Shows
New Books in EducationLaura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, sacc...2024-07-281h 10
New Books in ReligionLaura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, sacc...2024-07-281h 10
New Books in Jewish StudiesLaura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, sacc...2024-07-281h 10
New Books in American StudiesLaura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, sacc...2024-07-281h 10
From the Square: An NYU Press PodcastLaura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, sacc...2024-07-281h 10
72 Miles til KentuckyChapter 8: The HolidaysWhen you’re Jewish, it seems like the holidays are always around the corner, and there always seems to be some sort of competition. Whether it’s the High Holidays just as school gets into full swing, or how Chanukah and Passover often, but confusingly not always, overlap with Christmas and Easter. There’s a lot of explaining to do, and partnerships to be built. That’s what led my mother into my elementary school classrooms, where she fried latkes and read Herschel and Chanukah Goblins for me and my Christian classmates. It’s also what led her into in...2024-04-2230 min
Writing It!Episode 17: Writing while ParentingYou don’t have to be a parent to get something out of our conversation with Professor Laura Yares about “Writing While Parenting.” In this conversation, we speak about how to get writing done while caretaking; how to best take advantage of limited time to write; writing when the family stakes are high; time-blocking; lingering Covid trauma; finding and building an academic writing community; letting our writing lie fallow; dealing with the loneliness of parenting within academia; leaning in to the creative parts of our academic jobs; and the importance of modeling good “professor-ing with a family” boundaries.
Don't fo...2024-02-1253 min72 Miles til KentuckyChapter 3 – The Untold Jewish History of Bowling Green, KYMy family moved to Bowling Green in 1987, but we weren’t the first Jews to live there, far from it. Jews had been settling in Bowling Green for over 150 years, drawn by economic prosperity. Jewish merchants helped open up the American frontier, wherever they could a stream or railroad to follow. They learned to adapt their faith and traditions to a new place, one where there wasn’t a Jewish community to rely on. And when their children grew older, and fell in love, it was sometimes with a local Christian kid. In this episode, I speak with D...2023-12-1434 min
Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish EducationEpisode 18: What 19th Century Jewish Education Can Teach Us about Jewish Education Today | Professor Laura YaresMost histories of American Jewish education deride 19th-century Jewish Sunday schools. But when Laura Yares looked more closely at the curricula, the operative philosophies and the experiences that students and teachers had in these schools, she found that they did important cultural work. In this session, she discusses her recent book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, and describes what educators can learn from this pioneering generation in American Jewish education..Originally recorded: 10/19/23At the Mandel Center, we are committed to advancing the field of Jewish educational scholarship, especially scholarship on...2023-10-3030 min
Adapting: The Future of Jewish EducationWhere Does the Pendulum Swing?To kick off an inspiring new season of "Adapting: The Future of Jewish Education," David Bryfman dissects the origins of Sunday School in America with Laura Yares, as the pair discusses her new book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. This exploration, including a deep dive into the important role women played in pioneering accessible Jewish education, prompts a question that's still very much relevant to educators today: What holds greater significance in Sunday School, the content children learn or the emotional impact they experience? And where should that pendulum be swinging?This ep...2023-09-1438 min
Judaism UnboundEpisode 389: Jewish Sunday Schools, Then and Now - Laura YaresLaura Yares is the author of a brand-new book, entitled Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about her book -- in some ways about Sunday Schools, to be sure, but in other ways a chance to explore the broader question, "What even is religion?" , through the history of Sunday Schools in the 19th century. They also ask what the book can help us learn, today, about our 21st century Jewish landscape.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about...2023-07-2859 minLearning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish EducationEpisode 2: Learning at a Jewish Museum | Professor Laura YaresWhat happens when young adults visit a Jewish museum? What do they learn about Jews and Judaism, and how are they changed by what they see, touch, hear and feel? In this talk, Laura Yares discusses findings from a pre-pandemic study of 30 young adult visitors to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and describes the rich learning that can occur in episodic, leisure time Jewish educational settings. This study has been published as a chapter of the edited volume Portraits of Adult Jewish Learning: Making Meaning at Many Tables.Originally recorded: 11/11/212022-11-0124 min