Ariel - Volume 2 Number 1

Editors Delvun C. Case, Jr. Paul M. Fernhoff Associate Editors Donald Bergman Daniel B. Gould Richard Bonanno Ronald Hoffman Lay-Out Editor Carol Dolinskas Sports Editor James Nocon Business Manager Nick Grego Contributing Editors Michael J. Blecker Stephen P. Flynn Lin Sey Edwards Jack Guralnik W. Cherry Ligh

Mental health care and resistance to fascism

Mental health nurses have a critical stake in resisting the right-wing ideology of British fascism. Particularly concerning is the contemporary effort of the British National Party (BNP) to gain credibility and electoral support by the strategic re-packaging of a racist and divisive political manifesto. Evidence that some public sector workers are affiliated with the BNP has relevance for nursing at a series of levels, not least the incompatibility of party membership with a requirement of the Professional Code to avoid discrimination. Progressive advances, though, need to account for deep rooted institutionalized racism in the discourse and practice of healthcare services. The anomalous treatment of black people within mental health services, alongside racial abuse experienced by ethnic minority staff, is discussed in relation to the concept of race as a powerful social category and construction. The murder of the mentally ill and learning disabled in Nazi Germany, as an adjunct of racial genocide, is presented as an extreme example where professional ethics was undermined by dominant political ideology. Finally, the complicity of medical and nursing staff in the state sanctioned, bureaucratic, killing that characterized the Holocaust is revisited in the context of ethical repositioning for contemporary practice and praxis

Studying Sacred Texts as a Pathway to Positive Youth Development: Middle School Students Read Hebrew Bible

In many religious education classrooms, the meaning of a sacred text is treated as something stable and authoritative. A teacher’s job is to transmit that meaning to students. This study reports on a year-long intervention conducted in a seventh grade Hebrew Bible classroom in which students were asked to find their own meaning in the biblical text. The study found that religious text classrooms can offer a unique opportunity to support positive youth development when an effective interpretive community is created

Kids Reading Tanakh: The Child as Interpreter

This essay examines two fourth-grade students’ task-based read-aloud interviews on the biblical text of Numbers 13. Taking up the New London Group’s call for a pedagogy of multiliteracies this article examines how educators and adults might sensitize themselves to the interpretive identities children bring to their reading of biblical texts. This work is intricately tied to child development, as we move religious education from a deficit model and perspective towards the child to a more welcoming asset model and perspective

Resources of Jewish Culture: A Case Study of Two Talmud Teachers

This article offers a conceptual framework for understanding the diversity of pedagogies found in Talmud classrooms. It looks at how two different Orthodox Talmud teachers responded to an academic article about constructivist learning practices in the context of a professional development program. The case study presented in this article helps to illuminate Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning. Ultimately, this article argues that whether Jewish studies teachers are open or resistant to constructivist learning practices depends less on their particular theory of teaching and learning than on their understanding of Jewish culture