Teaching and Learning in Jewish Day Schools

Examines how day schools are educating diverse Jewish youth in a variety of content areas.

Teaching and Learning in Jewish Day Schools offers an important analysis of Jewish day school classrooms today. In light of difficulties initiating, evaluating, and sustaining educational innovation, this volume takes stock of what is happening among students and teachers in contemporary Jewish day school classrooms. The authors of this volume confront and question several bedrock principles of Jewish education to address how day schools intersect with broader societal issues including race and gender. They point to themes and topics that scholars and practitioners are grappling with to explore new potential pathways to evaluating student learning and learning outcomes: assessing core subject areas; understanding the ways social and environmental factors contribute to learning; and studying how race, ethnicity, class, and gender shape student learning and school culture. The chapters address topics relevant to educators working in contemporary Jewish day schools including Zionism, the outcomes of Israel education, Jewish engagement, the experience of Latinx students, community building, and more.

Jonathan Krasner is Associate Professor and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor of Jewish Education Research with a joint appointment in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. Krasner's 2020 book, Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press), co-authored with Sarah Bunin Benor and Sharon Avni, was the recipient of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. His 2011 book, The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education (Brandeis University Press), was the winner of the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies. He was named as a 2012 finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

Jon A. Levisohn is Associate Professor and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Chair in Jewish Educational Thought at Brandeis University, and directs the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. Professor Levisohn's areas of specialization include philosophy of education, Jewish education, hermeneutics and the epistemology of the humanities, and scholarship of teaching classical Jewish texts. Levisohn's recent volumes include Advancing the Learning Agenda in Jewish Education (2018, with Jeffrey Kress) and Beyond Jewish Identity (2019, with Ari Y. Kelman).

Sharon Avni, Professor of Academic Literacy and Linguistics at BMCC at the City University of New York (CUNY), is an applied linguist whose research focuses on language ideology, socialization, policy, and discourse in language education. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, sociolinguistic theory, and discourse analysis, Avni’s research primarily examines the field of Hebrew teaching and learning, use, and ideologies in informal and formal contexts in the US. Avni’s coauthored book, Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps was the winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. Her current book project Speaking of Hebrew: Language and the American Jewish Community explores the discursive, ideological, historical, and policy perspectives of contemporary Hebrew learning and usage in the United States.