My Enemy, My Neighbour: Characteristics and Challenges of Arabic Instruction in Israeli-Jewish Society

This article examines Arabic instruction in Israeli Hebrew schools with regard to the political, social, cultural, historical and pedagogical issues shaping it. It examines challenges facing Arabic instruction in Israel's education system, emphasising the dissonance between potential benefits of studying Arabic and its overall marginalised status in Israel. This article argues that that the main factors shaping Arabic instruction in Israeli-Jewish schools since 1948 are official security considerations and security claims — Arabic is studied as the language of the enemy and not the neighbour. A radical policy shift is required to ‘civilianise’ and demilitarise Arabic instruction and transform it into a bridge for understanding between Israeli-Jews, Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, in particular, the Palestinians, in general, as well as Israel's Arab neighbours in the Middle East.

Parental Involvement in the Arab and Jewish Educational Systems

To date, no comparison has been made between the Arab and Jewish educational systems regarding parental involvement. This preliminary study examines the perceptions about parental involvement as described by the pedagogic staff and compares the two sectors (Jewish vs. Arab as two ethno-religious groups). Staff members from four elementary schools (two Jewish schools and two Arab schools) were interviewed. The findings indicate that parental involvement in the Arab sector is lower than in the Jewish sector. The Arab parents have more respect and trust towards the school, the principal, and the teachers compared to the Jewish parents. This is reflected by lower involvement of the Arab parents in comparison to the Jewish parents. While Jewish parents who volunteer for parents’ associations use their status to promote their personal interest (their child’s benefit) and less desire to contribute to the school, Arab parents volunteer more to help the principals and teachers to get resources from the Mayor/ Head of the municipal council and less for their own child’s benefit. The depth and the type of parental involvement in the Jewish and the Arab educational systems can be explained by cultural differences, namely an individualistic Jewish society vs. a collectivistic Arab society.

Materials of I.M. Pulner on the Ethnography of the Georgian Jews in the Аrchive of the Russian Ethnographic Museum: 1926–29

The article introduces one of the documentary sources on the history and ethnography of the Georgian Jews stored in the archive of the Russian Ethnographic Museum – field materials collected by I. M. Pulner in his expeditions to Georgia in 1926, 1928, and 1929. The introductory part of the article provides a brief summary of the main stages of his professional activity, wherein his study of the Georgian Jews ethnography dates back to his student years. The expeditions he carried out at that time were the first experience of purposeful ethnographic study of this Jewish ethnic group. Pulner's field materials accrue special scientific value as they contain real facts and people’s statements, as well as ethnographer’s direct observations, which give a fairly objective idea of everyday culture and socio-economic conditions of the Georgian Jews in the second half of the 1920s. The documents of the archive include expedition journal and report, as well as separate notes on various areas of Georgian Jewish culture. Most notes date from Pulner’s first trip to Kutaisi; in the following two years, he mostly visited villages where the Georgian Jews lived, but the archive of the Museum contains only several his recordings of weather wisdom, culinary recipes, and song lyrics written down in these trips. The article chiefly analyses Pulner’s Kutaisi materials. Drawing on them, methods and peculiarities of his ethnographic work among the local Jews are revealed; areas in which he collected his data are described; certain information is cited concerning occupation, material situation, organization of religious life, specificity of religious rituals performed in synagogue, Sabbath celebration, state of Jewish education following the closure of Jewish schools during the Soviet era, attitude to the ideas of Zionism among the youth, relations (including matrimony) between the mountain Jews, Ashkenazi, and Georgians Jews, traditional dwelling and its decoration, festive and everyday food, clothing, folk sayings, wedding ceremonial rites, etc. Among all occupations, Pulner underscored trade, which remained the main occupation of the Jews of Kutaisi, although it fell into decay under the Soviet rule, forcing Jews to master new professions of porters and water sellers, which were considered lowly occupations in Georgia. Talking about the synagogue, he drew attention to the fact that among the Georgian Jews it was not just a place for performing religious rites, but also the center of the Jewish quarter residents’ social life; he noted the leading role of cantor in synagogue service and detailed its procedure. There are interesting materials about relationship between the Georgian Jews and the Jews of other ethnic groups (mountain, Ashkenazi) demonstrating their distancing, as well as materials on their close cooperation with the Georgians in everyday life. Information on material culture is brief and concerns mainly clothing worn by men and women. Of the wedding rituals, Pulner managed to record only matchmaking rites. He did not succeed in continuing a full-scale study the eorgian Jews, and those materials he collected during his student expeditions remain rare evidence of the Georgian Jews in the Soviet era.

