The “It” in Jewish Education

Abstract

In his landmark essay titled “I, Thou, and It,” David Hawkins (1974/2002) argues that at the heart of education lies relationships between and among teachers, students, and subject matter. Explaining the import of Hawkins’ conceptualization, Miriam Raider-Roth (2017) writes, “Each dyad in this triangle is informed and shaped by the other dyads. The third learning partner of the ‘it’ is what distinguishes this relational dynamic from other types of relationships” (p. 3). Teaching and learning, in this view, rest not only on interactions among teachers and students, but also stand in relationship with rich content. Each of the essays in this issue of the Journal of Jewish Education raises up the importance of some form of “it” in Jewish education. As a collective, they spotlight a range of content-rich materials: anthologies written for use in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox classroom, materials created for the study of Biblical Hebrew in English-speaking communities, and Jewish books written for the American Jewish family and home. Although these articles differently frame the “work” of Jewish education, are situated in different educational milieu, and rest on distinct beliefs about how students and teachers might relate to and learn from content, all explicitly highlight one form of Hawkins’ “it.” In the first article in this issue, Oshri Zighelboim examines how education anthologies used in ultra-Orthodox Israeli schools frame the concept of a chosen people. The title of Zighelboim's work, “You Have Chosen Us from Among all Nations,” draws from Natan Alterman's 1942 poem “Of All the Peoples” (Alterman, 1942/2018). Yet while Alterman's poetry conveys a deep discomfort with Jewish exceptionalism, Zighelboim's work demonstrates the positive valence of the concept of chosenness in ultra-Orthodox educational anthologies. By examining educational resources primarily aimed at a 6th grade audience, Zighelboim captures how ultra-Orthodox anthologies frame religious, ethnic, and territorial separatism, and she illuminates how this framing is both distinct from and related to the ways that the concept of chosenness appears in educational materials of Israeli state and state-religious schools as well. Turning from materials that teach about the idea of chosenness to materials that teach Biblical Hebrew, the second article in this issue, “A Pedagogical Approach to Teaching Biblical Hebrew in American Day “Schools” presents Ziva Hassenfeld's system for teaching students to read, understand, and interpret Biblical text. While Zighelboim offers colorful descriptions of ultraOrthodox Jewish education in Israel, Hassenfeld's materials for the teaching of JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION 2022, VOL. 88, NO. 4, 259–260 https://doi.org/10.1080/15244113.2022.2153550