The state educational system in Israel reflects the declared character of the state as a "Jewish state", and, consequently, the deep inter-group divisions in society, including a large Palestinian Arab minority. This study demonstrates how Israeli educational policy and curriculum are designed to support the Jewish nation-building…

In this article, the author talks about Jon Levisohn's discussion of "Visions of Jewish Education," which includes at least four valuable contributions. First, Levisohn offers an illuminating account of what a reader of the important book will find. Second, Levisohn draws attention to the ways in which the book will significantly enrich discourse…

A new movie version of Shakespeare's classic troubling comedy, "The Merchant of Venice" (Brokaw, Cowan, Navidi, Piette, & Radford, 2004), has appeared, bringing up an ancient issue of the possible bigotry of the greatest writer in the English language. Shakespeare's plays about minority characters in the Venetian Republic have caused more and more…

In this article, the author discusses the problems faced by educators in teaching about the Holocaust. She relates that because the Holocaust is now frequently taught in middle schools and in upper elementary grades, by the time it is taught in high schools, students will experience "Holocaust fatigue." As such, teachers face the challenge of…

In this article, the author recounts her teaching experience with new high school students at Northwest Yeshiva High School, an Orthodox Jewish high school on Mercer Island. In teaching the students about writing, the author describes how she was moved by the narratives written by her students, and that after reading their stories she decided to…

Examines the image of the Arab in children's fiction to illuminate attitudes which have prevented U.S. Jews and non-Jews from seeing Palestinians as human beings. Finds that the Arab and Jewish children are not portrayed as equals. (PRA)

All languages encode aspects of culture and every culture has its own specificities to be proud of and to be transmitted. The papers in this book explore aspects of this relationship between language and culture, considering issues related to the processes of internationalization and localization of the English language. The volume is divided into…

Raphael Cohen-Almagor's article "Hate in the Classroom: Free Expression, Holocaust Denial, and Liberal Education" (2008) calls for sanctions on those K-12 public school teachers whose deployment of "hate speech"--and/or associations with others who deploy it--creates a "poisoned environment" in the classroom. While…

For this study of sexual education in Israeli Modern Orthodox high schools, we interviewed teachers at the crossroads of conflicting values. Caught between a commitment to promote traditional practices and values, and a sense of obligation to serve as caregivers to students whose lived realities often do not fit neatly within the framework of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent social groups maintaining traditional-collectivistic or modern-individualistic lifestyles while sharing a similar nationality ethnicity and cultural origin, may be differentiated on the basis of their professional job perceptions and attitudes. Design/methodology/approach:…

Background: Great efforts are made to develop and implement contact activities for groups in conflict, yet studies of effects of planned contact interventions yielded mixed results. Previous attempts to explain why contact interventions do not fulfill their promise focused on the contact itself. However, the main focus of the present study was the…

"Where is God now?" is a question from the Holocaust memoir "Night" by Elie Wiesel and an underlying narrative dilemma for the teachers and most student participants in this qualitative study of three Holocaust units in secondary English classrooms in the Midwestern United States. Using a narrative theory framework, this study explores how…

Jewish history is unique in the sense that it expands over a vast period of time and takes place in almost all places in the world. This creates a major potential for historical debates. The state of Israel, which views itself as the high-point of Jewish national identity, has inherited these debates but attempted to find a way between them by…

William Shakespeare wrote several plays which depict Jews and Blacks in a very negative, stereotypical fashion. In "The Merchant of Venice," for example, Shakespeare chooses to depict Shylock as Jews were popularly conceived in his era--as cold-hearted usurers and crucifiers of Christ. This is racist doctrine at work, as Shylock is…

Difficulties in transcription from the Hebrew to the Roman alphabet are discussed. The resolution of some of the problems in Judeo-Spanish texts using the "aljamiado" writing system are reviewed, including the use of some Hebrew consonants as vowels, representation of Judeo-Spanish sounds non-existent in Hebrew, and phonetic variations…