Jewish Education Talks

Hello again! It has been over a year since I posted. I had grand intentions for this podcast in 2021, but alas, the podcast fell by the wayside. Nevertheless, I had many interesting things happen and the future looks bright at the moment. Most of 2021 was challenging but in a good way. 

I share a bit about the year that passed and look into the future. What can you expect content-wise from this podcast? Listen to find out. 

Welcome to a new episode with another outstanding educator! This is a wonderfully varied conversation with Dr Helena Miller (bio below) in which we discuss all sorts of things - from her research on a massive longitudinal study to teaching an MA in Jewish education online to students all over the world (and especially in South Africa).    I hope you find it interesting and informative.    Dr Helena Miller (Source) Co-Head of Teacher Training, Director of Degrees and Senior Research Fellow at London School of Jewish Studies   Dr Helena Miller has a PhD in Jewish Education and has taught, researched and written widely.

She heads the “Jewish Lives” longitudinal study, following the cohort of young people who started in UK Jewish secondary schools in 2011. Helena is the senior editor of the two volume International Handbook of Jewish Education (2011 Springer). She is the senior editor of the Journal of Jewish Education, and has both initiated, and been involved in, many innovative education, research and evaluation projects in the UK and overseas. Helena was co-chair of Limmud International 2009-12, and received the Max Fisher Prize for outstanding contribution to Jewish Education in the Diaspora in 2012.

In this episode, Ronnie Gotkin, a veteran Jewish educator, shares some of the key challenges that confront Jewish education and Jewish educators today in Cape Town. 

A sample of the topics we cover in the episode: 

1. Ronnie's roles and career
2. If you have the motivation, Hebrew fluency is attainable
3. Hebrew education
4. The role of Jewish history in Jewish education
5. and more! but I don't want to give it all away, so go listen to our chat. 

I hope you find it stimulating. 

What educational work goes on in Jewish Cape Town beyond schools? Rachel Bootcov joins us to discuss her role in the community, her views on various educational questions and challenges, the main considerations when creating programming for youth, and other issues. 

Rachel is deeply involved in Jewish youth education. Currently, her roles are: 

1. Youth Director at Temple Israel
2. Head of the Zionist youth council
3. Netzer Camp - Head of education and head of Cape Town

 

 

If you have not read Chaya Herman's book, Prophets and profits, then what have you been doing?! In this magnificent book, Herman presents a critical account of the upheaval surrounding a Jewish day school in South Africa. She records various stakeholders' experiences as the school community navigates the treacherous waters of restructuring, new managerial systems, and a concerted effort by a new powerful individual (and his backers) to shift the school's ethos. 

Even if you do not agree with her interpretation of the matter at hand, you will come away enriched due to the extensive breadth of the book and the erudition with which the author develops her argument. You will learn to look at Jewish education in South Africa in a new light and you will certainly experience the "shock of recognition" if you are at all familiar with the South African landscape.

While this episode turns out to be a bit of a ramble, and I thought of re-doing it in a more precise/coherent way, I decided to leave it be. The book is more important than my comments, and the point of this episode is to introduce you to the book. So why delay? 

I hope you go read it. 

 

This episode introduces the listener to M.E. Katz, a prominent Jewish education personality in Cape Town. His prominence is twofold. First, his professional career was spent as a Jewish educator and principal of Herzlia. Second, he produced (in 1980) a work on the history of Jewish education in Southern Africa that is unparalleled in its breadth and therefore essential reading for anyone who wants to do serious research in the field. I explore a theme he develops in his work and provide my own understanding of the implications of this theme for the contemporary scene. 

You can access M.E. Katz's work here: 

Title: The history of Jewish education in South Africa, 1841-1980.

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23668

 

Having introduced Isaac Goss and his significance to the South African Jewish education landscape, I read an excerpt from his book entitled "Reflections on Jewish Education in South Africa" (1951). 

The first essay is a letter written to Goss by a frustrated, yet well-intentioned and thoughtful parent. In it, he poses some challenging questions on the topic of Jewish education. He genuinely seeks answers to these questions, solutions to these problems. 

Goss, for his part, addresses the issues in a methodical and practical manner. He weaves together abstract philosophies with concrete suggestions. He sets out to describe his vision for the system but remains anchored firmly to the reality on the ground. It is an interesting piece due to the delicate manner in which he explores these four elements (educational philosophy, pedagogic recommendations, systemic vision, practical suggestions). I do not analyze this further in this episode, but I hope you enjoy it in the raw, unprocessed form. 

 

This is the first of two episodes dedicated to Isaac Goss, perhaps the most influential Jewish Education Personality in 20th century South Africa. Director of the Board of Jewish Education for four decades and a dedicated educationalist his entire life, Goss's influence is still felt today in the structure and ideology of the Jewish educational system in South Africa. By South African standards, he is a prolific educational writer, and his literary output remains an indispensable resource for both the history of education research and insights into perennial questions. 

In this episode, I try to date an apparently updated book of his. It is strange because his other works are all dated but this one is elusive. When was it published? 

I track my thinking in this regard and tell you the date that I settled. But then something catches my eye. And this changes everything... 

 

 

We are privileged to host Professor Adam Mendelsohn in this episode. He discusses important findings from a recent set of surveys conducted by the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies. Although at first glance, the South African community survey is not immediately relevant to Jewish education, it is obvious to me that these results are very significant indeed. Schools are embedded in a community and serve the needs of that society, while also shaping that society. Many of the survey findings discussed shape and are shaped by the Jewish education system. 

This is an important conversation to set the scene for deep questions such as: What is the purpose of Jewish education in SA? In Cape Town? What are the best approaches? And how shall we proceed?

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed speaking with Adam. 

You can read about our guest's bio below. 

Kaplan Centre: http://www.kaplancentre.uct.ac.za/

Surveys: http://www.kaplancentre.uct.ac.za/kaplancentre/reports

Adam D. Mendelsohn is Director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies & Research and Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (New York University Press, 2014) and co-editor of Jews and the Civil War: A Reader (with Jonathan D. Sarna, New York University Press, 2010) and Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History (with Ava Kahn, Wayne State University Press, 2014). He was Chief Historian of the exhibition The First Jewish Americans at the New-York Historical Society, and co-curator of By Dawn’s Early Light at the Princeton University Museum of Art. He is co-editor of the journal American Jewish History.

Much of his work focuses on the relationship between Jews in America and the British Empire prior to mass eastern European migration, a time when these fledgling communities were beginning to grapple with the challenges of living in liberal societies. While the time-period that he focuses on has remained consistent – the mid-nineteenth century – the themes he has explored have been more varied: economic mobility, cultural production, and religious innovation. His latest project draws on “big data” – a large database of Jewish soldiers who served in the Civil War – to reconsider the experience of Jews during this period.

This was fun! In a very flexible, generative discussion, Efraim and I bounce ideas off each other. Some of it is pretty theoretical and abstract, but other parts clearly have practical applications for the teacher in the classroom and for the school within its societal context. 

Efraim shared his personal background that shaped his desire to help students bring out their best from within. He talks of the value of educational approaches that value the individual as a person. And we wonder together about the challenges of conceptualizing and implementing such approaches. 

I consider this a generative discussion rather than a formal interview and I hope you, as the listener, appreciate this different style of conversation. You can hear that some ideas are very raw, some connections are delightful and new. I hope this will lead to further thinking and development of ideas and practices for both of us. You the listener, get to tune in and hear a discussion wind its way around core problems that face education today. 

As I say in the conclusion, this is just laying the groundwork, establishing the playing field, and I hope to connect with Efraim again on this podcast. I enjoyed it, and I hope you do too.