If Judaism is a response to existential questions, then we must validate our studentsâ questions, interests, and curiosities and create a context to discuss them.
How Jewish Studies Teachers can Use ChatGPT, Part 2
Is ChatGPT a threat to Jewish studies teachers? Learn how to use ChatGPT to enhance your teaching!
How Jewish Studies Teachers Can Use ChatGPT, Part #1
Is ChatGPT a threat to Jewish studies teachers? Learn how to use ChatGPT to enhance your teaching!
Personalizing the Past Through Oral Histories
If you were to ask your students to describe the process of teshuvah, my hunch is that most would echo some version of Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah: regret and renounce the sin, resolve not to do it again, and when the opportunity to sin occurs again, take a pass…
Taking Our Schools L’ayla Ulâayla
If you were to ask your students to describe the process of teshuvah, my hunch is that most would echo some version of Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah: regret and renounce the sin, resolve not to do it again, and when the opportunity to sin occurs again, take a pass…
Advice for Day 1 of School
I was always nervous the night before the first day of school. It didn’t matter if I was a student, a teacher, or a head of school. I slept very little the night before and was exhausted by the end of the first day…
Where Have All the Teachers Gone?
The indicators point to an intensifying shortage of Jewish educators in North America and beyond, and it looks like it will only get worse. This is not new and there are likely multiple causes, but COVID has brought about a wave of early retirement and teacher burnout so that the need has become more acute faster than anyone anticipated and the effects are being felt almost everywhere.
Relating the Four Sons to Holocaust Memory
The Passover Seder serves not only as âthe quintessential exercise in Jewish group memoryâ according to the Yerushalmi, but it can serve as a paradigm of what Jewish education should be. The Seder with its symbols, practices and intellectual stimulation resonates in us all.
A Lesson from Chelm: The Secret Recipe for Professional Development that Works
One of my favorite childrenâs Chelm stories is âMalkeâs Secret Recipe,â by David Adler which tells the story of Malke, who was known for her delicious, succulent, and soft latkes. The only problem was that she would not share the recipe…
Rethinking Prayer and Jewish Education from a Neurodiverse Perspective
My neurodiversity is likely a form of ADHD, partially due to brain surgery. Some of my distractions are due to wandering thoughts and others to sensory stimuli. I also have Irlen syndrome and irregular auditory processing. Irlen syndrome causes visual distortions due to inefficient perception and processing of light and is treated using colored spectral filters.