Change and Challenge: Jewish Education in the Time of COVID-19

As scholars, educators, and humans in the world, we have read, written, and heard all the buzz words related to COVID-19 and education: learning loss, zoom fatigue, pivot, digital divide, unprecedented, and the new normal. As guest co-editors, we initially had some concerns in late spring of 2020 when the idea for this special issue was conceived about what it could add to this ongoing discourse, as well as its timeliness, given the length of time it takes to produce and publish an issue like this. It is now late 2021, we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and we realize that this issue is as timely as ever, capturing teaching and learning experiences from the first year of what is an ongoing global pandemic. At the same time, as optimists who believe that one day the COVID-19 pandemic will be something we speak about only in the past tense, we recognize that this issue will one day be an artifact of the collective educational crisis we all experienced. How will we look back at this moment and the changes it brought in 5, 10 or 20 years? We cannot make any predictions about what changes in education will be long lasting, but we are proud to be associated with the authors and the journal’s editorial team, as we sought to document change in action. This special issue of the Journal of Jewish Education is an opportunity to pause, go deeper, and see what was – and still is – happening inside Jewish educational settings as a result of the pandemic. These articles show that while schools and institutions faced tremendous challenges, purposeful teaching and meaningful learning continued despite the abrupt shift to the online context. The educators and learners who were subjects of the studies written about in this issue showed resilience and creativity, and so, too, did the authors of the articles, who produced excellent work, in record time, under trying circumstances. The articles in this issue present findings from different educational learning modalities (fully online and hybrid), different content (Israel studies, Bible, rabbinics), range of ages (from young children to adults), and contexts (day schools to supplementary settings, North American to international settings). Five of the articles in this issue were produced as part of the Online Jewish Education fellowship. Project Director, Ziva Hassenfeld, offers the following as background to the inception and results of this fellowship: JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION 2021, VOL. 87, NO. 4, 265–269 https://doi.org/10.1080/15244113.2021.1995242