Culture

restoring culture to Jewish cultural education

Zvi Bekerman

Sue Rosenfeld

pp. 47-62

in: Helena Miller, Lisa Grant, Alex Pomson (eds), International handbook of Jewish education, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

Philosophical and textual perspectives have long influenced the field of Jewish education. These approaches, however, offer only a partial understanding of the field. In this chapter, we suggest that enhancing our understanding of culture and its role in Jewish education might offer additional insights into the activities and practices of the field and contribute to a more complete understanding of Jewish education. We will follow the tradition of anthropologists by examining the central paradigmatic perspectives in the study and practice of general education and argue for the need to restore the concept of culture to its historical sources. We will then develop this "restored" concept into a methodology—cultural analysis—and demonstrate how it allows us to shift the focus of the educational investigation from the individual (who succeeds or fails according to a deficit model) to a more promising objective: the production of vital cultural contexts.