Claim OwnershipLearning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education
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© 2025 Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education
Description
There is great scholarship being done in the field of Jewish education, but it’s not always accessible. And even when it is, it’s not always obvious why people in the field of Jewish education should care about it. That’s what this podcast is about—making really interesting scholarship on Jewish education accessible and talking with scholars about why it matters.
Learning About Learning draws on live conversations, originally conducted as Zoom webinars. Regular episodes feature discussions between core faculty members at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education (MCSJE) at Brandeis University, and a single scholar about a specific piece of their research. Bonus episodes include multiple voices, often discussing a newly released book, recently held conference, or other topic in Jewish education.
MCSJE is committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference in the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission. Thanks for being here, and we hope that you enjoy Learning About Learning as much as we do.
36 Episodes
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Children’s ideas about the world are rich, nuanced, sometimes amusing and surprising, and for Anna Hartman, always fascinating. In this session, she shares her doctoral research in the field of early childhood Jewish education, in which she explores the theories about Judaism that are held by young children, and provides a window into their process of exploring and participating in Jewish life. Originally recorded: 2/8/23 At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewis...
In this special event, authors from a themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on antisemitism on college campuses since October 7. The issue spotlights cutting-edge research to broaden and deepen our understanding of antisemitism and anti-Zionism by analyzing their contemporary manifestations and implications for Jewish education and learning. This webinar features the following authors speaking about their papers: Vikki Katz (Chapman University): Unsettled Ground: ...
Recent years have witnessed an impressive outpouring of important new work in contemporary Jewish theology. In this Spotlight Session, we gather four leading scholars, each of whom has recently produced an important work of Jewish theology, to think together about the implications of their ideas for Jewish education. This webinar features the following panelists in discussion with Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University) about their books: Julia Watts Belser (Georgetown University): Loving Ou...
Traditionally-Jewish fraternities and sororities are not often considered sites of Jewish community. In this session, Jenny L. Small discusses findings from interviews with fraternity and sorority life (FSL) educators, revealing their perspectives that students in these organizations bear distinctly gendered burdens around Jewish heritage and continuity. The educators in this study lacked a strong understanding of Jewish identity and how students express those identities through FSL; however,...
The field of Jewish education has now been split into two sub-fields, referred to as “formal” or “informal” (or “experiential”) education. But this division is artificial and proving profoundly limiting, distorting, and even harmful. What might be the ultimate potential of the field were we able to employ a balanced and integrated use of the full range of educational competencies, across all settings? In this session, Tali Zelkowicz shares recent work, in which she applies both/and thinking t...
In her article, "When a Yarmulke Stands for All Jews: Navigating Shifting Signs from Synagogue to School in Luxembourg," Anastasia Badder asks: How do congregational school students experience moments in which they were confronted with Jewishness outside of the classroom, in their secular schools and public spaces? And taking a material approach, how does the presence (and absence) of yarmulkes influence those experiences? In this session, she discusses findings from fieldwork she conducted a...
Habits of creative thinking have sustained the Jewish people through centuries of crisis and opportunity. How might the enterprise of Jewish education reclaim and teach creativity? Weaving together a wide range of theory and research, including affective neuroscience, Jewish philosophy and education, and studies of creativity and arts education, Miriam Heller Stern discusses a framework for fostering Jewish creativity that can be pursued across the Jewish educational ecosystem. Originally re...
The attack on October 7th, the ensuing war, and the changed environment in the US have all led to questions about how American Jewish educational institutions have responded, and how they should. What do we know about the impact of the last year on schools, synagogues, camps, Israel trips, and other initiatives? How have educators been affected? How have children? What new trends are emerging? In this session, a group of scholars and educational leaders offer ideas for educators and education...
There is a growing consensus that successful and holistic Israel education demands a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with critical questions within Israel, and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This feels especially pressing in a post October 7th world. Despite this critical need, many educators continue to express reticence about conflict education. In this session, Keren Fraiman explores why educators are hesitant to engage in conflict education, highlighting the greates...
