Faith development in college students constitutes an important topic in higher education research, and Modern Orthodox Jewish college students are a small but particularly under-studied group of college-goers. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, this study explored how Modern Orthodox Jewish college students understood their religious…

Sacred teaching takes many forms across religious traditions, focusing on creation and sacramentality in Christianity, God's nature and creation of human beings in Judaism, and spiritual and social practices in both. At the heart of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions are accents on the sacredness of life, creation in the image of God, and…

Jewish identity, carrying the historical significance and sense of mission of Jewish people, is rather serious and contradictory to Jews. This thesis tries to analyse Yakov's journey from his abandonment of Jewish identity to his awakening of Jewishness and his spiritual growth, from his pursuit of exterior freedom to the freedom of all Jews…

Given the centrality of Shabbat celebration to the weekly cycle of Jewish residential camps, it is surprising how little Shabbat-at-camp has been studied. This participant observational study of three American Jewish residential camps has focused on how Shabbat-at-camp is created and how the ritual celebrations engage the older campers. This study…

This qualitative research aims to explore the experiences of teachers in the implementation of prayer services in religious high schools for girls in Israel. Twenty teachers from three different schools were interviewed as part of this qualitative research study. Interviews were conducted during 2017-2018. The research focused on what teachers…

Objectives: To examine the effect of spirituality and spiritual training on resilience in primary caregiver parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Methods: A cross-country pre- and post-test-based experimental design has been used. The sample of this one-year-long study comprised 1687 parents of children with ASD in 15…

There is a legal requirement that schools engage with the spiritual aspects of education, which encompasses pastoral care. This reflects the ethical sensibility that is present in individuals and underlies interactions with Others; and which should be part of the ethos of all educational institutions and especially schools. This is because…

Veteran staff members play a key role in a camp's success. They preserve camp culture, maintain traditions, and serve important roles in the peer-training environment that camps depend on. It is not surprising, then, that camp counselor retention is important to the business of camping. This study focused on five counselors from Jewish camps in…

I consider in this paper the question of balance in popular education between what we can call annunciation and denunciation, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire. By annunciation, I mean the role of love, affirmation, encouragement and profound encounters with otherness; by denunciation, I have in mind the spirit of critique and challenge to the…

The phenomenon of adopting a religious lifestyle is growing worldwide in general and in Israel in particular. In the Israeli context, the transition from a secular lifestyle to a religious one is defined as "repentance". Sociologists define the repentant as someone who has changed his or her beliefs, opinions and behaviours in the…

Indian play at North American Jewish summer camps offered three sets of overlapping lessons. First, by providing activities created and understood as respite from urban pressures, including donning and removing so-called primitive faux-tribal identities, camps reinforced Jewish urban, modernist values and virtues. Second, as Indian play…

International student mobility (ISM), particularly degree-mobility, has been primarily portrayed as the rational pursuit of economic advantage in an increasingly competitive and stratified global hierarchy of nations, academic institutions and qualifications. This focus on what has been portrayed as the pursuit of 'cosmopolitan capital', has led…

This study focuses on the phenomenon of Israeli backpacking as a function of traditional, observant, and secular population segments. We explored whether and to what degree backpacking features are related to the affinity of backpackers with the Jewish tradition and faith. Our study was based on a sample of 120 Israeli backpackers who had returned…

A study of alumni self-report on the impact of a yeshiva high school education: Exploring academic and spiritual development A growing body of research has documented the impact of non-academic factors on academics and the role those factors play at the college level (Webber & Ehrenberg, 2010; Massi, 2012; Wasielewski, 2014), however, little…

Based on a single-group one-year long evaluation study with 1,625 gifted children aged from 225 schools in 15 cities, this article examines whether participation in a spiritual education program increases their emotional intelligence. Results showed that gifted children's emotional intelligence scores were higher post--spiritual education program…