Tikvah Fellowship Program
Annual Theme 2011 - 2012
"Law & Jewish Civilization – The Challenge of Pedagogy, Education and Transmission"
The Tikvah Center is dedicated to a new approach to the study and teaching of “Jewish Law.” The following are some pertinent lines from our Mission Statement.
The foundational premise of the Center is 1) that the study of Jewish law can profit immensely from insights gained from general jurisprudence; and 2) that Jewish law and Jewish civilization can provide illuminating perspectives both on the general study of law as a per se academic discipline, and on the reflection of law as a central social institution refracting the most important issues in our society… We understand Jewish civilization broadly. Surely, Nomos, Torah and Halakha have been and continue to be primordial in the Jewish experience. Indeed, in the comprehensive entanglement of law and life, Judaism antedates our more contemporary experience. However, it would be reductive and limiting to define the parameters of Jewish civilization within legal confines, important and broad as the worlds of Torah and Halakha are. Correspondingly, it would be equally reductive and limiting to define the canon of the Great Texts and great thinkers of Jewish civilization to the canon of Halakhik and Rabbinical texts – important as these are. Jewish civilization, in its long history, is far broader. If we consider, by way of illustration, the 20th Century, in our conception of Jewish civilization, Buber, Rosenzweig, Agnon, and Levinas are as important as, for instance, Kook, Feinstein or Heschel. It is this broad understanding of Jewish Law and civilization which informs the identity of the Center.
For the Academic Year 2011-2012 The Tikvah Center would welcome fellowship applications from scholars and educators, the focus of whose research and writing project during the year would be less on the substance of Law & Jewish Civilization as outlined in the Mission Statement, and more on the problems and challenges of teaching (and learning) – of articulating and transmitting this heritage. Proposed Fellowship Projects might focus on pedagogical or institutional issues (e.g. innovative ways of teaching; different institutional arrangements such as the Yeshivah, or University, or ‘Sunday schools’); they may concern different educational and transmission targets (e.g. school children; secondary or tertiary educational setting, adult education); they may be theoretical dealing with epistemic and cognitive issues (for example, studying and reflecting on the different ways a Talmudic Sugiya is studied or has been studied historically in different settings and different epochs and how it may be studied with different disciplinary tools) or pragmatic and programmatic, exploring new curricula or teaching methods. We welcome innovation and ‘thinking outside the box’ projects grounded in solid scholarly and methodological sophistication.
The Tikvah Center also welcomed applications from Educators who are not professional academics – e.g. School Principals, Rashei Yeshivot in Academic year 2011–2012.