In his recent book, Shaul Kelner recounts the compelling stories of heroism that helped to free Soviet Jews. In this session, he discusses how this activism reached Jewish educational spaces — through bar and bat mitzvah twinning, school field trips to rallies, summer camp programming, and much more — and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan-Bush years. Originally recorded: 9/26/24 At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jew...
How do educators from differing pedagogical orientations learn, undertake, and ultimately improve the work of teaching Israel? In this conversation, Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field editors Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold discuss the complex issues facing those who teach about Israel, along with respondents Lisa Grant (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) and Alex Pomson (Rosov Consulting), and moderator Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University). Sivan Zakai ...
In this special event, authors from a recent themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on race, ethnicity, and immigration in Jewish education. The issue spotlights the experiences of underrepresented individuals and serves as compelling testimony to the diverse array of Jewish experiences and identities, challenging prevailing norms about how Jewish educational spaces are designed and who benefits from them. This webinar features the following authors speaking about ...
What happens when students of classical Jewish texts encounter visual representations of those texts, not just words? In her recent study Reconsidering Religious Gender Normativity in Graphic Novel Adaptations, Talia Hurwich learned that students often respond in deeply personal ways to visual representations of topics that may otherwise be suppressed by social norms around Jewish texts and practices. In this session, she discusses the role graphic novels can play in mediating between traditi...
For over a generation, many American Jewish young adults have spent a year between high school and college in Israel—the “gap year.” How does the gap year contribute to North American Jewish education? How does it complicate that work? What does it mean for young adults to go from “here" to “there" to participate in this important educational experience? What do we know about the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional growth of those who do a gap year? What are the elements that contribute to...
Over the last two decades, talk of Yiddish as an alternate path of engaging with Jewishness comes up in the Jewish press almost cyclically — a journalistic evergreen. In this session, historian and Yiddish podcaster Sandra Fox explains how Yiddish became culturally significant, why young people are flocking to learn Yiddish in larger numbers than ever before, and what the growth of Yiddish says about American Jewish youth culture. More information can be found in her article, 'The Passionat...
Like other immigrants, many Israeli expatriates find themselves asking how they can maintain their culture on American soil. But what happens when their children learn their heritage language in American educational settings? In this session, Hannah Kober discusses the surprising finding from her recent research that the long-held narrative about Israeli-Americans as producers of Hebrew language education, and not as consumers, needs reconsideration. Originally recorded: 1/18/24 At the ...
How and why does the ability to navigate ideological differences within classrooms matter to Jewish education — and beyond? In this session, Esther Friedman discusses her recent study on the lived experiences of Orthodox teachers who teach Bible in pluralistic community schools and the institutional-level challenges they face. Originally recorded: 12/7/23 At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching a...
What have we learned about Jewish learning in the past, where are we today, and what do we still need to learn for the future? Join MCSJE for this special Spotlight Session in honor of Brandeis University’s 75th anniversary, at which Brandeis scholars of Jewish education share some of the most important developments in the field of Jewish education and why they matter for the flourishing of individual students and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. Panelists: Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Ziva Ha...
Beyond lifting the spirits of teachers and students, play in Jewish education spaces can also shape moral development and character. Drawing from his new research, Judd Kruger Levingston shares how teachers and administrators can cultivate "a moral ecology of play" in classrooms, hallways, gathering spaces, and playgrounds. In this session, Levingston speaks about ways in which a wide variety of approaches to play across the curriculum and throughout a school's culture can transform a young p...
Most histories of American Jewish education deride 19th-century Jewish Sunday schools. But when Laura Yares looked more closely at the curricula, the operative philosophies and the experiences that students and teachers had in these schools, she found that they did important cultural work. In this session, she discusses her recent book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, and describes what educators can learn from this pioneering generation in American Jew...
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