Jewish day schools offer many experiences meant to foster the Jewish development of students. However, these experiences are at risk of being disconnected from one another, complicating a comprehensive approach to addressing issues of identity. This article uses a constructivist approach to identity development to frame the challenges posed by…

This article mingles stories and concepts of young Jewish Israeli children about God, with reflections on the roles of faith, memory, imagination, and cognitive development in children's Religious Education. The stories are meant to illustrate, among other things, the purity and innocence of young children's faith, which is largely untroubled by…

This qualitative study discovers teenage boys whose connections to Judaism and Jewish life offered them resilience and contextual opportunities for identity development. Those who have active, positive Jewish identities describe adaptations that are more independent of adolescent peer norms and freer, in terms of masculine pressures, than less…

In Austria, activities for teaching about and remembering the Holocaust have concentrated mainly on National Socialism and its atrocities. Austria's history of political anti-Semitism goes back to the 19th century, however, and has been widely and publicly acknowledged. It has always been linked to nationalistic tendencies that are still present…

A series of articles appearing in English-language Jewish newspapers in the United States and the United Kingdom have recently announced the "blogosphere"--the world of discourse propelled by the technological innovation of online interactive diaries known as "weblogs"--as a new liberating arena for Orthodox Jewish women. In…

This article presents the attitudes of students and teachers to prayer at an American Modern Orthodox Jewish high school. Relevant data, based on observation and interviews, emerged from a larger study of the school's Jewish and secular worlds. A significant gap in responses became apparent. Students viewed prayer as a challenge to their autonomy,…

As liberal democracies include increasingly diverse and multifaceted populations, the longstanding debate about the role of the state in religious education and the place of religion in public life seems imperative now more than ever. The maintenance of religious schools and the planning of religious education curricula raise a profound challenge.…

This research explored how a group of religious leaders and scholars understand and make meaning of their experience in interfaith dialogue, and the reported impact it had on their spiritual and professional practice. It considered a broad range of themes, including participants' motivation to engage across religious difference, their…

Early childhood educators are increasingly being called upon to deal with emotionally charged topics, which include natural and manmade disasters, war, terror, death, and other traumatic events. At our teachers college, we prepare students to deal with a challenging issue, memory of the Holocaust, through a series of activities and workshops…

Recognition is the main word attached to multicultural perspectives. The multicultural call for recognition, the one calling for the recognition of cultural minorities and identities, the one now voiced by liberal states all over and also in Israel was a more difficult one. It took the author some time to realize that calling for the recognition…

Great strife has plagued the Middle East for decades. Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank of Palestine' have been battling over the land they both claim as holy. Regional threats of war loom and increasingly violent rhetoric has been exchanged regarding the claims to holy sites, land, olives, water, and other natural resources in…

Formal pre-service training has been shown to be effective in building teacher self-efficacy beliefs. However, the impact of other, less formal, "teacher-like" pre-service experiences on the formation of efficacy beliefs has not previously been investigated. This study examines the associations between both formal and informal formative…

My professional interest originally focused on curriculum planning and development, but for the last 30 years I have been researching, publishing and teaching in the field of human rights education. Suddenly, I became a human rights educator. Suddenly? No, nothing in our personal and professional life is the result of an abrupt occurrence. We are…

This paper examines the integration of Russian children and youth into education and society in Israel. It focuses on four central aspects: the character of the immigrant community in Israel, the function and structure of the family, governmental policy, school experience, and identity formation.

This study engaged Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Arab students in a joint investigation of their common past by means of secondary historical sources. The hypothesis was that a triadic interaction among agents of groups with opposing views and historical texts can foster historical thinking. It was expected that while ethnic identity would drive both…