Since its founding in 2002, the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University has become the address for serious research on teaching and learning in Jewish education. One of the signature projects at the Mandel Center is the Beit Midrash Research Project, which investigates the purposes, pedagogy and practices of text study in havruta (pairs). Elie Holzer and Orit Kent have been conceptualizing, teaching, researching, and writing about this central mode of Jewish

more »

... for over a decade. This is the fi rst book based on their work. Holzer's and Kent's devotion to classical Jewish texts and the transformative power of text study is rooted in their own autobiographies and professional interests, but the research and teaching they describe here originated in the unique institution that they created for the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis. For ten years, I served with Holzer and others on the faculty of the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute, a professional development seminar for instructional leaders in Jewish education. A central activity in MTEI involved studying short rabbinic texts, mostly narratives, concerned with issues of teaching and learning. As we studied in havruta under Holzer's guidance, I saw clear parallels between his approach to text study and the inquiry stance toward teaching that MTEI and DeLeT embraced. I wanted the DeLeT fellows, future day school teachers, to experience this kind of text study; I hoped it would deepen their att achment to Jewish learning and help build intellectual and relational skills needed for teaching. I invited Holzer to come to Brandeis in the summer of 2003 to create a Beit Midrash for Teachers (BMT) as a central component of the DeLeT program. Orit Kent, a doctoral student in Jewish education at the time, had been studying how people learn in havruta and wanted to pursue this inquiry further. She joined Holzer in creating and teaching in the A c a d e m i c S t u d i e s P r e s s D o N o t D u p l i c a t e