A Jewish education dilemma

“Jewish education has been going on for thousands of years, quite literally, and we do not have a theory,” says Professor Ari Y. Kelman. “There's a lot of ideas about what people should know, but we don't have a theory about how people learn.”

Kelman is the Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the author of the education volume in the Keywords in Jewish Studies series. He, arrived in Australia last week for a seminar in Sydney. During his trip, he also visited Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC) in Melbourne, where he delivered a lecture for Jewish educators last Monday.

 “I tried to shift the conversation on Jewish education, from one that is focused on ‘what do people need to know?’ to ‘how do people learn?’” says Kelman. “If we can develop a science and empirical basis for understanding how people learn, I would think that every Jewish educator would want to know that.”

A key focus of Kelman’s research has been examining the definitions of ‘Jewish studies’ versus ‘Jewish education’ throughout history. Referring to them as ‘strange siblings,’ he highlights how past scholars of Jewish studies resisted being thought of as Jewish educators. “Jewish education was this thing that happened to kids, that volunteers did, or rabbis did, the goal of which was to help people become Jewish,” he says. “The scholars who really drove the Jewish Studies stream, particularly in the late 1970s or late 1960s, thought of themselves as scholars first.”

From Kelman’s perspective, studying Jewish studies, particularly in higher education, is not so removed from the student’s life experience, but rather something that may inform their Jewish education and identity. “I think if we try to shift the framework away from what people are teaching to how people are learning, I think Jewish studies and Jewish education have more in common than people often realize,” he says.

Even before higher education, Kelman says this tension of duality presents challenges for Jewish schools. “The dual curriculum, trying to cram in a great secular education and a great Jewish education in the space of a seven or eight-hour day, is a lot,” he says. “And we try to do everything. It's hard to do everything exceptionally well, given the time demand.”

This can become further complicated, he says, as Jewish studies itself can become split into a dual curriculum, consisting of both religious practices and the academic study of Jewish texts and history. “I think schools spend so much time trying to balance the first level of the dual curriculum, they just figure Jewish studies is going of take care of itself,” he says.

“They're not as attentive as they could be with the dual curriculum in Jewish studies. Like, is it a normative set of behaviours, or a set of conceptual frameworks? Or is it just content?”

There’s no-one-size-fits-all model that can be easily applied. Kelman says “to know one school, is to know one school,” and more research is needed to develop more effective and adaptable teaching models. What might work for a specific school might look entirely different at another, depending on its culture, leadership, and the makeup of parents.

This becomes further complicated on college campuses, which are now navigating both questions about curriculum and how to combat antisemitism. “This past year was very difficult, and as a faculty person, I have certain institutional boundaries that exist between students,” says Kelman.

“If I'm an off-campus educator like at Hillel, those boundaries are not enforced, and they have much more latitude. Their mandate is different than mine, as a member of the community who cares deeply about his Jewish students, and all my students. But we do have one big lever to pull, and that's teaching.”

The issue has been a focus of Kelman’s even prior to October, and one of conflict. In 2022,
he led the Task Force on the Jewish Experience at Stanford, which uncovered evidence
of antisemitism in Stanford admissions during the 1950s. Afterward, he joined the school’s
newly formed Jewish Advisory Committee. In November, the committee announced a new
sub-committee focused on antisemitism, with Kelman as a co-chair."

Soon after, Kelman received backlash from some students, as well as prominent alumni, including accusations of being associated with anti-Zionist groups and downplaying antisemitism in a 2017 paper. While Kelman rejected the accusations, he decided it was best to step aside, as reported in The Jerusalem Post. He remains an advisor, and in the upcoming semester he’ll be teaching a new class on antisemitism. “I put together this class because it's important to me that students who are interested in understanding antisemitism better, and in a more nuanced way, have a venue for doing that,” he says.

“Hopefully we'll have the tools to do some sophisticated analyses, and the students will be able to come up with their own definitions. They're only with me for 10 weeks. But they're going to be, hopefully, Jewish people for as long as they live, and they're going to have to contend with all kinds of things in the world, way beyond my class.”