 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. 

J-Ed Talks

Ep 025 Dr Helena Miller

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

Ep 024: Ronnie Gotkin - Key challenges and insights in Jewish Education in Cape Town

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:  Youth Director at Temple Israel Head of the Zionist youth council Netzer Camp - Head of education and head of Cape Town    

Ep 023: Rachel Bootcov on Jewish Youth in 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.   

Ep 022: Chaya Herman's Prophets and Profits

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  

Ep 021: M.E. Katz - On the difference between Cape Town and Joburg Jewish Day Schools

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.   

Ep 020: Isaac Goss - Part 2

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...     

Ep 019: Isaac Goss - Part 1

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.

Ep 018: Prof. Adam Mendelsohn on the SA Jewish community

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.         

Ep 017: Efraim Lerner in Creative Individuality

Join us for a brilliant episode with Dr. Sharon Silverman, the incoming Chair of the Board of Trustees of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. She is an educator, academic, and published author. Scroll down for a full bio.   Student Voices: We Believe in You  Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership This discussion is filled with insights and wisdom about education and teaching and learning practices. It is peppered with personal anecdotes that illustrate Sharon's points and highlight her belief that stories are a great way to learn. A few details to look out for in the discussion:  Overall approach: While students have many similarities, each one is different from the next and we need to concentrate on how they differ from each other. What is emotional awareness? What is self-efficacy? What is persistence?  Practical suggestions for teachers based on these three components of the Believe In You model.  What is "applied Jewish learning"? "When you're green, you are growing. When you're ripe, you rot!" I hope you enjoy this episode and learn a lot. The quality of the conversation more than makes up for the limited quality of the audio recording itself.  Who is Dr. Sharon Silverman? Learn about her work below. Dr. Silverman is a founding partner in the consulting firm of TRPP Associates. She is an educator and independent scholar with degrees in learning disabilities and educational psychology. She is the founder and former director of the Learning Assistance Center at Loyola University Chicago where she developed LEAP, an award winning student access and retention program and a learning center at the Stritch School of Medicine. Dr. Silverman served on the Board of St. Augustine College in Chicago, the first bilingual institution of higher education in Illinois.    At Columbia College Chicago, Silverman helped develop The Learning Studio, an academic support center for students. At Harry S Truman College in Chicago, she worked with faculty and staff to develop a robust tutoring and tutor training program.  Dr. Silverman also helped The Adler School of Psychology develop a Center for Learning and Teaching. She continues to be a mentor/reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission.  She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.   Internationally, Dr. Silverman was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and subsequently received a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award for a project, "Sharing Cultures" connecting students and teachers in a virtual learning community at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Columbia College Chicago.   Other awards include a Rotary University Scholar Grant to continue her work in South Africa and a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award at Suleyman Demeril University in Kazakhstan.  She was an invited keynote speaker at the International Symposium on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace Research in Cyprus and an invited scholar at Kazakhstan-British Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan.   Dr. Silverman along with Dr. Martha Casazza co-authored the following publications: Learning Assistance and Developmental Education (Jossey-Bass, 1996) and Learning and Development: Making Connections to Enhance Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 1999), and Partners for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (iUniverse, 2005) and Student Voices: We Believe in You (iUniverse, 2017).

Ep 016: Dr Sharon Silverman on helping every student learn

Saul Kaplan shares some of his experiences and wisdom about Jewish education in this short interview. Some of the powerful ideas he mentioned are: The importance of ownership an example of what this looks like The importance of the teacher Considering the input/output process to ensure the system has coherence Education as "the opening of minds" (my words, not his) I really enjoyed speaking to Saul and hearing his ideas. I personally benefit from his prior work on a daily basis and this interview shows a bit of why he was successful in putting together a framework that has lasted so long and is still beneficial to our school. 

