This dissertation investigated the impact of being the child of a Holocaust survivor on teaching in a university setting. A life history method was utilized. Participants were asked about their backgrounds, parents' survival stories, and how the Holocaust has carried forward into their adult lives and teaching. Multiple interviews with a time…

The Re-Imagine Project (of the Experiment in Congregational Education) is an attempt to engender innovation in congregational schools. A long-term study of 24 participating congregations in Greater New York examined the extent to which the effort yielded new models of education (radical change). The study included surveys of task force members and…

This article uses a socio-cultural approach to analyze the formation and implementation of Estonia's Holocaust Day Policy, a day of both commemoration for victims of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, and education about the Holocaust. It investigates both the multi-level development of the policy in light of external pressure (from…

In this paper the authors explore the heuristic potential in the image of the teacher-as-stranger and use it as a frame for reflecting on teacher change and growth. Drawing on the sociological figure of the stranger, they conduct a qualitative study of a sample of teachers who are not only strangers in a metaphorical sense, but who, because they…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." As someone who is experimenting not only with how to teach rabbinic texts but with which texts to select in virtually every course the author teaches for American undergraduate as well as graduate…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." While the "menu" Levisohn describes in his groundbreaking work on orientations to the teaching of rabbinic texts will almost certainly be refined over time, even as it stands this article should be of…

Despite a growing amount of research on the topic of ethnic identity, Jews, and the important aspects of a Jewish identity, have not been included in the multicultural and psychological literature. Using consensual qualitative research (C. E. Hill et al., 2005), the authors sought to gain an understanding of Jewish ethnic identity in 10 American…

What are North American Jewish day schools doing when they engage in Israel education, what shapes their practices, and to what ends? In this article, we report on a multi-method study inspired by these questions. Our account is organized around an analytical model that helps distinguish between what we call the vehicles, intensifiers, and…

School-to-school collaboration has emerged as a key paradigm for fostering personal and institutional connections between Israeli and Diaspora youth, educators, and schools. Using the findings of a multi-year case study of a high school level twinning initiative, this article describes the challenges to this form of transnational collaboration and…

Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological model proposes that events in higher order social ecosystems should influence human development through their impact on events in lower order social ecosystems. This proposition was tested with respect to ecological violence and the development of children's aggression via analyses of 3 waves of data (1 wave…

This study examines attitudes towards bilingual Jewish-Arab education among Jewish and Arab adults in Israel. The sample consisted of 1014 respondents who participated in a national phone survey in late 2006. Results indicate that Arabs are significantly more supportive of bilingual education in Israel than Jews. Positive attitudes regarding the…

Despite increased interest in studying school violence, much less attention has been given to examining students' fear of experiencing this violence. A better understanding is important, because fear of victimization can generate negative academic consequences for the individual student and larger school environment. To explore students' fear, our…

Research about Jewish choral singers provides insight to a previously unstudied population of adult Jewish learners. Drawing on over 2,000 responses to the First-Ever Survey of Jewish Choral Activity, this article describes how Jewish choral experiences enable adults to deepen their involvement in Jewish life and learning. Survey results suggest…

This article presents a qualitative study of Israeli Jewish youth who self-identify as "religious-lite"--intended to uncover the reasons youth choose to define themselves using a non-institutionalized, somewhat dissonant identity label. Eighteen participants aged 22-29 were administered in-depth interviews regarding their deliberations…

Exploring how personal inheritances of the Holocaust--the Shoah--shaped particular familial silences, I show how they created a need for philosophy and social theories that helped grasp the truth of what remained unspoken. As my parents' generation insisted on having exclusive ownership of the past, while tacitly contracting that children create…