Israel Education

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The Jewish Education Project advocates for complex Israel education that recognizes the diverse and sometimes competing narratives at play in Israel today, while animating the richness of everyday life and includes the conflicts that threaten Israel’s peace and security both internally and externally.

Read the full text of Our Approach to Israel Education
 

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We believe that at the heart of engaging and meaningful Israel Education, are Israel Educators who are deeply knowledgeable, specifically skilled, and nuanced in their approach. They must know how to create educational experiences that support independent critical thinking by the learner. To be reflective of the authenticity of Israel today, Israel education must embrace the positive aspects of Israel as well as its complexities, struggles, and conflicts. We, in turn, embrace the educational principle that complexity and struggle are often best encountered when they are built on a foundation of love and emotional attachment.

To this end, we have designed our Israel Education Resources to reflect both this love and the struggle, this primacy and the existential questions it raises for us and for our learners. We invite you to read the full text of Our Approach, to take part in the unique Educator Opportunities we provide, and to explore several important Israel Education sites through our eyes. 

Strategic Implications

In line with the core strategies of the agency, The Jewish Education Project believes that the best way to effect systematic change in Jewish education is to empower Jewish educational leaders with the knowledge, skills and the resources to develop models of education that will engage more Jewish youth and their families.

The teaching and learning of Israel must be characterized by an approach that meets the following criteria:

  1. Israel education must be embedded within an approach to Jewish education that is developmentally appropriate and learner-centered.
  2. Learning must be focused on the whole child (cognitive, emotional, social, active).
  3. Israel education requires well-prepared Jewish educators that are empowered to provide quality experiences for our youth and their families.
  4. Israel education is dependent on fostering quality experiences that develop relationships between diaspora Jewish youth and the land, culture, and the people of Israel.
  5. Israel education must, when age-appropriate and context relevant, be complex and nuanced, dealing with the critical and sensitive issues that surround Israel today.
  6. Israel education, as with all good education, must be multi-vocal, and respect the learners. In order to remain authentic to the principles of good education, Israel education must include voices and opinions that are not necessarily popular or mainstream.
  7. (The Jewish Education Project is a pluralistic organization that serves the broadest cross-section of Jews as possible and promotes diversity with the core belief that) the Jewish people and society, in general, will be stronger if we are tolerant and respectful towards one another.
     


To be reflective of the authenticity of Israel today, Jewish learners must be exposed to the positive aspects of Israel as well as its complexities, struggles, and conflicts, which can be fraught with anxiety and emotion.