We are excited to welcome the new director of Melton Centre, Dr Noga Bing.

Dr Bing arrives at the position with an exciting record in Jewish education. She was the Jerusalem director of the Be'eri Program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity of the Hartman Institute; she has written textbooks for teaching Israeli and Jewish culture and taught in the Revivim program, which aims to develop the teaching of  Judaism in secular Israeli high schools. During the last academic year she served as acting director of the department of teacher training at the Seymour Fox School of Education. In addition to her work in the Melton Centre she is a faculty member in Mandel Institute's Program for Leadership in the ultra-Orthodox community.

 

 

You have extensive experience in training teachers in general and for Jewish education in particular. What is your vision for the teaching of Judaism today?

 

The first thing is to understand why we are doing it. How do you strike a balance between deepening knowledge and relevance without the search for relevance being at the expense of the material's depth. My vision is to develop motivation for teaching and learning everything related to the humanities today, including discourse on identity and values, based on sources and textual analysis. One of the main goals is to ask how we can extract relevant questions and discussions from an ancient text.

 

Why is this important to you?

 

Because studying this material in a schematic and dry manner will not lead to a meaningful connection with the students. As far as the humanities are concerned, it will seem irrelevant to them. Also, these texts relate to fundamental values similar to those that concern us in our society today: equality, freedom, justice, care for others, empathy, and tolerance. As soon as we turn the textual study in the humanities into an engagement with culture, identity and values, we achieve knowledge and wisdom while relating to what is relevant to our students and us and to what is happening around us on both a personal and national level.

 

The international program of Melton Centre is a home for dozens of non-Israeli students and alumni. What do you think about Diaspora Jewish identity in relation to current challenges in Jewish education?

 

Today we are witnessing significant and deepening gaps between Israel and the Diaspora. I think that there is a great need for Israelis to know the educational values ​​and challenges today in Diaspora Jewry. 

Besides the gender discussion, there are many tense and challenging gaps in questions regarding Israel education; this is another realm that I want to develop at Melton. To be able to ask the question: What does Israel education mean today?

 

What do you mean by Israel education?

 

Everything related to Israel studies, for example, learning about  Zionism, the army, the conflict and politics. I want to ask how Jewish education can deal with Israeli values ​​and how Israeli values influence and are influenced by education in Israel.

Another thing that interests me is the teacher-student relationship around Jewish sources. Today, there is a deep crisis of trust among the three sides of this triangle: students, parents, and teachers. There is a big lack of trust there. Attention, trust, and the relationship between teacher and student must be at the heart of the discourse again. I teach a course on this in the context of Hassidism. Throughout Jewish history, there have been different references and interpretations around this topic, and I strongly believe this topic should be brought back into the discourse.

Another thing that interests me is what happens to Israeli Jewish education after school hours. Many of our graduates work in non-informal education, such as youth movements and associations. I want to check how they meet the challenges of Jewish education not only within the framework of a classroom and a school.

 

Although most of our students live abroad, they are still, I believe, curious to hear about your experience with ultra Orthodox education in Israel. Especially in the US today, this topic is a hot topic due to the increasing interest from both media and governmental entities.

 

I am the dean of a non-profit organisation called Shluhei Tzibur, which works with ultra-Orthodox men and women who study at the Hebrew University. This program provides support to maintain their ultra-Orthodox identity within the academic world. I very much want to encourage members of the ultra-Orthodox community to study at the academy and get the academic tools along with preserving their ultra-Orthodox identity. This is based on the understanding that if we attempt too radical a change and do not preserve the ultra-Orthodox identity of the men and women who study now in academia, the desired change will not happen. Only in structures where such a change is encouraged alongside the maintenance of the ultra-Orthodox unique identity and its values, will the integration process succeed. Therefore, we will have to work towards it in a slow and gradual manner, and not in hastily or aggressively.

I am an optimist and believe that the change in ultra-Orthodox society will come from within. I see more ultra-Orthodox young men and women who apply for academic studies and want their children to study elementary secular studies. We must respond not in the form of coercion but by supporting the process that they initiate. The goal is to encourage people from the ultra-Orthodox community to be change makers and influencers in their society, for example, through leadership programs. We need to encourage leaders in ultra-Orthodox societies and let them be the agents of change from within the community. By the way, Melton has a few ultra-Orthodox students. Both the university as a whole, and Melton offer a place for ultra-Orthodox students, including those who live outside of Israel. The goal is to bring them into the Melton family and offer them a place in the field of Jewish education, showing them the huge potential of their influence, leadership and entrepreneurship skills in their communities.

This is a great value: to understand that for us Jewish education includes all sectors. Reform, Conservative, National Religious and ultra-Orthodox students sit in my class and learn together. I won't say it is easy, but at Melton, this sitting together turns into a class discussion. Melton is a special place that enables such discourse in the classroom, about identity, culture, interfaces and friction, even if sometimes there is conflict in the classroom,  understanding that what we have in the classroom is Jewish education, and if we do not speak up for it, we will miss out. We don’t want our students to be passive in classes only to find out, when it's too late, that our students have different identities that we failed to explore together. At Melton, we want to introduce it into the discussion.

This is why we also create opportunities for encounters outside the classes, such as in the Melton Fellows Program. I would like to call on students who are not studying in Israel to create forums and asynchronous meetings through Zoom in which we will talk about what is happening, interesting, and concerning them today in their communities. We share many troubling questions whether you are from the United States, Israel, or other places in the world. If we cultivate such an open discourse, we will all benefit.

 

 

Last question, how do you feel as a woman filling a senior position that has been filled so far by a succession of men?

 

It is important to me that there would be a modelling of senior female identity for students. This is my mission, even before anything I do. The fact that a woman can serve as the head of a centre for Jewish education can indicate a professional path for other women as educational leaders. I hope to express who I am and what I believe in, both in the interpersonal relationships that I strongly believe in, the way I see processes and strategies, and my involvement with the field. I am not only a woman; I am an Israeli woman who comes very much from within this region. I want to preserve and strengthen, on the one hand, the good things at the  Melton Centre and, on the other hand, to lead the centre to refreshing and new directions characterised by attentiveness to the needs of our students and of the field of Jewish education as a whole.