Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

During my time at Stanford I have been fortunate to work with a group of scholars who have sharpened my skills as a listener to music. Through working on social science research as an assistant to Dr. Ari Kelman, coursework in musicology, performance studies and Yiddish folklore, I have come to understand music both as a creative discipline and as a discursive tradition with the potential to expose unique insights into historical and social questions. Furthermore, studying music from an education standpoint has clarified for me the way the world of sound serves as a primary aspect of enculturation, both for performers and listeners.

In education literature, the sensory and non-verbal facets of experience are undervalued and underexplored resources in the construction and reproduction of culture. I am especially concerned with studying the intersection of musical experience and the process of enculturation.

I came to Stanford with a vague sense that I wanted to study transmission of musical culture and that I wanted to delve even more deeply into the cantorial music tradition I was involved with as a creative musician. As I began my research I was surprised and delighted to find that there was a cantorial music revival taking place in Brooklyn, just around the corner from where I used to live, both figuratively and literally.

The past two decades have seen a remarkable revival of early 20^th century cantorial styles among Chassidic Jewish singers. Chassidic Brooklyn is a conservative and inward-looking community that is marked by an ambivalent attitude towards the importation of “art” aesthetics into prayer practice. A young cohort of Chassidic cantorial singers is achieving star status in the world of Jewish music. For Chassidic cantors the bi-cultural sound of cantorial music, rooted in folk prayer practice and Euroclassical music, offers an opportunity for achievement in the realm of aesthetics and self-expression. My thesis, tentatively titled Golden Ages, explores how young Chassidic cantors in Brooklyn have claimed the music and culture of the “Golden Age” of cantorial music as a touchstone for the formation of their own aesthetics. The guiding research question around which my current research is organized is: How do musicians address the challenges faced in reviving a largely forgotten music genre to forge a successful path as a professional artist?

This question will be approached from the specific vantage point of Chassidic singers and will draw into focus the advantages their cultural background gives and the unique challenges they face. While my project is not framed as a comparative study, the learning and career formation issues faced by young Chassidic cantors bare a close relationship to issues faced by artists in other music revivals. Like the blues revival of the 1960s, or the current avante garde jazz scene, the cantorial revival is organized around a recorded music legacy genre that it seeks to extend into the present.

My central research question provides room for discussion of the ways in which the culturally syncretic history of cantorial music provides sonic and emotional resources that are resonant for contemporary Chassidic artists. The history of bi-cultural expression that is written into the cannon of cantorial music is pungently relevant for Chassidic singers whose home culture is organized around opposition to the dominant non-Jewish culture. For the artists I am writing about, genre revival of cantorial music offers a platform from which to speak about deeply felt issues including: aspirations for personal self-expression; theological and anti-theological probing of religious ideas and emotions; defining a sonic aesthetic that is emotionally and intellectually satisfying and relevant; expressing ethnic and class identity.

As I begin to transition from doing research and taking graduate seminars to teaching and writing my thesis, I look back on the journey I have undertaken at the Stanford Graduate School of Education Concentration in Jewish Studies with a great deal of excitement and satisfaction. I can see now that the tentative questions I began my research with have solidified into a stream of ideas and research concerns that I am thrilled to be engaged with and look forward to addressing over the coming years. These interests include exploring the relationship of history and creative musical careers, the interweaving of “folk” and “institutional” transmission of musical traditions, and the connections and disjunctions between group identities and the individual paths of artists.

Jeremiah Lockwood is a PhD candidate in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University. While engaged in his scholarship, Jeremiah continues to pursue a busy career as composer and performer in the bands The Sway Machinery and Book of J.

Read the first blogs in the series, here and here.

Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

My experience as a PhD student in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University is exceeding my expectations in every possible way. The interdisciplinary nature of the concentration has been especially valuable because I have been able to take classes in, and learn methodologies from, the fields of sociology and education policy. As a result, I examine American Jews and their experiences with Jewish education within the broader social context in which they live. Through my interdisciplinary training and collaborations with scholars outside of Jewish studies, I hope to advance the theoretical and methodological rigor in the Jewish education field.

