Learning and Community

by Wertheimer, Jack

• ISBN13: 9781584657705
• ISBN10: 1584657707
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-07-01
• Publisher: Brandeis Univ

Summary

At a time of heightened interest in Jewish supplementary schooling, this volume offers a path-breaking examination of how ten diverse schools have remade themselves to face the new challenges of the twenty-first century. Each written by an academic observer with the help of an experienced educator, the chapters bring these schools vividly to life by giving voice to students, parents, teachers, school directors, lay leaders, local rabbis and other key participants. The goal of the book is to uncover the building blocks each school put into place to improve its delivery of a Jewish education. Employing qualitative research, Learning and Community is filled with moving and inspiring human-interest stories. Collectively, these portraits offer models of how schools of different sizes and configurations can maximize their impact, and in the process revitalize the form of religious and cultural education that engages the majority of Jewish children in the United States.

Author Biography

Jack Wertheimer is Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. He is the editor of Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice (2007) and Imagining the American Jewish Community (2008). This research project was sponsored by the AVI CHAI Foundation.

Table of Contents

Contributors

Introduction

Innovative Small Schools

Kehillah

The Power of Their Commitments: Lessons for the Jewish Community from a Small Synagogue School

Between Entrepreneurship and Jewish Mission: The Making of a Chabad Hebrew School

Re-thinking Large Suburban Congregational Schools

Belonging Before Belief

Adath Shalom Religious School: Strengths, Challenges, and Transitions

Innovating Inside the Box: An Ongoing Process to Improve a Congregational School

Promoting a Counterculture

Beit Knesset Hazon: A Visionary Synagogue

High School Models

Western Hebrew High: A Place for Social Belonging and Personal Meaning

Putting the School Back into the Supplementary Jewish High School

Conclusion

Index

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