Abstract
Recalling, reviewing, reconsidering, and/or remembering the Jewish past plays a central role in most contemporary preK-12 Jewish schools the world over.1 In North American Jewish day high schools––the main focus of this chapter––teaching and learning Jewish history normally occurs through formal classroom instruction in Jewish history, Judaics, and/or general history courses, as well as through informal educational experiences including holiday celebrations, commemorations, and historical field trips. When taught chronologically, the course of study typically covers some or all of the following topics: the Hebrew Bible’s historical narratives; the ancient Israelite settlements in Palestine; the dispersion of Jews into the diaspora; Jewish life in medieval Europe, North Africa, and the Near East; modernity, enlightenment, and emancipation in western and eastern Europe; Jewish life in North America; the Holocaust; Zionism and the State of Israel; and the contemporary Jewish community. Methods for teaching Jewish history are mostly the same as in any history course, namely primary source analysis, discussion, debate, lecture, roleplay, simulation, and inquiry.
For modern Jews, a conception of their past is no mere academic matter. It is vital to their self-definition. Contemporary forms of Jewish identity are all rooted in some view of Jewish history which sustains them and serves as their legitimation.
(Meyer, 1987, p. xi)
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Notes
- 1.
We acknowledge with appreciation the contributions of Robert Chazan to this chapter, as well as comments on previous drafts from Samuel Kapustin, Shira Lander, and Laura Shaw-Frank.
- 2.
The professional development workshop, “Re/Presenting the Jewish Past,” is a joint project between RAVSAK: The Jewish Community Day School Network and The Network for the Teaching of Jewish History at New York University, and is funded by the Avi Chai Foundation. To date, we have worked with more than 50 teachers from over 20 day and supplementary schools across the United States and Canada. The workshops are focused entirely on issues regarding teaching and learning Jewish history. The teachers spend 5 days in intensive workshop meetings—guided by scholars of Jewish history and education––revising their schools’ Jewish history curricula, working to incorporate primary and secondary historical sources into the teaching of the Jewish past, and devising new modes of organization, instruction, and assessment.
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Jacobs, B.M., Shem-Tov, Y. (2011). History: Issues in the Teaching and Learning of Jewish History. In: Miller, H., Grant, L., Pomson, A. (eds) International Handbook of Jewish Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0354-4_26
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