Colonial vs Colonized Counter-Hegemonies: Two Vistas of Moroccan Educational Models

Both France and Spain used schooling as a vehicle in service of colonization during the Protectorate era in Morocco, whereas Moroccans retaliated with counter-hegemonic tools to resist and interrogate imposed educational models in order to implement their oppositional agendas. Thus, the paper is threefold: it attempts to revisit and sketch out both colonial policies in education with their ramifications, while outlining and analyzing their strengths and limitations. The study also seeks to investigate how Moroccans establish resistance movements to react to the newly-imposed colonial hegemonies, such as free schools and reformed traditional Qur’anic schools (Msids), discussing their goals, structures, success and failure. Finally, the paper explores colonial education as a site of interaction or “contact zones” between French and Spanish colonizers and elite Moroccan Muslims and Nationalists who sought to counter the processes of acculturation, marginalization and subalternization. The study covers the Moroccan schooling system from 1912 to 1956. The study dwelled on the congruity of education as an ideological apparatus to shape identity and/or dominate in a battlefield over power between the Protectorate powers and the Moroccan nationalists, who made use of different discourses as an instrument of power. This essay unravels some conclusions that both French and Spanish Protectorates utilized different vistas to establish and sustain their hegemonies through education and instruction, such as Franco-Berber schools and Spanish-Arab/Spanish-Jewish schools respectively. While, Moroccan Muslims and nationalists countered the former hegemonies through creating a free-school system and reforming traditional Qur´anic schools.

“I’ll Do Business with Anyone”

Given the surplus of Arab teachers and the shortage of Jewish teachers in Israel, the government has adopted the policy of employing Arab teachers in Jewish schools, contrary to the dominant nationalistic agenda. We argue that this low-cost solution meets the criteria for disruptive innovation in that it flies under the radar and has the potential to proliferate and change the existing social order. Through surveys and interviews with boundary-crossing Arab teachers, this article finds that teachers circumvent power structures in three social fields. In the Arab community, work in Jewish schools helps teachers bypass nepotism and provides a new path for upward mobility. In the education system, boundary-crossing teachers disrupt segregation. And at the state level, this innovation may improve Jewish-Arab relations.

Enclaves ethniques et stratégies résidentielles des Juifs à Toronto et Montréal

This paper explores the residential strategies developed by different waves of Jewish migrants in Toronto and Montreal since their early establishment in Canada. Tracking the creation of synagogues and centres of worship, as well as Jewish schools, allows us to evaluate their impact on the urban landscape. Where and how were these enclaves built? What were the strategies that have prevailed with each new wave of immigrants to incorporate their culture within these particular landscapes? Whereas religious and ethnic affiliations were essential expressions of identity in those enclaves, French language became the dominant factor of integration for Moroccan Jews in Quebec during the 1960s and 1970s. The paradox of their establishment in the 1960s is that even though most of them spoke French and founded their schools and main institutions in that language, they chose to live within established Jewish enclaves, which were multi-ethnic and anglophone. Did religion trump language?Cet article explore les stratégies résidentielles développées par différentes vagues de migrants juifs à Toronto et à Montréal depuis leur établissement initial au Canada. Suivre la création de synagogues et de centres de culte, ainsi que les écoles juives, nous permet d’évaluer leur impact sur le paysage urbain. Où et comment ces enclaves ont-elles été construites ? Quelles ont été les stratégies qui ont prévalu à chaque nouvelle vague d’immigrants pour intégrer leur culture dans ces paysages particuliers ? Alors que les affiliations religieuses et ethniques étaient des expressions essentielles de l’identité dans ces enclaves, la langue française est devenue le premier facteur de l’intégration des Juifs marocains au Québec dans les années 1960 et 1970. Le paradoxe de leur établissement dans les années 1960 est que, même si la plupart d’entre eux parlaient français et ont fondé leurs écoles et leurs principales institutions dans cette langue, ils ont choisi de vivre au sein des enclaves juives, qui étaient multiethniques et anglophones. La religion a-t-elle pris le pas sur la langue ?

