Teaching Israel

Sivan Zakai is the Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Los Angeles campus. She directs the Children’s Learning About Israel Project and codirects Project ORLIE: Research and Leadership in Israel Education. She is the author of My Second Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel, winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. Matt Reingold is a practitioner-researcher of Israel Education. He teaches and serves as the cohead of the Jewish History Department at TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Gender and Sexuality in Israeli Graphic Novels: Contested Masculinity and Independent Femininity, Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons: Visual Discourses During the 2018–2021 Electoral Crisis, Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives, and The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories.

“Teaching Israel . . . initiates a worthwhile dialogue between Israel education and Israel studies by conceptualizing an area of inquiry that can be beneficial for both fields, specifically, with insights on aims, pedagogy, context, and identity. Most importantly, Zakai and Reingold highlight that the scholarly dialogue is mutually beneficial. I recommend Teaching Israel for any educator or scholar interested in practical insights about the ‘pedagogical choices that teachers make when Israel, in all its many forms, is the subject matter.’ I hope this anthology is only the first of many volumes of empirical studies on what Zakai and Reingold have conceptualized as teaching Israel.”

• List of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgementsIntroduction (Sivan Zakai) Section I: The Reflective Teacher1. Teaching about Israel as a Modern State of Migration: Learning with Diverse, Inner-City, Nontraditional College Students in New York City (Robin A. Harper)2. Navigating Complexities: Teaching Israel Studies in the Professional Military Education Context (Amin Tarzi)3. Voices on the Page and in the Room: A Pedagogy of Jewish Text Study in Israel Education (Joshua Ladon)Section II: Using Student Voices to Examine Teacher Choices4. Complex Texts and Complex Identities: Helping Students Navigate Personally and Emotionally Resonant Topics about Israeli Society (Matt Reingold, Alexa Jacoby, Benjamin Day) 5. Into the Intimate Discourse: Rachel Korazim as an Exemplary Israel Educator (Diane Tickton Schuster) 6. Knowledge, Connection, and Stance: Toward a More Enduring Israel Engagement (Jonathan Golden and Yoni Kadden) Section III: Navigating the Teaching of Politics and the Politics of Teaching7. Cultivating Critical Inquiry about Israel: Teaching Israel in Our Time (Bethamie Horowitz)8. Activism and Identity: Teaching (About) BDS in the Israeli-Palestinian Relations Classroom (Mira Sucharov) 9. Barriers to Entry: Exploring Educator Reticence for Engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Keren E. Fraiman) Section IV: When Teachers Learn10. “What are We Doing?”: The Pedagogical Questions of Jewish Early Childhood Educators and Teacher Educators (Sivan Zakai and Lauren Applebaum)11. Teaching Who They Are: Understanding Teachers' Connections with Israel and How Those Enter into the Classroom (Laura Novak Winer)12. Nurturing Jewish Consciousness: Utilizing Values at Synagogue Supplementary Schools to Teach Israel (Ezra Kopelowitz and Abby Pitkowsky) 13. A Kite on a String and a Box that Opens: The Challenges of Transformative Professional Learning for Israel Educators (Lauren Applebaum) Conclusion (Matt Reingold)