Mandel Center News & Events -I- October 2022

MCSJE welcomes Nava Neriya-Cohen as visiting scholar

MCSJE is thrilled to welcome Nava Neriya-Cohen as a visiting scholar for the fall semester. Dr. Neriya-Cohen is a senior staff member at Bar-Ilan University in the Bible Department & the Faculty of Education. She also serves as the head of the Bible 2.0 Program: A Master’s Degree in Innovative Jewish Studies and is the head of the Bible teacher training track in the Bar-Ilan Faculty of Education. As a Mandel Center visiting scholar, Dr. Neriya-Cohen will work with Dr. Ziva Hassenfeld on a joint project of how the model of "visual reading with the Bible" affects students whose Hebrew language is not their first language. The research will be conducted in partnership with Bible teachers at a Boston Jewish day school. Learn more about Dr. Neriya-Cohen and read her article (in Hebrew) on Visual Reading of Texts – Reading Comprehension of Biblical Texts with Dual Coding Technology.

Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education publishes second book

The Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education is excited to announce the publication of Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at Jewish Summer Camps, the second book in the Series. This book tells the story of how Jewish camps have emerged as creators of positive spiritual experiences for Jewish youth in North America. Watch the video from the recent book launch or learn more about the book.

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 selected current and past MCSJE research:

In an article in The Reading Teacher entitled, “First and Second Conversations: Remote Learning and Interpretive Boundaries", Dr. Ziva R. Hassenfeld and lab members share the SCRoLL Lab’s findings from its inaugural year and its implications for the broader educational world. Read the article here. If you have trouble getting access to this article, please be in touch. We will be happy to send you a pdf.

The Learning Agenda Project brought together researchers in Jewish and general education to share their perspectives on how to advance the learning agenda in Jewish education. They presented their draft essays at a March 2015 conference and Advancing the Learning Agenda in Jewish Education, edited by Jon A Levisohn and Jeffrey S. Kress, was published in 2018. In his chapter “Learning to be Jewish,” Eli Gottlieb examines the question of what it means to learn religion.

Sivan Zakai, a MCSJE affiliated scholar, was featured in a recent Prizmah podcast where she was in a conversation with Debby Artz-Mor, Director of Jewish Learning at the Brandeis School in San Francisco, and Rabbi David Stein, Judaics Studies Principal at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, about her recently published book, My Second-Favorite Country. This book came out of the research Sivan conducted with MCSJE on Children’s Learning About Israel.  Listen to the conversation.

Diane Tickton Schuster, a MCSJE affiliated scholar and director of the Portraits of Adult Jewish Learning (PAJL) Project with MCSJE, published an eJewishPhilanthropy article providing context for the recently published book, Portraits of Adult Jewish Learning: Making Meaning at Many Tables. Read the eJewish Philanthropy article here.

Learning About Learning

A Conversation with Professor Meredith Katz:

How Do Jewish Day School Kids Think About the Holocaust?

Date: Thursday, Oct. 27

Time: 2 - 2:30 p.m. ET via Zoom

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 will discuss her recently published study, which explored 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.

Learning About Learning

A Conversation with Professor Judah Cohen:

How Debbie Friedman (and CAJE) Gave Jewish Education a New Soundtrack

Date: Thursday, Nov. 17

Time: 2 - 2:30 p.m. ET via Zoom

In this session, Judah Cohen will discuss 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 will also address the changes in Jewish education that resulted from this alliance, and why it still matters.

NEW RECORDED EVENT NOW AVAILABLE

Spotlight on Art and Artistry as Jewish Learning

What is the relationship between art and artistry, on the one hand, and Jewish education, on the other? In what ways might we think about engagement with Jewish art and culture as a kind of Jewish learning? Building on the 2022 Mandel Center spring conference, Art and Artistry as Jewish Learning, this pre-recorded Spotlight Session brought together conference chairs Laura Yares (Michigan State University and director of the MCSJE project on Jewish Learning Through the Cultural Arts) and Galeet Dardashti (NYU), along with Eva Heinstein (Mandel Foundation), Miriam Heller Stern (HUC), and Laura Mandel (Jewish Arts Collaborative), to explore these questions and their significance for the field of Jewish education. 

PAST EVENTS

Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps

In this engaging webinar, moderated by Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University), author Joe Reimer (Brandeis University), Michelle Shapiro Abraham (Union for Reform Judaism), Avi Orlow (Jewish Camp) and Bradley Solmsen (Park Avenue Synagogue), discussed the key points in Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps.

Making Shabbat was published as part of the Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education.