Children of the Book: Parents, Bedtime, and Jewish Identity

Abstract

This article offers a conceptual framework for assessing PJ Library programming grounded in the relevant scholarly literature and illustrated by way of conversations with PJ Library parents. It is built around three themes concerning how parents view their role as facilitators in their child's religious and cultural identity formation through the reading of bedtime stories: (a) how the reading of stories nurtures affective development, (b) can be a crucial tool in mediating the development of cultural and religious identity, and (c) affects the bidirectionality of the parent/child relationship in identity formation.

Acknowledgments

This article is a product of the International Research Group on Jewish Education in the Early Years, a project of the Center for Jewish Education, University of Haifa and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The author wishes to thank Professor Zehavit Gross of Bar Ilan University; Professor Hanan Alexander and Dr. Dana Amir of the University of Haifa, and the members of the research group for their helpful comments and suggestions; and to Professors Gabriel Motzkin and Naphtali Rothenberg, and Ms. Daphna Schreiber of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute for their support of the project.