Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration

Introduction. Jewish Schools, Jewish Communities: A Reconsideration
ALEX POMSON and HOWARD DEITCHER

 Part I Insights from Public and General Education 
1 Building Community Within and Around Schools: Can Jewish Days Schools Measure Up?
 ELLEN B. GOLDRING
2 From Control to Collaboration: Mapping School Communities across Diverse Contexts
 CLAIRE SMREKAR
3 Corporate Conservatism: On School, Community, and Democracy
 DEBORAH MEIER
4 A Response to Deborah Meier
 JOSHUA ELKIN
5 Community as a Means and an End in Jewish Education
JON A. LEVISOHN

Part II Cross-Cultural Insights
6 Do Jewish Schools Make a Difference in the Former Soviet Union?
 ZVI GITELMAN
7 Jewish Pupils' Perspectives on Religious Education and Expectations of a Religious Community: A Case Study of the Jewish High School in Berlin
CHRISTINE MA LLER
8 Mutual Relations between Shlihim and Local Teachers at Jewish Schools in the Former Soviet Union
 URIEL TA'IR and IRA DASHEFSKY
9 Community School versus School-as-Community: The Case of Bet El Community in Buenos Aires
YOSSI J. GOLDSTEIN
10 Beyond the Community: Jewish Day School Education in Britain
 HELENA MILLER
11 Comparison of Attitudes, Behaviours and Values of French Jewish Families with Children Enrolled in Jewish Day Schools and Other School Systems
ERIK H. COHEN
12 The School Ghetto
AMI BOUGANIM

Part III Insights through the Prism of Community
13 Relationships between Schools and Parents in Haredi Popular Literature in the United States
YOEL FINKELMAN
14 The Impact of Community on Curriculum Decision-Making: A Case Study from a North American Jewish Day School
ELI KOHN
15 Ideological Commitment in the Supervision of Jewish Studies Teachers: Which Community is Represented and Who Represents It?
MICHAL MUSZKAT BARKAN and ASHER SHKEDI
16 Schooling for Change in the Religious World: An Educational Experiment amid Ethnic, Class, and Academic Hierarchies in a Religious Junior High School in Israel
ILANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN
17 Home-Made Jewish Culture at the Intersection of Family Life and School
ALEX POMSON and RANDAL SCHNOOR
18 Teacher Perspectives on Behaviour Problems: Background Influences on Behavioural Referral Criteria and Definitions of Rebellious Behaviour
SCOTT J. GOLDBERG, BINYAMIN KROHN, and MICHAEL TURETSKY
19 Shabbatonim as Experiential Education in the North American Community Day High School
JEFFREY S. KRESS and JOSEPH REIMER
20 Teaching Leadership through Town Meeting
 JAY DEWEY
21 Building Community in a Pluralist Jewish High School; Balancing Risk and Safety, Group and Individual, in the Life of a School
SUSAN L. SHEVITZ and RAHEL WASSERFALL

Contributors
Index

About the Author

Alex Pomson is a senior lecturer at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University. He trained in History at the University of Cambridge, and received his PhD in Religious Education from the University of London in 1994. He was founding Head of Jewish Studies at the King Solomon High School. From 1996 to 2004, he served as Associate Professor of Jewish Teacher Education at York University, Toronto where he coordinated York’s Jewish Teacher Education Programme. He is past chair of the Network for Research in Jewish Education. He completed a longitudinal study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of the Canadian Government, to be published in 2008, as a book Back to School: Jewish Day School as a Source of Meaning in the Lives of Adult Jews. His work has been published in numerous academic journals, including Teachers College Record, Educational Research, Reflective Practice, the Canadian Journal of Education, and Journal of Curriculum Studies. Howard Deitcher is the director of the Melton Centre for Jewish Education and a senior lecturer at the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his rabbinic ordination at the Chief Rabbinate of Canada and his doctorate in education from Yeshiva University in New York. In 1990-91 he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowhip at the Philosophy of Education Research Centre at Harvard University. He is past director of the Jerusalem Fellows Program as well as director of Intensive Development Programs at the Mandel Leadership Institute. He was the founding principal of the Efrata Experimental School in Jerusalem, and has served as a consultant for Jewish schools around the world. He has edited two books Educational Issues and Classical Jewish Texts (1990), which was awarded the National Jewish Book Award, as well as Understanding the Bible in Our Times (2003).

Reviews

'Particularly relevant at this time when more Jewish children than ever, around the globe, attend Jewish day schools . . . comprehensive in its exploration of how schools and communities can be mutually influential in strengthening and developing Jewish identity . . . The book is optimistic about the future of Jewish day schooling and inspires belief in the breadth of opportunities to strengthen and develop Jewish communities and Jewish education . . . thorough and articulate . . . critically important as a reminder that when moulded the right way schools have a unique opportunity to breathe freshness, dynamism, and life into Jewish communities.'
- Adele Stowe-Linder, Manna

'Its cross-cultural and comparative approach reveals conflicting conceptions of the social functions of schooling, a new understanding of the capacity of schools to build community, and insights into faith-based schooling and the public good.'
- Shofar