Episodes
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The attack on October 7th, the ensuing war, and the changed environment in the US have all led to questions about how American Jewish educational institutions have responded, and how they should. What do we know about the impact of the last year on schools, synagogues, camps, Israel trips, and other initiatives? How have educators been affected? How have children? What new trends are emerging? In this session, a group of scholars and educational leaders offer ideas for educators and educational institutions one year into this new environment.
Panelists include Jonathan Krasner (Brandeis University), Matt Reingold (community educator/independent scholar), Amanda Winer (research consultant), Sivan Zakai (HUC-JIR) with Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University).
Originally recorded: 10/31/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
There is a growing consensus that successful and holistic Israel education demands a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with critical questions within Israel, and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This feels especially pressing in a post October 7th world. Despite this critical need, many educators continue to express reticence about conflict education. In this session, Keren Fraiman explores why educators are hesitant to engage in conflict education, highlighting the greatest sources of challenge and a typology of barriers to entry. Importantly, she shares what we can do to support our educators, educational systems, and the community more broadly.
Originally recorded: 10/10/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
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In his recent book, Shaul Kelner recounts the compelling stories of heroism that helped to free Soviet Jews. In this session, he discusses how this activism reached Jewish educational spaces — through bar and bat mitzvah twinning, school field trips to rallies, summer camp programming, and much more — and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan-Bush years.
Originally recorded: 9/26/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
How do educators from differing pedagogical orientations learn, undertake, and ultimately improve the work of teaching Israel? In this conversation, Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field editors Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold discuss the complex issues facing those who teach about Israel, along with respondents Lisa Grant (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) and Alex Pomson (Rosov Consulting), and moderator Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University).
Sivan Zakai is Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles. She directs the Children’s Learning About Israel Project and codirects Project ORLIE: Research and Leadership in Israel Education. She received a National Jewish Book Award in 2022 for My Second Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel.
Matt Reingold teaches and is the cohead of the Jewish History Department at TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Gender and Sexuality in Israeli Graphic Novels: Contested Masculinity and Independent Femininity, Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons, and The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories.
Teaching Israel is available for purchase and published in the Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education by Brandeis University Press.
Originally recorded: 5/30/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
In this special event, authors from a recent themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on race, ethnicity, and immigration in Jewish education. The issue spotlights the experiences of underrepresented individuals and serves as compelling testimony to the diverse array of Jewish experiences and identities, challenging prevailing norms about how Jewish educational spaces are designed and who benefits from them. This webinar features the following authors speaking about their papers:
Hannah Kober ‘16 (Stanford University): A Fraying Connection: Israeli-American Perspectives on Diasporic Hebrew Learning Through and Beyond Jewish Education Marva Shalev Marom (The Schechter Institutes): Eat, Pray, Wait: The Informal Israeli Jewish Education of Ethiopian Youth Awaiting Aliyah Elana Riback Rand (Yeshiva University): “Realizing I’m Sephardi”: Navigating Prayer and Curricular Discontinuities in Majority-Ashkenazic Day Schools Ariela Ronay-Jinich (Olamim): Latin Jewish Families and Their Educational Choices: Navigating Multiple IdentitiesModerated by Ilana Horwitz (Tulane University)
Co-sponsored by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, the Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University, and the Journal of Jewish Education.
Originally recorded: 5/2/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
What happens when students of classical Jewish texts encounter visual representations of those texts, not just words? In her recent study Reconsidering Religious Gender Normativity in Graphic Novel Adaptations, Talia Hurwich learned that students often respond in deeply personal ways to visual representations of topics that may otherwise be suppressed by social norms around Jewish texts and practices. In this session, she discusses the role graphic novels can play in mediating between traditional religious practices and modern social change.
Originally recorded: 4/11/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
For over a generation, many American Jewish young adults have spent a year between high school and college in Israel—the “gap year.” How does the gap year contribute to North American Jewish education? How does it complicate that work? What does it mean for young adults to go from “here" to “there" to participate in this important educational experience? What do we know about the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional growth of those who do a gap year? What are the elements that contribute to growth among participants in the gap year, and what are the impediments to growth?
This session brings together: Shalom Berger (Herzog College), Jonathan Schwab (Yeshiva University), Tilly Shemer (Shalom Hartman Institute), and Amy Weinreb (Masa Israel Journey) in conversation with Jon Levisohn.
Originally recorded: 2/29/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Over the last two decades, talk of Yiddish as an alternate path of engaging with Jewishness comes up in the Jewish press almost cyclically — a journalistic evergreen. In this session, historian and Yiddish podcaster Sandra Fox explains how Yiddish became culturally significant, why young people are flocking to learn Yiddish in larger numbers than ever before, and what the growth of Yiddish says about American Jewish youth culture.
More information can be found in her article, 'The Passionate Few': Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present.
Originally recorded: 2/8/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Like other immigrants, many Israeli expatriates find themselves asking how they can maintain their culture on American soil. But what happens when their children learn their heritage language in American educational settings? In this session, Hannah Kober discusses the surprising finding from her recent research that the long-held narrative about Israeli-Americans as producers of Hebrew language education, and not as consumers, needs reconsideration.