Ep 015: Saul Kaplan on Ownership

What are the implications of Jewish education's obsession with programmes? Why do we have a proclivity to deploy programmes? In this episode, which is based on personal experience rather than objective findings, I explore this issue and the potential for a different approach. The key theoretical claim I make is to view programmes as a positioning act rather than a well-grounded educational decision. The position taken depends on the context but has some general characteristics, for example, that the position dichotomizes and paints the Other with one brush. It is therefore difficult to question the educational power of an established programme because to do so involves opposition to the taken position. You want to ask questions about the educational value, but the programme represents, by its very nature, a position taken (often implicitly ideological) that resists any attempt at questioning.  For those interested, I borrowed the concept of "position-taking"  from Rob Moore and Johan Muller in 'Voice Discourse' and the Problem of Knowledge and Identity. Although I don't state it in the episode, alternatives solutions to deploying programmes would involve addressing systemic goals and developing talent within that framework. Rather than creating further fragmentation through additional sub-systems, you would look to address goals through a holistic lens and problem solve in a whole system manner where implications of proposed solutions apply to all aspects of the system.  I think this idea really plays out in the online situation forced by the worldwide shutdown of schools. The resources that are thrown around as solutions represent programmes that are deployed in a school system. I understand the value in these resources as a short term solution. But as a permanent or long-term approach, I really wonder whether schools relatively indiscriminate adoption of resources is wise?

Ep 014: Obsessed with programmes?

Along with teachers and schools around the world, we have, in a matter of days, transferred to 'remote/digital/online' teaching. I have found it difficult to transfer the cultural aspects of the school - those Jewish aspects that rely heavily on a physical presence at the school. For me, this includes things like Tefilla, ceremonies for significant Jewish dates, informal activities, corridor interactions, Jewish initiatives, charitable initiatives etc - things that create an 'Avirah' (atmosphere) in the school.  In this podcast, I reflect on the nature of these challenges in the hopes that a better understanding will lead to a better set of possible approaches. By the end of the episode, I identify what my "next-step question" is.  I offer a theoretical lens to frame this problem based on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). This thinking was inspired by Dorian Love's blog post. I also refer briefly back to Ep 010 - the difficult part of education. How do we foster disposition development in students? Or, if you believe in 'identity goals', what is the connection between student learning and student identity formation? Put into the context of an online environment, these questions become all the more stark.   

Ep 013: The difficulty of moving Jewish aspects 'online'

Join Rabbi Gavi Ziegler and me for a meandering conversation - I ramble, he is direct and clear! - about Jewish education. We explore what he enjoys about his work, what goals his school has for Jewish education, the challenges they face, their focus on values and integrating values across the school.  Gavi's recommended resource is Rabbi J. Sacks's book "To Heal a Fractured World".  At the end, Gavi shares a powerful message (he heard from Rabbi Sacks) to give us strength during this time of lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. 

Jewish Education Podcast Ep 012: Gavi Ziegler Interview

I share Basil Bernstein's three fields of knowledge:  production recontextualization re-production Using this as a lens, I present a second idea about the quandary that Jewish day schools face in trying to meet the diverse needs of a diverse community. Since no real philosophy of Judaism within the community can be 'imported' into the school to meet diverse needs - because it doesn't exist, partly due to the fact that Jewish day schools are often the only institution in which diverse communities may combine (cf. the siloing of denominational synagogues) - a new philosophy has to be produced. Thus, Jewish day schools may serve as rich seeding grounds for new ways of thinking about Judaism.  It turns out that Jewish day schools, in addition to knowledge re-production (teaching and learning), may need to become sites of knowledge production and knowledge recontextualization. This may point to the complexity inherent in such endeavours as foundationally complex rather than merely technically complex. 

Ep 011: Bernstein and why Jewish day schools can seed new ways of thinking about Judaism

J-Ed Talks is a podcast that discusses Jewish Education through the lens of Jewish Studies teachers. By sharing our experiences and ideas, we hope to be a small part of the Jewish educator's success. The aim is to be authentic, innovative and open to learning. Oh! We also have "Tech Mezonos" so have a listen and take a bite!