Senior Fellows Publications
The Mandel Center Senior Fellows Program brings together Jewish educational practitioners who are currently serving in leadership roles in North American Jewish educational settings and institutions. The program gives these leaders an opportunity to cultivate a sense of self as scholar-practitioners and contribute to the advancement of research and scholarship about Jewish education. Each monograph in this series is the culminating thought piece from a Senior Fellow.
Publications
by Miriam Heller Stern, Ph.D.
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, I construct a definition of Jewish creativity that can be pursued across the Jewish educational ecosystem. Building on this historical and philosophical rationale and putting the definition into practice, I suggest four facets of creativity—interpreting, curating, making, and collaborating—that I believe are essential for ensuring a future where Jews can continue to negotiate the conditions of their day, while boldly creating the future they want to see. From the conceptual discussion to the applications described, I hope that this essay will inspire conversation and generate new ideas across diverse stakeholders in Jewish education, as we consider current and future priorities and practices for the field.
by Tali Zelkowicz, Ph.D.
For at least the past two decades, it has become an accepted fact that the field of Jewish education is split into two sub-fields that are referred to as “formal” or “informal” (or “experiential”) education, sometimes labeled as “education” versus “engagement.” These subfields exist largely unquestioned, and we have inherited an ecosystem which generally expects professionals, learners, funders, and others to choose between the two. However, the sub-fields are not rival or even independent entities. At least for Jewish education, the very separation is artificial, profoundly limiting, and harmful. But through a reexamination of these critical default assumptions about the field, we uncover two areas of competency—“Translation” and “Transmission” —that are not setting-specific, and when combined, lead to enduring and transformative learning. Finding neutral, descriptive language that reflects the vital and productive tension between these two interdependent principles can help refocus discourse onto the deeper processes of successful learning and will be able to manage—but importantly never resolve—the productive tension between Transmission and Translation. Unfortunately, for over a century, the culture and dominant discourse of the field of Jewish education has swung between commitments to these two principles. Currently, we find ourselves in an at least three-decades-long thrust toward Translation. What might be the full potential of the field were we able to stop over-correcting and employ a balanced use of Translation and Transmission, without defaulting to anxious overuses of one or the other? By drawing on literature about both/and thinking, adapting tools for applying that expertise to Jewish education specifically, and learning from those in the field who manage to resist the false dichotomy between Translation and Transmission, stakeholders across the field of Jewish education collectively have the opportunity to realize expansive and integrative new visions for Jewish learning experiences that consistently empower and endure.
Supplement A: Clarifying Your Vision for Jewish Communal Life and Learning: A Self-Inventory Exercise
Supplement B: What Counts as Great (Jewish) Learning?
Supplement C: Attempting to Connect the Dots between the Fields of Education and Facilitation: What They Share and Where they Differ