Every morning at the CommuniKids Preschool in northwest Washington, D.C., children are greeted with hola, not hello, and they banter and sing in Spanish rather than English. The preschool has another site in Northern Virginia where parents can choose immersion in French as well as Spanish. At the French Maternal School in Georgetown, 2- to…
What worries and expectations do Jewish parents face when sending their kids to college? Molly Ritvo polled parents and found that some valued schools with large Jewish populations and active Hillels, while others felt confident that their budding scholars’ Jewish upbringing would set the tone for their college lives. Unsurprisingly, most parents want college-bound sons…
The Benderly Boys and American Education By Jonathan Krasner Brandeis University Press, 496 pages, $95 In the early years of the 20th century, Samson Benderly stood with the legendary figures of American Jewish life: He was recruited to New York by Judah Magnes; he knew Henrietta Szold and Barnett Brickner; he battled Solomon Schechter; he…
When biochemist Aaron Ciechanover surveys the education landscape in his native Israel, he is invariably disappointed by the diminishing emphasis he sees being placed upon math and science curricula and by the limited access to higher learning granted to those who can’t afford it. Ciechanover shared with two colleagues the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry…
Most American Jews who travel make at least a token attempt to visit a synagogue or otherwise to taste the Jewish flavor of whatever land they are in. But few have the time, instinct or know how to faithfully follow in the footsteps of their forbears, especially when those trails lead across a continent. Fewer…
Wearing a funny hat and spewing bad biblical puns, Aaron Friedman didn’t look or sound like your typical Moses as he took to the stage during a recent performance by the Bible Players theater group. “What’s the difference between an Israeli and an Israelite?” he asked fellow actor Andrew Davies, who played the part of…
When Len Lipkin and his wife, Jill Maderer, a Reform rabbi in Philadelphia, started thinking about kindergarten for their son last year, they chose a Quaker school. “It’s tough,” sighed Lipkin, explaining why they didn’t go the Jewish day school route. “The question really became, do you need to have [Judaism] in every piece of…
For some Jewish day schools, there is no teaching Yiddishkeit without Yiddish. Buoyed by the Yiddish renaissance of the past two decades, which has produced an increased interest in university Yiddish programs, a renewed interest in Yiddish theater and even the advent of Yiddish heavy metal bands, these schools have held steadfast to their Yiddishist…
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