Mandel Center News & Events -I- May 2022
NEWS
MCSJE Faculty and Affiliate Named Senior Co-Editors of the Journal for Jewish Education

Jonathan Krasner, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Chair in Jewish Education Research, and Sivan Zakai, MCSJE affiliated scholar and Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at HUC-JIR/Los Angeles, have recently assumed leadership of the Journal for Jewish Education (JJE). The most recent issue of JJE features an introduction by Jonathan Krasner entitled, “Jewish Education and the Potential for Change" (see more below). Also, MSCJE affiliated scholar Ilana Horwitz and Mijal Bitton will be co-editing a special issue of the JJE highlighting issues of race, ethnicity, and immigration status in Jewish education. Read here for more information about this upcoming special issue.
MCSJE RESEARCH
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, MCSJE is sharing information about one of its current projects, Children's Learning About Israel; one from past research,“Beit Midrash for Teachers: An Experiment in Professional Development;" and a photograph from the Day School History Project archive.

The Children’s Learning About Israel project, under the leadership of Sivan Zakai, studied how American Jewish elementary school students think and feel about Israel, and how that thinking changes over time. Addressing the lack of information in understanding the roles that Israel and Israel education play in the lives of elementary and middle school students, Zakai tracked a cohort of 35 children from three Jewish day schools in the Los Angeles area from kindergarten through 5th grade. This project is concluding with the publication of “My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel." See below for information about the book launch event.

Can teachers learn to “read” teaching by learning to read texts? The Beit Midrash for Teachers (BMT) was a vehicle for building a collaborative culture of learning and a laboratory for groundbreaking scholarship by the instructors, Professor Elie Holzer and Dr. Orit Kent, within the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis. BMT appropriated a traditional Jewish learning structure–text study in hevruta–and adapted it to the contemporary purposes of teacher education. This article examines the mix of purposes which the BMT served and how they came to life in the Beit Midrash and in other parts of the program.
From the Day School History Project Archive

The Day School History Project is an investigation into the history of Jewish day schools in America since their beginning in the early 20th century. Jonathan Krasner, the project director, is exploring the origins of the idea of modern Jewish day schools, why they have developed as they have, and whether they are likely to be sustainable in the future. This picture features students from the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, New Jersey (known today as Golda Och Academy) when they arrived in Israel in 1987. Read here for more information about the history of day school Israel travel.
MCSJE IN THE NEWS

Many MCSJE scholars have been featured on the Prizmah Reseach Encounters Podcasts. Most recently Ziva Hassenfeld spoke with Elliott Rabin and veteran educators Michal Bessler and Aviv Matzkin about the research that her SCRoLL lab conducted on online Jewish education. Listen here.
The 88th volume of Journal of Jewish Education features Jonathan Krasner’s introduction, “Jewish Education and the Potential for Change” as well as his book review of “From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family.” The volume also includes Isa Aron and Ziva Hassenfeld’s article, “Going beyond Zoom to Enrich Learning in Part-Time Jewish Schools.”
MCSJE affliated scholar Laura Yares, who is an assistant professor at Michigan State University and project leader of the MCSJE research project on Jewish Learning Through the Cultural Arts, recently published an article drawing on this research, “The Material Inventories of Millennial Jewish Lives: Affective Learning and Jewish Consumer Culture at the National Museum of American Jewish History Gift Shop," in the journal Material Religion.

If you have trouble getting access to this article, please contact us. We’ll be happy to send you a pdf.
UPCOMING EVENTS
These MCSJE events are free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required.
A Conversation with Professor Mijal Bitton:
How Jewish Communities Educate

Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Time: 1 - 1:30 p.m. ET via Zoom
Most analyses of Jewish education, like most analyses of general education in Western, liberal society, emphasize the individual student. But some communities approach education very differently. Mijal Bitton will discuss her research into how the Syrian Jewish community educates its members, formally and informally, to maintain bonds of commitment.

Date: Thursday, June 2, 2022
Time: 1 - 2:15 p.m. ET via Zoom
Israel has long occupied a prominent place in the lives and imaginations of American Jews, serving as both a symbolic touchstone and a source of intercommunal conflict. Sivan Zakai's forthcoming book, My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel, is based on the major findings from her research project with MCSJE on Children's Learning About Israel. This project was the first longitudinal study of how American Jewish children come to think and feel about Israel, tracking their evolving conceptions from kindergarten to fifth grade. In this event to mark the publication of the book, Zakai and her fellow panelists will explore the implications for the theory and practice of Jewish education.

My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel is available for pre-order from NYU Press; a 30% off code will be available to those attending the webinar. 
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