Originally recorded: 1/18/24At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
How and why does the ability to navigate ideological differences within classrooms matter to Jewish education — and beyond? In this session, Esther Friedman discusses her recent study on the lived experiences of Orthodox teachers who teach Bible in pluralistic community schools and the institutional-level challenges they face.
Originally recorded: 12/7/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
What have we learned about Jewish learning in the past, where are we today, and what do we still need to learn for the future? Join MCSJE for this special Spotlight Session in honor of Brandeis University’s 75th anniversary, at which Brandeis scholars of Jewish education share some of the most important developments in the field of Jewish education and why they matter for the flourishing of individual students and the vibrancy of the Jewish community.
Panelists: Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Ziva Hassenfeld, Jonathan Krasner, Jon Levisohn, and Joe Reimer
Originally recorded: 11/30/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Beyond lifting the spirits of teachers and students, play in Jewish education spaces can also shape moral development and character. Drawing from his new research, Judd Kruger Levingston shares how teachers and administrators can cultivate "a moral ecology of play" in classrooms, hallways, gathering spaces, and playgrounds. In this session, Levingston speaks about ways in which a wide variety of approaches to play across the curriculum and throughout a school's culture can transform a young person's values and moral outlook.
Originally recorded: 11/15/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Most histories of American Jewish education deride 19th-century Jewish Sunday schools. But when Laura Yares looked more closely at the curricula, the operative philosophies and the experiences that students and teachers had in these schools, she found that they did important cultural work. In this session, she discusses her recent book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, and describes what educators can learn from this pioneering generation in American Jewish education..
Originally recorded: 10/19/23
At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Jewish educators and educational institutions started talking about “vision” in a new way, prompted by the efforts of the Mandel Foundation and especially its influential leader Seymour Fox. For many, the publication of Visions of Jewish Education (2003) was a landmark event in the field. Jon A. Levisohn discusses a forthcoming article in which he analyzes how Fox’s ideas about vision in Jewish education developed over time, some of the challenges that he encountered, and what we can still learn from them. This session is led by Professor Jonathan Krasner (MCSJE).
Originally recorded: 5/3/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
In the past, Jewish families, like many others, offered girls fewer educational opportunities than boys. But that has not been the case for some time now. In her recent scholarship, Ilana Horwitz demonstrates the ways that girls raised by Jewish parents complete more years of college and attend more selective schools than girls from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds raised by non-Jewish parents. She argues that this is based on a distinctive “religious subculture” in the home.
More information can be found in her article, From Bat Mitzvah to the Bar: Religious Habitus, Self-Concept, and Women’s Educational Outcomes (American Sociological Review, February 28, 2022).
Originally recorded: 3/15/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Mahloket—that is, dispute or principled debate—has long been celebrated as a Jewish ideal, not only within Jewish texts (where sages debate laws, interpretations and principles) but within the practice of engagement with those texts (where, for example, students might engage in debate about laws, interpretations or about principles). What does Mahloket look like at its best? How does Mahloket function as a kind of signature pedagogy (or at least a signature practice) within Jewish education? What does it mean to “educate for Mahloket,” and what are the benefits and challenges of doing so? In what ways is Mahloket a model for substantive engagement across difference?
This session brings together: Aaron Dorfman (A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy), Robbie Gringras (educator, performer and writer For the Sake of Argument), Orit Kent (Pedagogy of Partnership powered by Hadar), Abi Dauber Sterne (For the Sake of Argument), and Mike Uram (Jewish Federations of North America), in conversation with Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University).
Originally recorded: 2/28/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Children’s ideas about the world are rich, nuanced, sometimes amusing and surprising, and for Anna Hartman, always fascinating. In this session, she shares her doctoral research in the field of early childhood Jewish education, in which she explores the theories about Judaism that are held by young children, and provides a window into their process of exploring and participating in Jewish life.
Originally recorded: 2/8/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Jewish day schools expend significant time and energy in teaching Torah. But what are they trying to accomplish in this work? In this session, Ziva Hassenfeld discusses her soon-to-be published research on students’ learning to read Torah, in order to argue that Jewish day schools can induct students into a way of reading texts that will serve them in all endeavors, from their academic studies to text messaging with friends.
Originally recorded: 12/7/22At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
Holocaust education is a staple of Jewish day school education. What messages do day school students take from this education? In this session, Meredith Katz discusses her recently published study, which explores how a group of day school kids navigated questions of particularism and universalism, and how Holocaust education helped them to see themselves as civic actors in the broader community.
Originally recorded: 10/27/22At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. -
In this session, Judah Cohen discusses his recent article on the crucial role that Debbie Friedman played in making song leading a core part of the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE). He also addresses the changes in Jewish education that resulted from this alliance, and why it still matters.
Originally recorded: 11/17/22At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.
To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.
Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC. - Show more