A particularly helpful part of my studies at Stanford is my fellowship from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) (part of the GSE Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA)). The IES Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Analysis provides doctoral students with advanced training in state-of-the-art quantitative methods of discipline-based education policy analysis. Through this program, I am participating in an interdisciplinary core curriculum consisting of coursework in education policy, discipline-based theory, and applied quantitative research methods. I hope to significantly improve the way scholars, funders and practitioners of Jewish education think about evaluating the effectiveness of their work.  There are ample opportunities to conduct more rigorous research and evaluation studies by improving our standards for what counts as rigorous research, and by adapting quasi-experimental methods used by scholars of public education.

As I work towards completing my Certificate in Quantitative Research Methods through the CEPA IES Program, I am exploring the interaction of religion and education in three populations: families, adolescents, and emerging adults. I think it is quite misleading to study American Jews separately from their social environments. Thus, in most of my research, I examine Jews in the non-Jewish contexts they inhabit to illuminate how social contexts and sociological phenomenon influence their lives and choices about Jewish engagement and Jewish education. 

Currently, I am looking at how being religious affects how adolescents and college students from all religious denominations in the U.S. perform in school. Central to this work is my dissertation entitled, The Long Arm of God: How Religiousness Shapes Educational Outcomes. Based on secondary analyses of longitudinal surveys and interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion, I find that more religious students consistently report better grades than their less religious peers, even after accounting for social class, gender, and race. I find that religious adolescents are more conscientious and agreeable, traits that are linked with academic success. Being religious helps adolescents in middle/high school because they are rewarded for being obedient, respectful, disciplined, and cooperative. Next, I will examine whether the traits that help religious adolescents in high school continue to help them in college.

As I progress in my studies, I look to further hone my interests, build relationships with colleagues, and continue exploring new areas of research. I am particularly excited about my collaboration with five Stanford scholars, including Abiya Ahmed, to conduct longitudinal surveys and interviews with 150 Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, and Christian college freshmen over their first year. Our goal is to understand how they form social networks and construct their identities from the time they set foot on campus. We focus on how identity construction occurs through social networks by building on earlier research I did with Dr. Ari Kelman and my colleagues to examine how American Jews construct, negotiate, and reaffirm their Jewishness through ongoing social interactions. This research serves as a counter narrative to literature that conceives of Jewish identity as something that inheres in individuals, and can be cultivated, strengthened, or enhanced. Two papers resulting from this study are published in Contemporary Jewry and Jewish Social Studies.

I also want to note two key opportunities that would help strengthen the Jewish education field. First, we would greatly benefit from stronger researcher-practitioner partnerships (although this is not a problem solely in the Jewish education field). It is a shame that scholars conduct research that never reaches the hands of our educators and decision-makers. And, it is a shame that Jewish organizations don’t have more opportunities to collaborate with researchers to build their knowledge and to improve their work. With help from The AVI CHAI Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, and The Crown Family, among others, CASJE (whose Board I recently joined) is bringing together researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders to strengthen our field.

Second, we need to do a better job designing studies to identify strategies and practices that predict learning and engagement. This means better evidence using regression techniques, which allow for deeper analysis and understanding of associations between variables. Our field needs to raise the standards for what counts as quality research and to incorporate decades of knowledge from the general education field. Of course, none of this can happen without stellar graduate programs to train future scholars.

Ilana M. Horwitz is a PhD Candidate in Sociology of Education & Jewish Studies at the Stanford School of Education

Read the first piece in the series from Abiya Ahmed.

Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

Before I started my Stanford doctoral program, I was a middle school English teacher at a Bay Area Islamic school. My experience there formed my research interests, which led me to a search for suitable doctoral programs that would allow me to research the intersection of religion and education. Few schools of education in the country offer such a program, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Stanford had an Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) concentration that could possibly fit my own academic pursuits. I met with Ari Kelman, the Jim Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies, to indicate my research interests regarding Islamic and Jewish education specifically as well as religion and education broadly. He encouraged me to apply, and here I am three years later, a doctoral candidate now halfway through my program.

