Haim Aronovitz | Dr. Howard Deitcher | Dr. Jen Glaser | Prof. Gabriel Horenczyk | Dr. Jonathan Mirvis | Alex Pomson | Dr. Marc Silverman
Haim Aronovitz
Haim Aronovitz previously directed the Israel Experience Staff Training Institute at Melitz, where he worked for twelve years. During that period, he frequently accompanied missions as a scholar-in-residence, as well as coordinating the educational program of the Otzma leadership program. He served on the staff of the Summer Institute for Teachers (JETI) of the Melton Centre from 1989 to 2000 and has worked in field research on Israel Programs, as well as teaching in Jerusalem and South Africa.
He holds a B.A. and M.A., as well as Teacher’s Diploma, all from The Hebrew University.
See Haim Aronovitz’s course with Dr. Marc Silverman, The Place of Israel in Contemporary Jewish Culture and Education
Dr. Howard Deitcher
Dr. Howard Deitcher is a faculty member at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University and its former director. In addition, he is the director of the Florence Melton Institute for Adult Jewish Learning at Hebrew University. Dr Deitcher is the current educational director of the Revivim Program at Hebrew University, which trains outstanding university students to teach Bible in Israeli national (non-religious) schools. He also serves as the academic advisor for the Legacy-Heritage Fund Institute for Jewish Studies teachers at the Hebrew University. He has published numerous articles, co-edited four books, and produced several teaching guides that are being used in schools in Israel and around the Jewish world.
Dr. Deitcher is currently directing educational projects in 5 countries worldwide and is a member of a team that recently received a grant from the Covenant Foundation to produce a Bible Education program integrating a Philosophy for Children Approach for Jewish Schools in the USA. He is writing a children’s book on “Questions about God and the Meaning of Life”, and is also researching “Questions of Jewish Spirituality in Children’s Lives.”
See Dr. Deitcher’s course, Curriculum and the Teaching of Jewish Texts
Dr. Jen Glaser
Dr. Glaser is founder and co-director of the Israel Centre for Philosophy in Education – “Philosophy for Life” (ICPE). She is engaged in educational projects with schools, higher education institutions and community organizations in Israel and abroad (Europe, USA and Australia). Dr. Glaser currently leads a Covenant Foundation initiative based at the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, Ohio titled: “Engaging Texts” which involves developing a teacher network for Jewish educators involved in engaging students in Philosophical Inquiry around Biblical texts.
In 2010-11 she was a visiting scholar at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Between 1999 and 2011 she was a senior faculty at the Mandel Institute, Jerusalem. Dr. Glaser is a past president of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) and currently serves on the ICPIC executive. Her main areas of research include Philosophy for Children, theories of personal identity and group membership, pluralism, civic education, justice-oriented democracy, philosophy of education, critical thinking, hermeneutics, children’s theological reasoning and the connection between philosophical inquiry and Jewish education. Jen holds a PhD. in philosophy from Melbourne University, Australia, and a teaching degree from the University of Sydney.
See Dr. Glaser’s course, The Philosophical World of the Young and its Implications for Jewish Education
Prof. Gabriel Horenczyk
Professor Gabriel Horenczyk is a faculty member of the School of Education and the Melton Centre for Jewish Education, both at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His major areas of teaching and research are: Psychological aspects of cultural and ethnic identity; identity and adaptation of immigrants; immigrants in schools; the school acculturative context; religiosity, spirituality, and identity; museum multicultural education. Professor Horenczyk serves as the regional representative and member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology. He headed the Israeli team of the ICSEY study (International Comparative Study of Ethnocultural Youth), and is currently conducting a comparative study on overt and hidden dropout among immigrants.
See Prof. Horenczyk’s course, Social Sciences and Jewish Identity
Dr. Jonathan Mirvis
Jonathan is a senior lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is Hebrew University’s foremost academic specialist in social entrepreneurship, social innovation and adult Jewish education. He lectures to graduate students and conducts research on these subjects at the Hebrew University’s Melton Centre for Jewish Education, The School of Social Work’s Program in Non-Profit Management, The Business School’s MBA Program and the Glocal International Program.
In 2004 he received the Kaye Innovation Award for his development of the social franchise model.
Over the past two academic years, he received special recognition for excellence in lecturing.
Parallel to his academic career, Jonathan was the International Director of The Florence Melton Adult Mini-school for two decades.
Jonathan is currently writing a book on social entrepreneurship in the context of Jewish education in the Diaspora.
See Dr. Mirvis’s course, Leadership and Innovation in Jewish Education
Alex Pomson
Alex Pomson is Director of Research and Evaluation at Rosov Consulting. He is a member of the faculty at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University where he served as a Senior Researcher. He trained in History at the University of Cambridge and received his Ph.D. in Religious Education from the University of London. He was the Head of Jewish Studies at the King Solomon High School. He served as Associate Professor of Jewish Teacher Education at York University, Toronto, where he coordinated York’s Jewish Teacher Education Programme. He is past chair of the Network for Research in Jewish Education.
He is the co-author of Back to School: Jewish Day School as a Source of Meaning in the Lives of Adult Jews. He is co-editor of Jewish Schools, Jewish Communities: a Reconsideration, The International Handbook of Jewish Education and Speaking in the Plural: Jewish Education and Pluralism.
See Alex Pomson’s course, Renewing the Practice of Israel Education
Dr. Marc Silverman
Dr. Marc Silverman is a senior lecturer at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His academic expertise, research and teaching center on two interrelated fields of educational inquiry and practice: Present-day ideologies of Jewish life, culture and education; and religious, moral, progressive and radical philosophies of education. The following article reflects his 1st field of inquiry: Elisheva Moatti and Marc Silverman (2008-2009) “Between the ‘Brenner Incident’ and Present Day Conceptions of Jewish Culture and Education”, in Modes of Educational Translation – Studies in Jewish Education, Volume XIII, Jonathan Cohen & Elie Holzer (editors), Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, p. 193-223 (in Hebrew). His book in Hebrew entitled The Child is a Person: Janusz Korczak’s Educational Thought, published in March 2012, by the Mofet Institute publishing house in Tel-Aviv, reflects his second field of interest.
See Dr. Silverman’s course with Haim Aronovitz, The Place of Israel in Contemporary Jewish Culture and Education