Beyond Jewish Identity - Rethinking Concepts and Imagining Alternatives

"This volume, while not the first to explore and critique the concept of Jewish identity, makes two important interventions into contemporary understandings of American Jewish life. It is the first collection to critically examine the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity. Insofar as Jewish identity has become the most popular way to talk about the desired outcome of Jewish education, a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity is both useful and necessary. It is useful because the reification of identity has, we believe, hampered much educational creativity in the rather single-minded pursuit of this goal. It is necessary because the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures a whole set of significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be for in the first place. Second, this volume offers responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for "identity." With a selection of more critical essays, we hope that we can begin to expand, rather than replace, the array of ideas that the term "identity" is so often used to represent. As scholars of Jewish education, the authors of this book hope their work contributes to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life. The intention here is to move from critical inquiry (in Part I of the volume) to suggestive possibilities (Part II). The true measure of this effort, of course, lies in the hands of the readers, those who will advance our understanding of the complexities of American Jewish education and life-beyond Jewish identity"--

Sommario

Contents
1. Introduction
Jon A. Levisohn and Ari Y. Kelman
2. Taking Jewish Identity Metaphors Literally
Eli Gottlieb
3. You are Jewish if You Want to Be: The Limits of Identity in a World of Multiple Practices
Samira K. Mehta
4. On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education
Jonathan Krasner
5. Identity and Crisis: The Origins of Identity as an Educational Outcome
Ari Y. Kelman
6. Regarding the “Real” Jew: Authenticity Anxieties Around Poland’s “Generation Unexpected”
Katka Reszke
7. Re-Thinking American Jewish Zionist Identity: A Case for Post-Zionism in the Diaspora (Based on the Writings of R. Menachem Froman)
Shaul Magid
8. Jewish Educators Don't Make Jews: A Sociological Reality Check About Jewish Identity Work
Tali Zelkowicz
9. Beyond Language Proficiency: Fostering Metalinguistic Communities in Jewish Educational Settings
Sarah Bunin Benor and Netta Avineri
10. Where is the Next Soviet Jewry Movement? How Identity Education Forgot the Lessons that Jewish Activism Taught
Shaul Kelner
11. Jewish Education as Initiation into the Practices of Jewishness
Jon A. Levisohn
12. Jewish Sensibilities: Toward a New Language for Jewish Educational Goal-Setting
Lee Moore and Jonathan Woocher, z’’l

Info autore

Jon A. Levisohn is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Associate Professor
of Jewish Educational Thought at Brandeis University, where he serves as the
director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish
Education.

Ari Y. Kelman is Jim Joseph Associate
Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University, where he
serves as director of the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies.

Riassunto

There is something deeply problematic about
the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a
desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of
Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly
seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish
education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it
mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers
and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education
or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish
identity”? And what are the costs of doing so?

This volume, the first collection to
examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish
identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical
assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the
reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit
of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures
significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second,
this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous
replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think
about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing
to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education
and Jewish life.

Testo aggiuntivo

“It’s a good thing for the Jewish educational domain to question the ways that funders and other stakeholders understand the work of educators, schools, and other educational institutions. The book succeeds in pushing back against the heavy hand of funders’ expectations about how individual educational enterprises are supposed to yield subsequent Jewish identities. … The editors of this volume are to be commended for gathering together this stimulating collection of essays to focus our attention on the relationship between Jewish identity and Jewish education. I hope this book leads to many more focused studies that will illuminate and extend the important questions it provokes.”
—Bethamie Horowitz, New York University, Journal of Jewish Education

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Con la collaborazione di: Ari Y Kelman (Editore), Ari Y. Kelman (Editore), Jon A Levisohn (Editore), Jon A. Levisohn (Editore)
• Editore: Academic Studies Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 30.09.2019
• EAN: 9781644691298
• ISBN: 978-1-64469-129-8
• Pagine: 290
• Dimensioni: 156 mm x 234 mm x 16 mm
• Peso: 445 g
• Categorie: Saggistica > Filosofia, religione > Religione: tematiche generali, opere di consultazione; Scienze umane, arte, musica > Religione / teologia > Ebraismo