This article explores how arts-based learning can facilitate understandings of Jewish religious texts. Through practical examples drawn from our own research, from the worlds of dance, drama, and the visual arts in education, we demonstrate the ways in which arts can allow for the transmission of information and knowledge, as well as offer a…

During the past 40 years, several generations of American children have grown up with the Nation of Israel as a historical reality. Whether Jewish or Gentile, juvenile readers have absorbed a version of the story that recapitulates in modern dress the biblical story of the children of Hagar and Sarah, reinforced by American attitudes toward people…

Objective: This study is the first in a comprehensive examination of therapeutic components and outcome of interventions in a public, nonresidential service for drug addicts in Jerusalem (SHALEM). Method: Data were gathered from 153 clients (35 women, 128 men; 35 Arabs, 118 Jews; median age = 39) using clinical data mining. Results: Men who had…

This article reports on two Mideast-themed schools which have attracted fierce controversy amplified in the news media and the blogosphere. A new public school with a focus on Arabic language and culture is set to open in New York City this week, after being assailed for months by opponents who claim it will be a taxpayer-funded Islamic school…

Background: Before 1999, there was little research on teachers and apartheid aside from some biographical sketches. "A Mother and Her Daughters" is part of an ongoing oral history project of teachers who fought apartheid. It is contextualized through the literature on Jews and apartheid in South Africa and joins the growing literature on…

The study examined attitudes toward school inclusion of students with disabilities of 1,145 prospective teacher trainees from six national/religious groups in eleven colleges in Israel: The groups were secular, religious and ultra-orthodox Jews and Muslim, Christian and Druze Arabs. Participants responded to the "Opinion Related to Inclusion…

The effect of parental Holocaust trauma on children's Jewish identity and Holocaust-related ideation was investigated through comparison of children of survivors with children of American Jews. The role of possible mediating factors, (the quality of parental communication style) was also assessed. Subjects included 40 adult children of Jewish…

This collection of lectures and articles was occasioned by the author's 70th birthday and his many decades of teaching in the English departments at the University of Montana and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he is the self-proclaimed "apostle to the gentiles." The book explores the often conflicting paradox of…

By 1985, almost 2,500 Ethiopian Jews, who call themselves Beta Israel, had settled in Israel, with more than 1,600 in permanent housing in 2 major areas. This mass immigration caused strains on Israeli society and on the immigrants. The Bernard van Leer Foundation funded the Community and Education Project for Beta Israel to assist in the…

To identify patterns of first names over three generations, two samples of 100 Jewish families representing over 1,400 individuals from the former Soviet Union were interviewed. Sample 1 came mainly from Ukraine and European Russia; Sample 2 came from Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan. Individuals in the samples were born between 1886 and 1992. Both…

Discusses a study in which Jewish and Arab Israeli children attending pre-kindergarten to eighth grade were required to copy a vertical and a horizontal line, and also in which the intelligence of partial samples was assessed. It was found that starting from the right was correlated with higher intelligence for Arabs and with lower intelligence…

This book contains 15 essays on the relation of language to ethnicity, race, and culture. Although a wide variety of topics are covered, much of the discussion is intended to contribute to an understanding of the Western "ethnic revival" of the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s and the sociology of language in general. Chapter titles are: (1) "Language,…

Since the turn of the century, American Jews have been closely associated with reform movements that seek to improve social conditions, to help the disadvantaged, and to achieve international peace. Jewish religious traditions and social circumstances have disposed many Jews to view politics and power idealistically. However, traditional…

As a follow-up to a conference on Jewish population growth, two focus groups of young couples explored personal factors that motivate childbearing decisions. Couples reported that their decisions about how many children to have evolved sequentially, and depended on specific experiences with the first child and each additional child. Couples…

Arab and Jewish children living in a city in northern Israel were matched as closely as possible for school grade, age and SES, and tested on the Wechsler Preschool Primary Scale of Intelligence. Results indicated little if any difference between Jewish and Arab children in level or pattern of the intellectual abilities as elicited by the WPPSI…