Some of the children who rushed to cool off in the pool on a sunny July morning would not have attended camp together a few years ago. They lived next-door to each other, but their South Brooklyn communities often kept their distance. Now they splash around in the water before lunch, the only traces of…
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is ready to talk frankly with Jewish youth about sex — and he thinks you should be, too. Yanklowitz, a central figure in the Open Orthodoxy movement, has called publicly in workshops, speeches and Op-Eds for comprehensive sex education in Orthodox Jewish schools, including accurate, extensive information about STD/STI prevention, sexual and…
There once was a place known as Yiddish Land. It wasn’t a country. In fact, it lived and breathed for a thousand years in total disregard for the invisible borders sovereign nations fought and died over. Its citizens — German Jews, Polish Jews, Jews throughout Central Europe and across the world — numbered nearly 12…
Jewish Italian chef and cooking teacher Silvia Nacamulli doesn’t believe in keeping particular recipes in the family, and as she collects the vegetables for eggplant Parmigiana or fried matzo fritters with pine nuts and orange zest, she is constantly thinking of how she can make the recipe easier for her students to follow. “I’m someone…
The Republican Party’s new platform calls for teaching the Bible as literature in public schools. But which Bible, exactly, would the Republicans approve of? The idea of the Bible taught in public schools has a fraught Constitutional history. For the Jewish community, it can bring back memories of “prayer in the schools” or mandatory participation…
As you read these words, a new law is being hustled through Israel’s Knesset that would abolish all requirements for the teaching of a “core curriculum” in ultra-Orthodox Israeli schools, even those that are partly funded by the government itself. If the bill becomes law, many young Israelis educated in right-wing Orthodox yeshivot will learn…
When I was ten years old, I learned about the educational summer slide which disproportionately impacts low income students who often lack age-appropriate books at home. As an avid reader myself, I was upset to learn that this loss of educational skills over the summer adds up over the years and can significantly disadvantage these…
As a high school English teacher who writes poetry in her free time, I read a poem a day at the start of each class period. Last September, I read poems by Emma Lazarus, because students were going to be writing an essay about her famous sonnet “The New Colossus.” When I introduced her to…
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