A core goal of Jewish education is that the educational process will connect the learner to Judaism in a personal and meaningful manner, infusing each individual with a strong Jewish identity. We hope that the learner understands and internalizes that Judaism can provide guidance or context for grappling with life’s struggles, doubts, and questions, alongside its celebrations and joy. These connections must be based on knowledge, personally constructed meaning, and emotional understanding.
The Jewish People and The Land of Israel have always had an integral connection, a relationship that goes far beyond that of a people and their homeland—Israel is part of our identity. Throughout the generations, the connection to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem was expressed mainly through tefilla, Jewish literature, the study of Tanakh, and commemorating Jerusalem though rituals, practices, and customs.
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 Sarah Golubtchik | Copyeditor Zvi Grumet |...
I’ve always been envious of my father who can recite by heart the Preamble of the United States Constitution (“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility….”), much of the Gettysburg Address…
The Talmud describes the extraordinary innovation of R. Yehoshua ben Gamla, who began teaching fatherless children or those whose fathers were unable to teach them. We would have thought that he would receive accolades from all sides, yet the Talmud’s response is, “however, we still recognize the good that he did.” This backhanded compliment suggests that starting the first yeshiva to teach children was a cause for concern, and perhaps that concern was that the parents were being replaced as the primary educators for their children.
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.
As we know, parental involvement, engagement, collaboration, and support have and will continue to occupy an essential aspect of the Jewish Day school education landscape. The evolving impact of parent involvement and engagement on their children’s learning experiences has shown to strongly influence student achievement, engagement, and motivation. Moreover, parental involvement in education is widely understood as a key component to educational success. To be sure, the best predictor of student success is the extent to which families encourage learning at home and involve themselves in their children’s education.
Each morning during school term, parents wave goodbye to their children with the confidence that they will be cared for while being stimulated by quality lessons and activities, delivered by competent and caring staff. With the freed hours in the day, they can get on with life’s responsibilities and become the professional, the volunteer, the keep-fit, and the leisurely adult that is their chosen routine. When schools went on lockdown, suddenly the scaffolding that kept life ticking collapsed. Without warning or choice, parents were gifted (or lumbered) with taking primary responsibility for their children’s education. What lessons have we learnt from the last few months about how schools can facilitate the role parents play in their children’s education? How can these lessons be incorporated in a post-pandemic school culture to foster a better working relationship with primary carers, offering better mutual support?
The rapid shifts in society brought on by the coronavirus pandemic open up an opportunity to understand the challenges children face in school at the system level. Parents tend to address their child’s issues “in the moment,” at a specific (and perhaps, granular) level. This makes sense: parents understand their children’s experiences in school via a limited set of data from a limited number of informants. The COVID crisis brought school into the home, and as such, gave parents a new view into their child’s school experience, a chance for parents to pause, step back, and partner with the school to explore challenges from a systems level. In order to do this, parents need to understand not only how schools work, but how the systems of schools work. A child in one system context looks different than the same child in another system.
What role should a parent play in the months of preparation that lead up to a coming of age celebration for a child?
I first started taking this question seriously after I stood on the Bimah, uttered the traditional parental blessing that freed me from “personal liability” (shepetarani mei’onsho shel zeh) for my newly dubbed “teenager” and tried my best to connect to the blessing on an emotional level. It was not easy. As much as I felt a release in that moment; the parental part of me was actually sensing a growing set of legal and moral responsibilities that I would carry for the actions of the pimpled, brace-faced teen who stood before me in his new suit and tie.
