Tagged education

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Foreign students planning to begin their studies in Israel this fall will be permitted to enter the country despite coronavirus restrictions that ban non-citizens. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said in a statement reported by The Jerusalem Post that “we have been making great efforts to maintain… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s education minister made it clear: Rise in coronavirus cases or not, schools in the country will open on time. “I say here to the citizens of the State of Israel, the school year will open on Sept. 1. Period,” Yoav Gallant said in an interview… Read more »

(JTA) – For Orthodox Jewish advocacy groups, the last day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 session brought a big win. On Tuesday, the high court handed school voucher proponents a victory in ruling that a state-run scholarship program funded by tax-deductible gifts could not exclude religious schools. The… Read more »

As soon as it became clear in March that COVID-19 would force school closures around the country, Jewish day school administrators faced a conundrum that went beyond the question of how to continue educating students. The challenge: how to maintain a sense of community at a time when everyone… Read more »

(JTA) — The principal of a charter school in Arizona no longer has his job after a former employee posted on social media a series of anti-Semitic and racist messages the principal sent to her. Justin Dye left the Heritage Elementary Charter School in Glendale on Monday, the Arizona… Read more »

(JTA) – Shuly Rubin Schwartz’s appointment as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s eighth chancellor comes just in time for the historian to guide the institution through a period of unprecedented crisis management. The flagship university of Judaism’s Conservative movement recently completed a major renovation project of its Morningside Heights campus… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Thousands of students in Jerusalem and other cities across the country were sent home Monday to isolation after staff and students were found to have COVID-19. Schools in Israel began opening more than two weeks ago after isolating for nearly two months due to the coronavirus.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Going to high school for the first time last month, Linda Shamah felt like many other incoming freshmen: really nervous and really excited. The large lecture-style classes seemed daunting. She’d be getting less personal attention from teachers. At the same time, she was looking forward… Read more »

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont spoke Oct. 9 to an estimated crowd of 11,000 at the Demeester Outdoor Performance Center at Reid Park. The rally marked the first large-scale event in Tucson by a national Jewish candidate and brought Sanders his first congressional endorsement. Former Connecticut… Read more »

Ben Louchheim (Photos courtesy Tucson Hebrew Academy)

At Tucson Hebrew Academy parents sometimes say “you keep them in a cocoon,” says Ronnie Sebold, director of admissions. But this cocoon also nurtures THA students as they embark on their high school years. “They get a lot of comfort here, learn skills and are academically so prepared and… Read more »

Hebrew High students (L-R) Shane Weinstein, Ariel Nadler and Ben Bressler celebrate Purim 2011 with a hamantashen break. (Courtesy Hebrew High)

Sharon Glassberg was a member of Tucson’s second Hebrew High graduating class in 1980. Thirty years later, as director of the Coalition for Jewish Education at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, she’s the principal of Hebrew High. The evening program’s main goal is still the same, to enhance… Read more »

Cindy Sadowsky with pre-school students at Temple Emanu-El

Temple Emanu-El’s Olga and Bob Strauss Early Childhood Education Center will add a full-day kindergarten class beginning in fall 2011. The kindergarten will include a fully integrated secular and Judaic curriculum, with an emphasis on emergent education, in which a teacher observes children’s natural interests and expands on them… Read more »

Learning to read is part of any school curriculum but loving to read is another story. For the past two years, Tucson Hebrew Academy has been using the Great Books Foundation K-12 program from the University of Chicago, an established literature curriculum that promotes outstanding reading choices and shared-inquiry… Read more »

Why read memoirs about terrible persecution? This provocative question was the focus of “Teaching the Holocaust: Diaries, Personal Correspondence and Memoir,” an in-service workshop for teachers held at the University of Arizona Poetry Center on Oct. 28. The workshop was organized by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Coalition… Read more »

Congregations Or Chadash, Chaverim, and Anshei Israel will hold a community Youth Mitzvah Day on Sunday, Oct. 31, combining their religious school studies. The event, open to all Jewish students from pre-K through 8th grade, will be held at Congregation Or Chadash from 9:30 a.m. to noon. The theme… Read more »

Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda enlightened Tucson Hebrew Academy middle school students about the origins of modern spoken Hebrew in a lecture at the school on Monday, Oct. 4. “My grandfather wanted to teach Hebrew as a living language so you could go to the store and buy a Coke,” Ben-Yehuda,… Read more »

The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has issued a position statement in opposition to Proposition 302 on the 2010 Arizona ballot. The statement notes that in 2009, the JCRC chose to focus its social justice efforts on the needs of local youth at… Read more »

An inservice workshop, “Teaching the Holocaust through Diaries, Personal Correspondence and Memoir,” with Harvard professor Susan R. Suleiman, will be held on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 E. Helen St. Suleiman is C. Douglas Dillon professor of the… Read more »

Hebrew High, a program of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Coalition for Jewish Education, will hold its orientation on Tuesday, Aug. 24 at Congregation Anshei Israel. Orientation for incoming students and parents will begin at 6 p.m., with an opportunity to meet teachers, enjoy pizza and ice cream,… Read more »

Guide with Holocaust educators on Centropa trip outside the entrance to Theresienstadt, a former concentration camp outside of Prague, July 2010 (Centropa)

PRAGUE (JTA) — Educators who teach Holocaust history face the same challenge every year: how to get students interested in one of history’s greatest tragedies more than 65 years removed from World War II. In the old days, the formula was straightforward. “You show kids horrifying pictures, scare them,… Read more »