The Lookstein Center’s Communities of Difference Spring 2024 edition offers a platform for Jewish educators and laypeople to network, learn, and share.
FROM THE EDITOR: SPRING 2024
In the 1970s, UJA’s rallying slogan was: “We are One.” Indeed, those were the days in which the Jewish community banded together over three core principles—commemoration of the Shoah, saving Soviet Jewry (and Syrian Jewry and Ethiopian Jewry), and Israel. The past fifty years have eroded each of those. People are tiring of the Shoah and are eager to move on from what Salo Baron termed the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history.” Soviet Jews left en masse in the 1990s with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Jews of Syria and Ethiopia have mostly migrated and resettled as well. And Israel, which is itself grappling with unparalleled polarization, no longer serves as a uniting factor for many North American Jews. All this leaves us, fifty years after the UJA banner, with a dramatic shift in punctuation:
Jewish Education Amidst Rising Antisemitism – 2024 Update
When we published our issue on antisemitism two years ago, some thought that we were being alarmist. In retrospect, it seems like the antisemitic sentiments we were sensing were just the tip of the iceberg. The surge of Jew-hatred in the United States and abroad, from...
From The Editor: Winter 2024
When we published our issue on antisemitism two years ago, some thought that we were being alarmist. In retrospect, it seems like the antisemitic sentiments we were sensing were just the tip of the iceberg. The surge of Jew-hatred in the United States and abroad, from college campuses to workplaces to the streets of New York, Paris, London, Sydney, and so many more places, leaves us reeling with questions. How did we get to a place where the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT speaking to a congressional committee could not say unequivocally that calling for the genocide of the Jews is considered harassment and violates campus rules?
Tackling Talmud
Was the Talmud intended to be studied by the masses? Should it be required learning in Jewish schools? This issue of Jewish Educational Leadership presents a broad range of ideas from thinkers and educators across the field. We invite you to read it and to join the...
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Fall-2023
Was the Talmud intended to be studied by the masses? Should it be required learning in day schools? Why? What do we want our students to get out of it?
FROM THE EDITOR: Fall 2023
Fascinating. Infuriating. Uplifting. Complex. Boring. Inconsistent. Logical. Brilliant. Eclectic. Irrelevant. Compelling. Frustrating. Inspiring. Ancient. Contemporary. The Talmud evokes all the above, and more. I vividly remember my first encounter with Gemara. I must have been ten years old, and my family was in a bungalow colony in the Catskills. Rabbi Cohen taught Gemara to the older boys, of which I was not, but I asked permission to sit in and listen. I loved following the discussions and debates, even though I couldn’t read any of it and retained none of the content.
Fall 2023 Journal Credits
JEWISHEDUCATIONALEADERSHIP
Jewish Educational Leadership is a publication of The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education of Bar Ilan University.
Chana German, Executive Director
JOURNAL STAFF
Hyim Brandes | Editor
Zvi Grumet | Editor-in-Chief
Chevi Rubin | Editor
Shani Sicherman | Copyeditor
Please send correspondence regarding journal content to zvi@lookstein.org.
The Lookstein Center publications present a variety of viewpoints. The views expressed or implied in this publication are not necessarily those of the Center.
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Cultivating Jewish Spirituality
I must confess. I am deeply torn about spirituality. I have gone through extended periods during which I experienced deep and profound connection with God. Music, tefillah, mind-expanding Torah-study, cloudless starry nights, awesome thunderstorms, staring at a single...