In November of last year, Beit Berl, a teachers college in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv in Israel, held a graduation for bachelor of education students. The ceremony was unremarkable but for the students it honored: All 63 of them were ultra-Orthodox Jews. They were the first cohort in a new program to educate…
As an educator in New York, I believe that Jewish education in this country teaches kids to engage with the world and its complexities, just not with Israeli politics. It teaches them to speak up about racism, but not Israeli racism. It teaches them to fight for equality, but that in Israel that fight has…
It took a product of the ultra-Orthodox school system to get New York City to investigate the quality of secular education at the city’s ultra-Orthodox schools. Following a campaign by Naftuli Moster, 29, founder and executive director of an activist group called YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education), New York City’s Department of Education announced…
“So, wait, Miss — there is a difference between Jews and Israelis?” Coming from a seventh-grade Jordanian of Palestinian origin, this question was a breakthrough in my classroom. As a foreign teacher in a private Jordanian school, I need to be careful what I say in front of my students. I am not allowed to…
(JTA) — When Ali Martell’s eldest daughter reached school age, Martell and her husband both assumed she’d go to a Jewish day school, as they had. And for a while, she did. But after the couple’s two younger children started school, too, the Martells began to feel overburdened by tuition. They couldn’t afford to send…
About 2 miles west of the Delaware River, eight deaf Jewish girls sit circled on a gym floor, tossing plastic fruits and vegetables at each other. Zissy Moskowitz, one of two interpreters for the group, walks around the circle, taking pictures for a blog the girls’ parents have been following for two weeks now. Moskowitz,…
“Fell in love” is how a handful of teachers, largely from the United States and the United Kingdom, describe their first-time experience in Israel. That love is what has brought them back to the Holy Land summer after summer — not for vacation, but to educate hundreds of Israeli children, regardless of religion or socioeconomics….
It’s common for young Jews to study Hebrew until the age of 13 — and then never interact with the language again. Hebrew school students learn the alphabet, but often have little understanding of what the prayers mean. Having a conversation in modern Hebrew is a long shot. This phenomenon raises questions about the priorities…
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