In her article, "When a Yarmulke Stands for All Jews: Navigating Shifting Signs from Synagogue to School in Luxembourg," Anastasia Badder asks: How do congregational school students experience moments in which they were confronted with Jewishness outside of the classroom, in their secular schools and public spaces? And taking a material approach, how does the presence (and absence) of yarmulkes influence those experiences? In this session, she discusses findings from fieldwork she conducted as an ethnographer and teacher in a Jewish congregational school researching the ways children learn about and how to do Jewishness.

Originally recorded: 1/23/25

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

Habits of creative thinking have sustained the Jewish people through centuries of crisis and opportunity. How might the enterprise of Jewish education reclaim and teach creativity? Weaving together a wide range of theory and research, including affective neuroscience, Jewish philosophy and education, and studies of creativity and arts education, Miriam Heller Stern discusses a framework for fostering Jewish creativity that can be pursued across the Jewish educational ecosystem.

Originally recorded: 11/7/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

The attack on October 7th, the ensuing war, and the changed environment in the US have all led to questions about how American Jewish educational institutions have responded, and how they should. What do we know about the impact of the last year on schools, synagogues, camps, Israel trips, and other initiatives? How have educators been affected? How have children? What new trends are emerging? In this session, a group of scholars and educational leaders offer ideas for educators and educational institutions one year into this new environment.

Panelists include Jonathan Krasner (Brandeis University), Matt Reingold (community educator/independent scholar), Amanda Winer (research consultant), Sivan Zakai (HUC-JIR) with Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University).

Originally recorded: 10/31/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

There is a growing consensus that successful and holistic Israel education demands a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with critical questions within Israel, and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This feels especially pressing in a post October 7th world. Despite this critical need, many educators continue to express reticence about conflict education. In this session, Keren Fraiman explores why educators are hesitant to engage in conflict education, highlighting the greatest sources of challenge and a typology of barriers to entry. Importantly, she shares what we can do to support our educators, educational systems, and the community more broadly.

Originally recorded: 10/10/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

In his recent book, Shaul Kelner recounts the compelling stories of heroism that helped to free Soviet Jews. In this session, he discusses how this activism reached Jewish educational spaces — through bar and bat mitzvah twinning, school field trips to rallies, summer camp programming, and much more — and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan-Bush years.

Originally recorded: 9/26/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

How do educators from differing pedagogical orientations learn, undertake, and ultimately improve the work of teaching Israel? In this conversation, Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field editors Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold discuss the complex issues facing those who teach about Israel, along with respondents Lisa Grant (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) and Alex Pomson (Rosov Consulting), and moderator Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University).

Sivan Zakai is Sara S. Lee Associate Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles. She directs the Children’s Learning About Israel Project and codirects Project ORLIE: Research and Leadership in Israel Education. She received a National Jewish Book Award in 2022 for My Second Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel.

Matt Reingold teaches and is the cohead of the Jewish History Department at TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Gender and Sexuality in Israeli Graphic Novels: Contested Masculinity and Independent Femininity, Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons, and The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories.

Teaching Israel is available for purchase and published in the Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education by Brandeis University Press.

Originally recorded: 5/30/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

In this special event, authors from a recent themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on race, ethnicity, and immigration in Jewish education. The issue spotlights the experiences of underrepresented individuals and serves as compelling testimony to the diverse array of Jewish experiences and identities, challenging prevailing norms about how Jewish educational spaces are designed and who benefits from them. This webinar features the following authors speaking about their papers:

• Hannah Kober ‘16 (Stanford University): A Fraying Connection: Israeli-American Perspectives on Diasporic Hebrew Learning Through and Beyond Jewish Education
• Marva Shalev Marom (The Schechter Institutes): Eat, Pray, Wait: The Informal Israeli Jewish Education of Ethiopian Youth Awaiting Aliyah
• Elana Riback Rand (Yeshiva University): “Realizing I’m Sephardi”: Navigating Prayer and Curricular Discontinuities in Majority-Ashkenazic Day Schools
• Ariela Ronay-Jinich (Olamim): Latin Jewish Families and Their Educational Choices: Navigating Multiple Identities

Moderated by Ilana Horwitz (Tulane University)

Co-sponsored by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, the Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University, and the Journal of Jewish Education.

Originally recorded: 5/2/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.

What happens when students of classical Jewish texts encounter visual representations of those texts, not just words? In her recent study Reconsidering Religious Gender Normativity in Graphic Novel Adaptations, Talia Hurwich learned that students often respond in deeply personal ways to visual representations of topics that may otherwise be suppressed by social norms around Jewish texts and practices. In this session, she discusses the role graphic novels can play in mediating between traditional religious practices and modern social change.

Originally recorded: 4/11/24

At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on teaching and learning, in order to make a deep and lasting difference on the lives of learners and the vibrancy of the Jewish community. That’s our mission.

To learn more about the Mandel Center, and sign up to attend upcoming virtual and physical events, visit our website.

Learning About Learning is a production of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, and is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media LLC.