Jewish Day Schools, Jewish Communities

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).

'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

• Note on Transliteration Introduction. Jewish Schools, Jewish Communities: A Reconsideration ALEX POMSON and HOWARD DEITCHER Part I Insights from Public and General Education1 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 Insights6 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 Community13 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