Jewish History is often situated at an intersection between general studies and Judaic studies. Given that Project Based Learning (PBL) provides opportunities to combine the rigors of a general studies curriculum with a values-based approach typical of Judaic learning, Jewish History provides fertile ground for PBL to create meaningful and authentic learning experiences for students.
The indicators point to an intensifying shortage of Jewish educators in North America and beyond, and it looks like it will only get worse. This is not new and there are likely multiple causes, but COVID has brought about a wave of early retirement and teacher burnout so that the need has become more acute faster than anyone anticipated and the effects are being felt almost everywhere.
In his final song, Moses commands the Children of Israel: “Remember the days of old, seek to understand the years of each generation” (Deuteronomy 32:7). As we ask how best to teach Jewish History in high schools, there are three principles I’d like to examine based on the wording of Moses’ command. Moses speaks about remembering, implying that one must first acquire factual knowledge that makes sense and can sit in the memory. Only that way will the student be able to use the acquired information for her own thinking process.
Journal Homepage View or Print Full Journal in PDFJewish History Resources 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...
The Passover Seder serves not only as ‘the quintessential exercise in Jewish group memory’ according to the Yerushalmi, but it can serve as a paradigm of what Jewish education should be. The Seder with its symbols, practices and intellectual stimulation resonates in us all.
One of my favorite children’s Chelm stories is “Malke’s Secret Recipe,” by David Adler which tells the story of Malke, who was known for her delicious, succulent, and soft latkes. The only problem was that she would not share the recipe…
My neurodiversity is likely a form of ADHD, partially due to brain surgery. Some of my distractions are due to wandering thoughts and others to sensory stimuli. I also have Irlen syndrome and irregular auditory processing. Irlen syndrome causes visual distortions due to inefficient perception and processing of light and is treated using colored spectral filters.
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 | EditorZvi Grumet | Editor-in-ChiefChevi Rubin | EditorShani...
Educators are busy. They constantly dance between the multiple roles they play—teaching, enabling, counseling, negotiating, peacemaking, managing, assessing, planning, designing, creating, reporting, adapting—and the list goes on. Educators spend years building their repertoire, finding the styles that work for them, and refining them through numerous iterations. And then, when they finally hit their sweet spot, they face perhaps their greatest challenge—repeating what they’ve been doing over and over again.
Bibliodrama is not acting, per se. Its creator, Dr. Peter Pitzele (whose book, Scripture Windows, is designed to train the reader to use the method) imported methods from the world of psychodrama into the study of Tanakh, and honed them into an art form. In Bibliodrama, a transition is effected by moving from studying the texts from the outside, using the analytical and academic left brain, to studying them from the inside, in creative and imaginative right-brain mode—and thus, getting right into the kishkes of the stories we are teaching. Questions, ones with no obvious answer, are posed to the students who respond in first-person language, speaking as the biblical characters or even as objects.
