Annette Koren

Jewish Life on Campus: From Backwater to Battleground

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic shift in the extent and focus of concerns about Jewish life on campus. The Jewish community is increasingly occupied with the education of the next generation and the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. Outreach to Jewish students—from the expansion of Hillel and Chabad to the flourishing of Birthright Israel, as well as the growth of Jewish and Israel Studies—have engaged formerly uninvolved students with Jewish education and Jewish life. This article describes the situation on campus: the proportion of Jewish students, Israel-related activity, and perceptions of anti-Semitism. It discusses academic programs such as Jewish and Israel Studies and informal programs, such as Hillel and Chabad, that engage students in Jewish life. It also describes organizations and programs, both experiential and advocacy-oriented, that help students identify and combat attempts to delegitimize Israel and intimidate Jewish expression.

Deep Change in Congregational Education

The Re-Imagine Project (of the Experiment in Congregational Education) is an attempt to engender innovation in congregational schools. A long-term study of 24 participating congregations in Greater New York examined the extent to which the effort yielded new models of education (radical change). The study included surveys of task force members and interviews with 101 key informants. Results show four patterns of change: radical, replacement of old forms with new forms, creation of alternatives, and addition of programs. Factors related to starting points, the change process, and resources were found to influence which synagogues achieved deeper levels of change.

It Planted the Seeds: A Retrospective Study of Jewish Family Education's Impact on Families.

Susan Shevitz, Ed.D., is Associate Professor and Director of the Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis University. Annette Koren, Ph.D., is Senior Research Associate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. This research was part of a multi-year project in Boston sponsored by Combined Jewish Philanthropies Commission on Jewish Continuity and administered by the Bureau of Jewish Education.

Identical, Fraternal, or Separated at Birth: A Case Study of Educator Teams Within American-Israeli School Twinning

School-to-school collaboration has emerged as a key paradigm for fostering personal and institutional connections between Israeli and Diaspora youth, educators, and schools. Using the findings of a multi-year case study of a high school level twinning initiative, this article describes the challenges to this form of transnational collaboration and takes the first steps to articulating a theory of intervention of Israeli-Diaspora school twinning at the organizational level. The article suggests two processes, collaborative capacity and cultural competence, critical to development of positive and productive relationships in school partnerships. Institutional twinning is suggested as the goal of these interventions at the organizational level.