My experience thus far has exceeded my expectations in that I’ve been able to not only pursue my research interests but also expand them, while exploring opportunities I had not expected. I have learned significantly from being part of research teams and working on projects like exploring Jewish students’ experiences in relation to political activism on campus, or how people learn to be religious and develop religious commitments. For my own research, I have done long-term ethnography of an Islamic high school to explore what makes it Islamic, and I am currently developing my dissertation proposal around how Muslim college students negotiate traditional religious authority with their lived experience of being Muslim at various higher education institutions. In attempting to understand how Jewish students might navigate similar terrain, this is an important comparison case.

In terms of opportunities, being in this program at Stanford has exposed me via conferences to other academics and graduate students exploring issues of religion and education, as well as the chance to apply for related grants. This year, Ilana Horwitz (another Jim Joseph Foundation awardee and my colleague) and I received the IDEALS grant from Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), through which we are examining the role of social class in students’ interfaith engagement. While all of these projects are distinct in some ways, they are also interconnected in ways that I had not imagined, drawing on sociological and anthropological literature related to religion, religious practices, belief, belonging, and associated issues of identity, power, authenticity, and authority.

In this way, working on religion and education broadly, per the EDJS concentration’s approach, allows me to consider both universals and particulars within categories of religion and education and within their intersection. For instance, examining Jewish education / Jewish students highlights issues specific to the American Jewish experience, while exploring other traditions such as Islamic education / Muslim students, or examining other American religions and religious communities (including those who identfty as atheists, agnostics, or as religious Nones) allows for comparability across various traditions in terms of both historical trajectories and current realities. Additionally, bringing in other variables such as race, gender, and class and their intersection with religion nuances the research to offer perspectives that might not have been considered before.

Perhaps this is one of the most fruitful outcomes of being part of the EDJS concentration: acquiring the knowledge and skills to be able to examine a tradition or phenomenon in its own terms while also comparing it with significant others to draw nuanced conclusions and say something about each of those. My work has thus far been interdisciplinary cutting across sociology, anthropology, but also religious studies and education. In future I hope to continue researching and writing across these fields and exploring issues of religion and education, construing them both broadly in terms of institutional and non-institutional settings, and across various kinds of religious communities. Needless to say, I have come a long way from being a middle school English teacher: in that setting, my “on-the-ground” reality surely set the tone for my future work, but it’s only after exploring religion and education in terms of historical and contemporary factors and via various disciplinary lenses have I been able to better grasp those realities.

For all that I’ve been able to learn so far, I can say this with enthusiastic confidence: there’s so much more where that’s coming from, and I find myself at the cusp of more exciting personal opportunities as well as (hopefully) meaningful contributions to academia and practice.

Abiya Ahmed is a doctoral candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she studies the intersection of religion and education from anthropological and sociological perspectives. Her work addresses various American religions and religious communities, with a focus on the American Jewish and the American Muslim experience. 

Against the backdrop of a nation strained by senseless race-based police killings and the most serious wave of racial injustice seen in fifty years, more and more Jewish community leaders have been awakened – moved to both wonder about their role in advancing racial justice, and to deeply reflect about how daily and institutional expressions of racism affect Jews, specifically Jews of Color who navigate the world in brown and black skin.

Out loud, leaders have begun to wonder about our lives – are we, Jews of Color safe? Do we feel welcome? Are we treated with fairness? Are we able to move though our Jewish community without obstacle – with comfort and ease? Do we feel valued? Are we seen? Are we heard? And beyond the immediate they wonder about our community network. How do we connect and plug-in to the community infrastructures in ways that are purposeful and powerful? Do we feel like this is our Jewish community, too?

To answer these questions, in September 2016, the Leichtag Foundation in partnership with other funders and organizational leaders convened 12 Jewish, African American community leaders for a two-day, bring your whole self, let’s get into proximity, then relationship, then problem-solving partnership for serious think tanking, strategic conversing, teaching, learning and ultimately activating!

