Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education
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.
Episodes
37 episodes
Episode 37: Bringing the Big World into the Little Classroom
What issues in the contemporary world matter most to Jewish children, and how do children make sense of these issues? How do educators make sense of children’s ideas and their implications for the work of Jewish education? American Jewish 4th a...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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30:37
Episode 36: Antisemitism on Campus After October 7
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 sp...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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1:05:47
Episode 35: Spotlight on Contemporary Jewish Theology
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 ...
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Season 4
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Episode 8
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1:06:17
Episode 34: Fraternities and Sororities as Jewish Communal Spaces | Dr. Jenny Small
Traditionally-Jewish fraternities and sororities are not often considered sites of Jewish community. In this session, Jenny L. Small discusses findings...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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28:15
Episode 33: Using Both/And Thinking to Repair a Rift in Jewish Education | Dr. Tali Zelkowicz
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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27:07
Episode 32: Fluid Meanings of the Yarmulke Across Educational Contexts | Dr. Anastasia Badder
In her article, "When a Yarmulke Stands for All Jews: Navigati...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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29:14
Episode 31: Jewish Creativity: An Essential Aspiration for Jewish Education | Professor Miriam Heller Stern
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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30:48
Episode 30: Spotlight on Jewish Education after October 7
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 yea...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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1:05:21
Episode 29: How Educators Can Overcome Barriers to Engaging with the Conflict | Dr. Keren Fraiman
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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29:50
Episode 28: How American Activists Helped Free Soviet Jews | Professor Shaul Kelner
In his recent book, Shaul Kelner recounts the compelling stories of heroism that helped to free Soviet Jews....
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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28:06
Episode 27: Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field | Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold
How do educators from differing pedagogical orientations learn, undertake, and ultimately improve the work of teaching Israel? In this conversation,
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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1:04:59
Episode 26: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in Jewish Education
In this special event, authors from a recent themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on race, ethnicity, and immigration in Jew...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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1:10:23
Episode 25: Visualizing Jewish Texts and Practices through the Graphic Novel | Dr. Talia Hurwich
What happens when students of classical Jewish texts encounter visual representations of those texts, not just words? In her recent study Reconsiderin...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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28:08
Episode 24: Spotlight on the Gap Year
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 doe...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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1:08:09
Episode 23: Why Young Jews Love Yiddish | Dr. Sandra Fox
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
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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28:39
Episode 22: How Israeli-Americans Think About Their Kids’ Hebrew Learning | Hannah Kober
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, <...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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27:55
Episode 21: Navigating Ideological Differences in Pluralistic Jewish Schools | Dr. Esther Friedman
How and why does the ability to navigate ideological differences within classrooms matter to Jewish education — and beyond? In this session, Es...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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32:37
Episode 20: Spotlight on Jewish Learning: Past, Present and Future
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 s...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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1:04:45
Episode 19: Getting Serious About Play in Jewish Education | Rabbi Judd Levingston, PhD
Beyond lifting the spirits of teachers and students, play in Jewish education spaces can also shape moral development and character. Drawing from his
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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29:30
Episode 18: What 19th Century Jewish Education Can Teach Us about Jewish Education Today | Professor Laura Yares
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 ...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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30:13
Episode 17: What We Can Learn from Seymour Fox and the Visions of Jewish Education Project | Professor Jon Levisohn
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Jewish educators and educational institutions started talking about “vision” in a new way, prompted by the efforts of the Mandel Foundation and especially its influential leader Seymour Fox. For many, the publi...
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Season 2
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Episode 17
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27:54
Episode 16: What Girls Learn in Jewish Families | Professor Ilana Horwitz
In the past, Jewish families, like many others, offered girls fewer educational opportunities than boys. But that has not been the case for some time now. In her recent scholarship,
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Season 2
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Episode 16
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28:34
Episode 15: Spotlight on Mahloket
Mahloket—that is, dispute or principled debate—has long been celebrated as a Jewish ideal, not only within Jewish texts (where sages debate laws, interpretations and principles) but within the practice of engagement with those texts (where, for...
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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1:00:34