Text, Context, and Knowledge Building: Creating, Crisscrossing, and Rising above Jewish Identity

ABSTRACT Jewish education in Israel’s non-religious state (Mamlakhti) schools is intended to support an open-ended, pluralistic dialogue surrounding the question of Jewish identity. The distinct features of Knowledge Building Communities (KBCs) set them apart as a pedagogical approach that is particularly suitable for achieving this educational goal. In this article, we report on a year-long study that redesigned a tenth-grade Jewish philosophy class in Israel as a KBC. Our findings indicate that students co-created a Jewish-identity idea landscape, which they crisscrossed and rose above, to develop a deeply nuanced understanding of contemporary Jewish identity in Israel.