The “It” in Jewish Education

In his landmark essay titled “I, Thou, and It,” David Hawkins (1974/2002) argues that at the heart of education lies relationships between and among teachers, students, and subject matter. Explaining the import of Hawkins’ conceptualization, Miriam Raider-Roth (2017) writes, “Each dyad in this triangle is informed and shaped by the other dyads. The third learning partner of the ‘it’ is what distinguishes this relational dynamic from other types of relationships” (p. 3). Teaching and learning, in this view, rest not only on interactions among teachers and students, but also stand in relationship with rich content.

Each of the essays in this issue of the Journal of Jewish Education raises up the importance of some form of “it” in Jewish education. As a collective, they spotlight a range of content-rich materials: anthologies written for use in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox classroom, materials created for the study of Biblical Hebrew in English-speaking communities, and Jewish books written for the American Jewish family and home. Although these articles differently frame the “work” of Jewish education, are situated in different educational milieu, and rest on distinct beliefs about how students and teachers might relate to and learn from content, all explicitly highlight one form of Hawkins’ “it.”

In the first article in this issue, Oshri Zighelboim examines how education anthologies used in ultra-Orthodox Israeli schools frame the concept of a chosen people. The title of Zighelboim's work, “You Have Chosen Us from Among all Nations,” draws from Natan Alterman's 1942 poem “Of All the Peoples” (Alterman, 1942/2018). Yet while Alterman's poetry conveys a deep discomfort with Jewish exceptionalism, Zighelboim's work demonstrates the positive valence of the concept of chosenness in ultra-Orthodox educational anthologies. By examining educational resources primarily aimed at a 6th grade audience, Zighelboim captures how ultra-Orthodox anthologies frame religious, ethnic, and territorial separatism, and she illuminates how this framing is both distinct from and related to the ways that the concept of chosenness appears in educational materials of Israeli state and state-religious schools as well.

Turning from materials that teach about the idea of chosenness to materials that teach Biblical Hebrew, the second article in this issue, “A Pedagogical Approach to Teaching Biblical Hebrew in American Day “Schools” presents Ziva Hassenfeld's system for teaching students to read, understand, and interpret Biblical text. While Zighelboim offers colorful descriptions of ultra-Orthodox Jewish education in Israel, Hassenfeld's materials for the teaching of Biblical Hebrew are quite literally in color as she explores what it might look like to make complex grammatical constructs accessible to young learners through color-coded visual cues. In this article, Hassenfeld develops a series of principles—the importance of word-by-word translation, focusing on the prefixes, suffixes, and roots of words, and making textual thinking explicitly visible to students—that might guide teachers’ work with students around the “it” of the Biblical text.

Next, in Carol Ingall's “Abram S. Isaacs, Educating Jews for Character and Continuity,” the focus turns to the writings of educator and author Abram S. Isaacs (1851–1920). Part intellectual biography, part analysis of the corpus of Isaacs’ writings, Ingall's work demonstrates how Isaacs functioned as journalist, rabbi, professor and educator committed to situating character education as central to the Jewish home. In this article, Ingall demonstrates how Isaacs transformed his ideas about character education into print materials, first as editor of the newspaper The Jewish Messenger and later as an author of books for adults, children, and families. In Ingall's vivid recounting of Isaacs’ successes and struggles to convey the importance of “Jewish virtues,” the “it” of the printed word—and especially the development of the genre of Jewish children's literature—clearly surfaces as central to the ongoing work of Jewish educators.

Hawkins’ conceptions of education as a triangular set of relationships—I, thou, and it—is clearly a riff on Buber's (1923/1970) dyadic I and thou. And yet, as the articles in this issue demonstrate, the “it” matters deeply for the work of education. The materials that educators craft and that students read—whether those are anthologies like the ones spotlighted in Zighelboim's work, curricular materials like those developed by Hassesnfeld, or the types of books for children and families that Ingal's work highlights—are the substance that shapes how students and teachers think about both Judaism and education.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.