Zioness is a movement of Jewish activists and allies who are unabashedly progressive and unapologetically Zionist. Our whole goal is to ensure that there is always a space for Jews and Zionists in the progressive movement and in the progressive world, which is where most American Jews naturally find themselves politically anyway.
JEWISHEDUCATIONALEADERSHIP Jewish Educational Leadership is a publication of The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education of Bar Ilan University. Journal Staff Hyim Brandes | EditorChana German | Executive DirectorZvi Grumet | Editor-in-ChiefLeah Herzog | Editorial...
Some of the articles in this issue describe the joy of studying Talmud, others break down the complex processes to make it more accessible to students or to enable the students to engage with it meaningfully. And just to make sure that we covered the bases of both the how and the why of Talmud study, we asked our authors to weigh in separately on the question: “Why do you think that day school students should be learning Gemara/Rabbinics?” We invite you to join that discussion.
Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair in the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program in the Department of Religion at Seton Hall University. Rabbi Dr. Brill specializes in interfaith theology, mysticism, and comparative theology. Jewish Educational Leadership is pleased to share with you excerpts of our discussion with him.
Yonah Fuld is a dynamic and creative Jewish day school educator. Recently retired as Educational Director of The Lookstein Center, Rabbi Fuld’s pioneering and groundbreaking work in experiential education at SAR Academy (Riverdale, NY) inspired dozens of schools to incorporate it into their own programming. Jewish Educational Leadership is pleased to share with you excerpts of our discussion with him.
Ephraim Buchwald is a lifelong pioneer in the area of Jewish outreach. Rabbi Buchwald was Director of Education at Lincoln Square Synagogue (NY) for fifteen years, where he also founded the Beginner’s Service which he has been leading since 1975. He is also founder and Director of the National Jewish Outreach program, which has engaged more than a million North American Jews in Jewish life, and he was included in Newsweek’s list of the top fifty Rabbis in America. Jewish Educational Leadership is pleased to share with you excerpts of our discussion with him.
Excerpted (with permission) from a June 2022 report, After Covid: The Future of Jewish Education in the UK, A Community Project. The very existence of such a project, in which a community-based non-denominational organization (UJIA) joined with a denominational institution for adult Jewish learning (LSJS), marks significant forward-thinking. The report itself contains numerous innovative ideas for planning the future of Jewish education in the UK, and serves as another example of how being prepared to re-examine the basics can open doors to new starts.
For this issue of the journal, we asked five thinkers, scholars, and doers who are familiar with the Jewish day school world from the inside to reflect on core questions facing those who teach and design the place of Jewish History in the classroom. We were fascinated by both the overlap and the remarkable diversity of ideas expressed. Their responses are presented here in alphabetical order of their last names: Professor Adam Ferziger, Peter Geffen, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Greenberg, Professor Marc Shapiro, Rabbi Berel Wein.
While sitting around our own virtual conference table brainstorming the questions that would make up the Call for Papers for this issue, we shared our own ideas with one another and now we’d like to share them with you, our readers, as well. Pull up a chair.
Olivia Friedman is an innovative educational thinker who teaches at Ida Crown Jewish Academy (Skokie) and is a member of the Advisory Board of Jewish Educational Leadership. In this conversation she shares her thoughts about relationships with and engaging parents who have high school age children.
