Jewish education – From Under the Fig Tree

Playing with blocks

joselitAugust 28, 2017November 29, 2017Leave a comment

In what has become an annual tradition come late August, GW’s Program in Experiential Education & Jewish Cultural Arts welcomes its new, and hopefully merry, band of students to town by hosting a whirlwind orientation called Mosaic.

Click on image to read the brochure

Drawing loosely on the theme of building blocks, this year’s Mosaic had us both poolside, sipping cocktails, and in an old-fashioned parlor, playing the 21st century equivalent of parlor games.

When not sitting down, we walked around Dupont Circle, taking in its architectural delights; made our way downtown to Sixth and I for a lively exchange about institutional sustainability; and took the measure of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s deployment of space. We ate a lot, too.

The point throughout was to think about what it takes to build relationships, institutions and community. Without literalizing matters too much, the big idea behind this year’s Mosaic was to cast a searching eye on the constituent elements — the building blocks — that the students will draw on in the course of their training
as well as in their subsequent careers.

What kind of “structures” will they end up fashioning? It’s too early to tell, of course, but over the course of the next 13 months, they will have ample opportunity to pick up and assemble the right tools.

Shop talk

joselitMay 30, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

If all you knew about education came from what you read in the New York Times, you’d be right to think it’s in a sorry state, indeed. But if you had the good fortune to spend time in the company of committed educators, you’d come away with an entirely different perspective -- not rosy-eyed, exactly, but upbeat and enthusiastic, all the same.

I’ve just returned from Brandeis, where the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education assembled a diverse mix of professionals to explore how best to approach the teaching of history -- Jewish history especially. Some of us teach or conduct research, others experiment with digital forms of exchange and still others work in museums. What binds us together is our shared fidelity to the enterprise of education and with it, the value of thinking historically.

That’s not to say that differences didn’t emerge. On the heels of screening “Raise the Roof,” a marvelous, inspiring film about the making of the wooden synagogue that now takes center stage at Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, I, for one, got into a lively (read: heated) discussion with one of colleagues. He felt that the project’s participants did not come away with a sufficient understanding of the larger context of Polish-Jewish relations, rendering the undertaking of limited utility. My point, in turn, was that if ever there was an educational opportunity to translate history into an immediate, powerful experience, this was it. Knowledge wasn’t the point so much as sensitivity. Neither one convinced the other, but we had a good time trying.

In the course of our deliberations or “convening,” as the lingo would have it, attendees looked at the ways in which gaming, material culture, theater and the pursuit of heroes might advance the study of the Jewish past. The air was thick with collegial exchange.

We’ll have to wait and see what big-ticket conclusions, if any, will be drawn. In the meantime, it’s heartening to know that fresh ideas await.

Crossroads

joselitNovember 25, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Last week, I was quite literally on the road, travelling on trains, planes and buses. No matter the destination -- New York; D.C.; College Park, Maryland; and Cincinnati, Ohio -- the conversation at hand had to do with the future of Judaic Studies. At the risk of sounding like the doomsayers who find their worst fears confirmed by the Pew Center study on contemporary Jewish life, I've come away from my wanderings rather concerned about the ongoing vitality of Judaic Studies. The field is currently celebrating, or about to mark, its 40th birthday on many a college campus, amidst dwindling enrollments and exceedingly anxious university administrators who measure success, or viability, solely in terms of metrics.

Thomas Guignard At the crossroads — "At the crossroads." Flickr/Thomas Guignard

For all its maturity, Judaic Studies is a veritable start-up, especially when compared with other longstanding disciplines in the humanities such as History, English or even Semitics. Along the way, it has experienced more than its fair share of growing pains. Some have to do with the circumstances under which the field is constituted, others with the nature of the academic economy, much less the vagaries of the marketplace, and still others with the vexing matter of its intellectual utility.

University deans decide whether Judaic Studies ought to be administered as a program or as a department, a seemingly insignificant semantic decision whose implications run deep; donors, in turn, provide the financial incentive to set things in motion. The faculty, meanwhile, answers not only to these two constituencies, but to its colleagues as well, many of whom, even forty years on, are still not persuaded that Judaic Studies is a legitimate academic enterprise, with its own distinctive methodologies, body of practices and conceptual concerns.

There’s not too much we can do about university administrators, donors or the economy. But, as Judaic Studies approaches its next forty years, perhaps we could do something about our presence on the academic landscape. Much as I’d prefer to think otherwise, we who traffic in Judaic Studies inhabit an intellectual ghetto, whose gates we zealously monitor. Privileging the mastery of traditional Jewish texts at the expense of other kinds of sources and clinging tightly, stubbornly, to a static and internal hierarchy of interpretive values, we have not always been the most welcoming of neighbors.

Before the next significant birthday rolls around, here’s hoping we can do better.