School’s Place in Nurturing Students’ Jewish Identity Within a Broader Social and Cultural World: Stakeholders’ Experience

ABSTRACT This article reports on students’ and faculty members’ experience of their pluralistic Jewish day school’s educational mission to nurture students’ Jewish identity exploration within a broader social and cultural world. It articulates these stakeholders’ perceptions of the ways teaching and learning of Jewish values, customs, and knowledge are integrated into the formal and informal educational experiences. Furthermore, it identifies five key features that contribute, mainly positively, to students’ exploration. of a broader Jewish, Australian, and global identity formation. It argues that a close alignment between stakeholders’ personal views and beliefs and their experience of the implemented educational mission, is a major contributing factor in stakeholder satisfaction with Jewish day school education.