimism: a response to lipset’s remarks

In the 1990s, ethnicity has ceased to be a unifying force for American Jewry. Low rates of ritual observance and little active involvement in the Jewish community together with high rates of intermarriage all attest to a high degree of assimilation. Nonetheless, trends in formal and informal Jewish education suggest that Jewish youth are receiving a more intensive Jewish education than their parents and may, as a result, become more strongly attached to the Jewish community as adults.

An Application of Schwab's Educational Commonplaces: Examining One Aspect of the Milieu Commonplace as Reflected in a Synagogue in a Florida Retirement Community

Burton I. Cohen serves as Associate Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His articles have appeared in the NSSE Yearbook, jewish Education, and the Meltonjournal. Co-editor ofStudies in jewish Educationandjudaica in HonorofLouisNewman (KTAV, 1984), he has recently completed a volume of studies ofJewish schools. He specializes in the pre-service preparation of teachers for non-Orthodox day schools and in informal Jewish education.

A Cooperative Effort Between Formal and Informal Education Agencies

There is a strong tendency in American Jewish education to promote the coordination of formal and informal Jewish education. This is not always possible for a variety of different reasons. One factor is the separate nature of the formal educational and informal educational organizations and their institutional goals and directions. Moreover, the formal educational agencies tend to hire staff that are not capable of dealing with informal education. They look at Jewish education as the transmission of cognitive skills; Jewish knowledge is viewed largely as a set of skills which demands long hours in classroom situations. On the other hand, informal educational institutions like the Jewish communal camps (in contrast to the ideological camps such as Camps Ramah, Morasha, Habonim Camps, Young Judea Camps, etc.) are generally social-work-oriented agencies. They do not always perceive themselves as the transmitters of Jewish culture nor as change agents in the complex process of Jewish identity. There is an uns...

Informal Jewish Education and the Bureau

Informal Jewish Education and the Bureau