Education

Turning Living Rooms Into Schoolrooms

By Jennifer Siegel

As a transplant from Philadelphia to Nashville, Tenn., Bill Bernstein resigned himself to a life with fewer opportunities for the perfect bagel or for kosher Chinese food. But when he discovered that his 9-year-old son, Viktor, was bored and unhappy at the only Jewish day school in the city, Bernstein refused to accept his lack of options.Instead,Read More

Confirmation Class Blazes New Trail

By Lauren Appelbaum

This fall, as happens every fall, students in Hebrew schools around the country will begin their confirmation studies. But at Old York Road Temple Beth Am, this year will be a little different. Next spring, when the confirmation class conducts the service on Shavuot, five students with physical, cognitive and verbal disabilities willRead More

Dyslexic Girls See The Light

By Miriam Colton

When Leah David couldn’t find the proper school for her daughter, she started her own.“My daughter wasn’t getting it,” David said. A stay-at-home mother to Gittel Bracha, her only child, David had been meeting with teachers and principals in her daughter’s Orthodox school for two years to discuss the young girl’s difficultiesRead More

Shoah Seminar Stirs Educators

Public school teacher Ronda Hassig remembers when the Holocaust became real for her: when a young Jewish boy in her classroom in Overland Park, Kan., recognized a concentration camp survivors’ medal, which she had purchased at an antique store, on her desk.“‘Ms. Hassig,’ he said, ‘I have one of those, and it belongs to myRead More

Act of Hatred Becomes A Tool To Teach Tolerance

By Miriam Colton

It was an incident that many in Lincoln, Neb., would prefer to forget. But Tom Kolbe is making sure that never happens.In 1995, three teenage boys from the Goodrich Middle School in Lincoln scuttled over the fence of Mount Carmel Cemetery to disrupt the funeral of a 99-year-old Jewish man, shouting “Heil Hitler,” and spitting tobaccoRead More

Judaic Studies Classes See Enrollment Boom

By Nacha Cattan

Lauren Twigg entered San Diego State University as an undergraduate four years ago with a game plan: She would study business and become a chief executive officer of a powerful company. But what she didn’t bank on was that she’d be bored to tears by her math and economics courses.“I figured if I didn’t like the studying, I wasn’t goingRead More

Israel Advocacy Coalition Targeting High Schools

By Max Gross

In response to what many are calling the sad state of Israel advocacy on college campuses, prominent Jewish communal officials and educators have settled on a new approach to teaching undergraduates how to defend the Jewish state: Start in high school.About 60 juniors and seniors from Jewish high schools in the New York metropolitan areaRead More

Russian School Helps Kids Maintain Parents’ Heritage

By Ariel Zilber

The mass exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the past decade has created a unique quandary for Jewish schools: How can educators help immigrants’ children maintain links to a country they don’t know, and imbue them with knowledge of a religion and culture that is often unfamiliar to their parents?The Shalom School inRead More

Israelis Living in the U.S. Find a Special Place To Learn

By Jill Suzanne Jacobs

Children lugging backpacks rivaling their own weight trudge slowly up the stairs on a typical Monday afternoon at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Mass. At first glance, it looks like another session of an ordinary afternoon Hebrew school is about to begin.But leaning one’s ear closer, one hears children kibitzing in a mixture of English andRead More

Educators Sharpen Their Skills Through Internet Courses

By Howard Kleinman

Modern communications began with telegraph inventor Samuel Morse transmitting a religious question, “What hath God wrought?” across state lines. It is fitting, then, that the most recent evolution in telecommunications — the Internet — is now instrumental in transmitting religious knowledge across America.Faced with the challengeRead More