From the History of Jewish Schools in Samarkand

This article describes the activities of Jewish schools in Samarkand region during the reign of the Russian Empire on the basis of archival documents. In Turkestan, the views and policies of the Russian government on Jewish education have been objectively assessed on the basis of sources. The author cited the number of Jewish schools in the province and the number of students in them on the basis of documents. The Jewish school in Samarkand, their educational system, their features are covered. Shortcomings and achievements in the education system of the Jewish diaspora were revealed.

Encouraging and Discouraging Factors in the Decision to Become an Israeli Leader in Religious Schools: Implications for Reforming Bureaucratic Mandates of the Ministry of Education

This mixed methodology study explored the reasons that teachers in Israel are motivated to become school leaders, and the relative importance of the different discouraging factors that worked against such interest. A cross-national Israeli survey included 39 individual interviews, 2 focus groups of 25 teachers each, and a questionnaire completed by 149 teachers working in Jewish schools. Findings indicate a sense of mission and personal challenge motivated our sample. The most significant discouraging factor was the perceived inability to circumvent bureaucratic constraints imposed by the Ministry of Education. Implications and reform efforts for reducing bureaucratic constraints upon school leaders are discussed.

Has religiosity become a key factor in Jewish Israelis' attitudes toward minorities? A call for research

PurposeAttitudes toward minority employees are hard to predict, and there is no enough information about the variables that are associated with increased and decreased prejudice toward them. The Jewish and Arab education systems in Israel are, for the most part, segregated, which may potentially contribute to prejudice and alienation between the two populations. The integration of Israeli–Arab teachers in Jewish schools has been suggested to reduce prejudice. The current study sought to examine Israeli teachers' attitudes toward the inclusion of Arab teachers in Jewish schools (AJ) and its relation to degree of religiosity, minority status and demographic variables.Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,644 teachers completed an online 22-item questionnaire that surveyed background variables such as gender, mother tongue, seniority and degree of religiosity, the two independent variables, religiosity and minority status, and the dependent variable, attitude toward the inclusion of AJ.FindingsOverall, teachers exhibited positive attitudes toward the integration of AJ. Multiple linear regression indicated that among Jewish teachers, the degree of religiosity was the strongest predictor of the teachers' attitudes toward inclusion but was a poor predictor among Arabs. Conversely, minority status was the strongest predictor among Arab teachers but was a poor predictor among Israeli Jews. Not only did religiosity differ in its prediction of attitudes among Arabs and Jews but also the patterns of religiosity were quite different among these two groups.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the overall sample was wide, the specific minority groups that were examined were small and did not allow deep exploration of minority nuances. The study's generalizability is hampered by the given exceptionality of the Israeli context, where “Church” and State are not separated. Religiosity was examined in a unidimensional way and failed to explore other related factors that may be relevant, such as political inclination.Practical implicationsThe study further refutes the notion of commonality among minorities. It proposes to place more emphasis on religion's role in attitudes toward minority employees. Further research into the role of religiosity in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward Arabs is needed.Social implicationsThe findings suggest that the degree of religiosity might be a central factor in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward the Arab minority in general.Originality/valueThe research calls attention to the association of Judaism and nationalism as well as segregation, contributing to negative attitudes and prejudice toward the Arab minority. Unlike previous research using contact theory, the authors call attention to the importance of examining willingness to make contact prior to examining the impact of contact itself.