MCSJE News & Events -I- March 2023 | |
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Data collection is currently ongoing for the MCSJE-sponsored Jewish Learning Through the Cultural Arts project. Affiliated scholars Laura Yares and Sharon Avni co-direct this research study, which focuses on the distinctive forms of Jewish learning that can occur when individuals and groups experience the cultural arts. This spring, they are conducting ethnographic research with viewers who have seen Broadway shows that feature Jewish themes and characters: The Wanderers, Leopoldstadt, and Parade. In 2022, Dr. Yares published related findings in Material Religion about visitors’ responses to Jewish objects for sale in the museum store of Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History.
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MCSJE is committed to sharing its research findings broadly with other scholars and practitioners in an effort to strengthen the field of Jewish education scholarship. To that end, please find links to past MCSJE research: | |
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Summer Camps are Focal Points for Jewish Learning and Experiences
In the fall of 2022, the Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education published Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at Jewish Summer Camps. The book, written by Joseph Reimer, Associate Professor Emeritus of Jewish Education, answers fascinating questions relevant to Jewish education, such as: How have Jewish camps emerged as creators of positive spiritual experiences for Jewish youth in North America? How has Shabbat at camp become the focal point for primal Jewish experiences? Are these experiences exclusive to Shabbat at camp? Learn more about the book or watch the video from the book launch.
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Jewish Education as Initiation into the Practices of Jewishness
In a book chapter titled Jewish Education as Initiation into the Practices of Jewishness, MCSJE Director Jon A. Levisohn discusses Jewish identity as “not the kind of thing that one just has, but rather, … the kind of thing that one performs, in various ways and at various times.” The role of educators is to help Jews become what they do. The larger volume, Beyond Jewish Identity: Rethinking Concepts and Imagining Alternatives, edited by Jon and Ari Y. Kelman, was published in 2019 after a MCSJE-hosted convening on Rethinking Jewish Identity and Education. Beyond Jewish Identity is available as a free open-access download.
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Congratulations to MCSJE’s Ziva Hassenfeld who was recently selected as a Brandeis 2022 Career Hero. Brandeis University’s Hiatt Career Center asked graduates of the class of 2022 to identify faculty or staff who made a significant contribution to their professional or career objectives, and Ziva was recognized for her influence.
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MCSJE Doctoral Fellow Julie Golding successfully defended her dissertation, Vicarious Trauma Exhibited by Visitors to a Central Holocaust Museum, at Yeshiva University. Mazel tov to Dr. Golding!
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These MCSJE events are free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required. | | |
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Learning About Learning
A Conversation with Professor Ilana Horwitz:
What Girls Learn in Jewish Families
Date: Wednesday, March 15
Time: 1 - 1:30 p.m. ET via Zoom
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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 has demonstrated 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. | |
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The story of Ethiopian immigration to Israel has been told many times, but often from the perspective of the non-Ethiopian onlooker as a story of the “rescue” of African Jews and how open (or resistant) they have been to change after two generations in Israel.
This in-person conference is sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and co-sponsored by MCSJE. It takes a different approach by bringing Ethiopian scholars, activists, and artists into the center of the picture. Understanding this encounter as malleable and contingent, we will examine not just how Israel affected Ethiopian Jews, but how these immigrants changed Israeli society.
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Spotlight on Mahloket
Mahloket—dispute or principled debate—has long been celebrated as a Jewish ideal. This is not only within Jewish texts but also within the practice of engagement with those texts (where, for example, students might engage in debate about laws, interpretations, or 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?
Aaron Dorfman (A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy), Robbie Gringras (For the Sake of Argument), Orit Kent (Pedagogy of Partnership), Abi Dauber Sterne (For the Sake of Argument), and Mike Uram (Jewish Federations of North America) explored these questions in a conversation moderated by Jon Levisohn.
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The Mandel Center offers a robust schedule of events to convene scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to advance thinking, generate new questions and, in some cases, generate new work for future publication. See our full list of recent conferences and events and view past videos of events, or listen to our podcasts on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, or Google.
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