MCSJE News & Events -I- February 2024

NEWS

Announcing New Research Projects

Professor Jon Levisohn and Professor Jonathan Krasner have each launched new studies of Jewish young adults. Respectively, they will examine how American Jewish teens completing a gap year in Israel between high school and college understand their experience, and how college students perceive the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jewish identification, and personal safety.

National Jewish Book Awards

Mazel tov to MCSJE project leader Laura Yares, whose book Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America was a finalist in the Education and Jewish Identity category at the National Jewish Book Awards. Professor Yares spoke about her research in a recent Learning about Learning session.

MCSJE RESEARCH

Ziva Hassenfeld, Jonathan Krasner, and Jon A. Levisohn wrote about new research projects. Sivan Zakai, Lauren Applebaum, Jenny Small, and Sharon Avni wrote about the effects on ongoing research projects. 

Read their reflections here.

Related Research

Read more about the impacted research projects:

The American Jewish Gap Year in Israel

Distance Teaching During a Time of Crisis

Jewish Campus Belonging: Fraternities and Sororities as Jewish Educational Spaces

Jewish College Students and the Israel-Gaza War

Learning and Teaching about What Matters

UPCOMING EVENT

MCSJE events are free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Spotlight on the Gap Year

with panelists Sarah Mali (Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA), Shalom Berger (Herzog College), Jonathan Schwab (Yeshiva University), and Tilly Shemer (Shalom Hartman Institute) in conversation with Jon Levisohn

Date: Thursday, February 29

Time: 1 - 2:15 p.m. ET via Zoom

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?

PAST EVENT

Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education

How Israeli-Americans Think About Their Kids' Hebrew Learning

Hannah Kober '16

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, MCSJE Doctoral Fellow Hannah Kober will discuss 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.

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