In an era of profound antisemitism, it is essential that higher education leaders and campus communities provide additional, direct support to Jewish students. In this space, we introduce recent literature on Jewish identity expressions and campus climates for bolstering Jewish appreciation in hopes of catalyzing necessary conversations with…

This study examines the outcome of incongruence between home and school religious environments on predicting adolescent identification with religious values and worldview in Israeli religious high schools, and the possible mediating effects of general and identity-related aspects of school climate. The study compares Jewish students from religious…

Over the past two decades, the internet has become a central platform affording lay-learners access to a multiplicity of experts. While these outlets empower lay-learners, they create competition amongst clerical and knowledge authorities. This article addresses the question: "how is religious authority understood and negotiated by learners,…

For thousands of years Jewish law was based on revelation and precedent. God's will, as revealed in scripture, was determinative: it demarcated what was permitted, required and prohibited. A contemporary rabbi could offer only a slight emendation of precedents. The early modern period, however, witnessed a dramatic shift in Jewish norm-making. A…

Sex education presents a major dilemma for state-minority relations, reflecting a conflict between basic rights to education and religious freedom. In this comparative ethnography of informal sex education among ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) in Israel and England, we frame the critical difference between "age-appropriate" and…

This paper engages with two overarching questions: why is engaging with queer theologies potentially valuable for sex education, and how can we carry out this kind of work without rendering sex education an expression of queer theological commitment? In responding to the first of these questions, I argue that working with queer theologies can…

This paper offers a philosophical analysis of Israel education as reflected in the Jewish education research literature. Six distinct conceptions are identified that all share an educational objective to engender personal and collective Jewish commitment with Israel as an integral value. This conceptual mapping revealed the need for writers on…

As emerging adult college students ponder their religious/spiritual beliefs and identities, those in religiously diverse countries (e.g. the USA) often encounter beliefs different from their own. These encounters can prompt new perspectives on their own beliefs and elicit responses from rejection to incorporation of the diverging belief, thus…

Jewish schools educated more than 151,000 students in New York State in 2013, the last year a careful count was done. And taxpayers have a stake in how well the yeshivas are doing their jobs. The Jewish schools absorb more than $100 million a year in city government funds for things such as textbooks, special education, security, and…

The purpose of this paper was to examine the institutional conditions and educational practices associated with the development of first-term students' appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Using a longitudinal design, we administered a theoretically derived and empirically validated measure of interfaith experiences to 7,194 first-term students…

Evolution is one of the most controversial scientific issues worldwide, mainly because of the presumed conflict with religion, which also arises in school biology classes. Here, we surveyed biology teachers from different Jewish sectors in Israel about their experiences teaching evolution and their perspective on relating to students' religious…

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the interaction between the constructs of spirituality and religiosity of Orthodox Judaism with marriage. Eight participants were selected to be interviewed for this study. All of the participants were from the Greater Cleveland area and considered themselves to be members of the Orthodox Jewish…

This essay explores the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened human rights conditions across the globe, particularly around the rise of authoritarianism, erosion of democracy, increase in hate crimes and racism, and deepening of economic inequality. We then advocate for the possibilities and significance of human rights education as a…

The present study investigated the mental health needs of a Modern Orthodox Jewish High School. The researcher sought to find out what types of emotional, social, and behavioral issues students present in a Modern Orthodox High School, what types of strategies and interventions are currently being used to address these issues, and how effective…

This paper explores the notion that religious texts and the tradition of religious story telling are the content, form or "the movable feast" by which we form and preserve our culture and group identity, and by which we pass them down to the next generations. All these texts are composed of language that is open for analysis and multiple…