The think-tank was not without its awkward and intensely uncomfortable moments. We barely made it through developing ground rules for the convening as “assume good will” fell flat when a Black colleague very gently explained that Black people in the United States have no reason to assume good will of White people given the institutionalized racism that is endured on a daily and pervasive basis – Jewish community most definitely included. And I think we were all uncertain if we’d make it to the end of the two days when, the funders were challenged to respond to questions about how racism plays out in Jewish funding efforts and decisions. However, what could have been a difficult and fruitless gathering did not go bust. Everyone involved met the awkwardness and discomfort with warmth, humor, an inquiry posture, (cautious) openness and optimism and collaboration. In fact, when the entire collective decided our experience together needed to be more like graduate school than a retreat, we developed mini-courses in real time on African American History, Jewish History, and the History of Jewish Philanthropy taught by the leaders in the room. We also had seminar-style discussions on topics like, What’s in the Way of Jewish Funders Funding Jews of Color? You can imagine the conversation was robust.

In retrospect, the gathering was such a gutsy thing for funders to initiate and for Jewish leaders of Color to say yes to. And it proved to be a watershed collaboration moment for both the Jews of Color and the Jewish Philanthropic leaders resulting in the nation’s first ever philanthropic fund and grant activity expressly dedicated to responding to racial injustice through helping further establish, fortify and build-out the Field for Jews of Color.

In Winter 2017, infused with pooled-resources from the Think-Tank anchors – the Leichtag Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and the Jim Joseph Foundation – the Fund for Jews of Color Field Building released an initial request for proposals. Six grants were awarded, and today the Fund for Jews of Color Field Building is excited to support:

• Bend the Arc, Seleh Cohort 15 a best-in-class leadership program for Jews of Color that provides training for leaders, new tools to enhance personal vision and facilitate organizational change, and the opportunity to learn with innovative and inspiring Jewish social change leaders.
• Dimensions, a national nonprofit training and consulting organization specializing in diversity and inclusion led by Yavilah McCoy, focusing on leadership development – facilitating a cohort of Jews of Color working at the intersection of critical conversations, racial justice and working with Allies.
• Courtney Parker, a national educational leader and program designer partnering with Dimensions to develop program modules supporting the training of a cohort of leaders who are Jews of Color.
• Jews in All Hues led by Founder and Executive Director Jared Jackson, focusing on organizational development.
• The Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN) represented by Board Chair Tamara Fish, bringing together more than 100 Jews of Color for the Second National Jews of Color Convening, with a focus on deepening leadership skills and building institutional capacity.
• The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) with April Baskin, and their 2018 JewV’Nation Fellowship Jews of Color Cohort focused on a successful leadership development program for visionary Jewish leaders that includes educational seminars, cohort relationship building, individualized coaching, and intensive in-person retreats.

We are half-way through the current grant round, and it’s stunning to hear back from the grantees about their work and experience so far with the resources provided by the nascent Fund for Jews of Color Field Building. As a result of the six grants made, right this very moment there are three separate cohorts of Jews of Color Leaders being developed. By the fall, more than 100 Jews of Color connected to the Jewish organizational ecosystem will have gained new leadership skills and their organizations will have additional capacities developed. By the close of the grant round, vital organizations led by Jews of Color and their leaders will be stronger, and better positioned to continue and to amplify their already excellent work.

And this work really matters. By 2042 the United States will be at least half people of color. And 71% of non-Orthodox Jews marry non-Jews. And that’s within a context in which we know that way back in 2003 the US-based Jewish community was somewhere between 13%-20% Jews of Color. The next generation of baby Jews is going hued.

Racial diversity is all around us. And US-based Jewish racial diversity is not a dilemma or a challenge to be solved. It’s simply a fact. The challenge to be solved is how to successfully build the bridges, pathways and highways needed to more meaningfully, purposefully and effectively connect together the diversity of our community. The Fund for Jews of Color Field Building is taking on some of that challenge. Inspired by a team of racially diverse Jewish community leaders, and anchored by the voices and experience of Jews of Color, The Fund is one example of partnership-based, equity and reality-informed philanthropic activity that is strengthening our Jewish community for today, and building and reinforcing our community for tomorrow.

Ilana Kaufman is a Berkeley-based community relations professional. She is a Schusterman Fellow, public speaker, occasional author, strategic designer, planner and problem solver. Ilana works with Jewish organizations and philanthropic entities navigating the intersection of Jewish community, Jewish identity and racial justice.

originally posted in eJewishPhilanthropy