“So I Looked Up Modesty on Wikipedia ...”: Religious Identity and Inquiry Learning in Jewish Schools

• In Event: Judaism and Education

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of the implementation of project based learning in modern Orthodox Judaic studies classes that deal predominantly with analysis of religious texts. Primarily using data from in-depth videotaped observation of one such school, as well as interviews with teachers in this school, this paper argues that some modern Orthodox schools in the U.S. have used current educational theory to reimagine traditional forms of Jewish textual study. This has changed student identity in relation to the subjects studied from one in which religious study is something foreign, imposed over their regular lives, to one in which religious study is integrated into students’ lives in a meaningful way.

Author

• Moshe Krakowski, Yeshiva University