The issue is dedicated to the memory of
Emmanuel Levinas.

1. Editorial Column

   Alexander Lvov. Our “today” in history. (text in Russian)

   The article by a contemporary St. Petersburg philosopher, a member of Pedagogical Club contains speculations on unique spiritual experience gained by Jews of the USSR during the decades of Soviet regime and on the place of this experience in the context of Jewish history and contemporariness. The article contains the analysis of the problems of Jewish education in CIS, the most urgent of them being ineffectiveness of imported approaches towards the education which thrive very badly on the local soil and suppress the motivation towards learning. The author proposes his own approach which is based on the cultural tradition of Jews of the former USSR and which is close to teachers, pupils and parents.

2. Jewish pedagogical thought

   Rav Shmuel Wygoda (Izrael, Efrat). Between Lithuania and Athens. Emmanuel Levinas: Philosopher and teacher. (text in Russian)

   A new article by one of the closest pupils of E. Levinas. R. Wygoda, the rector of Hertsog pedagogical college at “Alon Shvut” yeshiva, analyses pedagogical views of his teacher regarding them as the base for modern philosophy and ideology of Jewish education. The article is translated from author's manuscript.

   Emmanuel Levinas. 3 articles on Jewish education. (text in Russian)

   A selection of the articles by E. Levinas dedicated to the problems and perspectives of Jewish education in Diaspora and in Israel. These articles are quoted in the articles by A. Lvov and r. Sh. Wygoda. The translation is done from the interlinear translation provided by Eugene Kushner under the editing by A. Lvov and A. Rotman

3. Pedagogical University

   Emmanuel Levinas. Lesson on Gemara Brakhot: Language of belief and the fear of God. (text in Russian)

   One of the 8 lectures by E. Levinas dedicated to the analysis of the most important fragments from Talmud. The text is addressed to French intellectuals knowing nothing about Talmud. It enables the reader who possesses the baggage of European culture to get involved into philosophical depth of Talmud and to feel its emergency in our days. The text can serve as a base for the pupils of Jewish highschool to get acquainted with Talmud

4. An open Lesson

   Natalia Gutkina (Nizhnij Novgorod). Literature of tannaim. Midrash, Mishna, Tosefta. (text in Russian)

   A lesson-to-lesson methodological work on the topic. The material is interesting not only for teachers but also for any reader.

5. Exchange of experience

   Marina Falkenshtejn (Riga). Jewish upbringing through emotional experience: Sabbath celebration in a Jewish primary school. (text in Russian)

   The author is a teacher of primary school, the contents of the article is reflected in its title. The article is supplemented with illustrations.

6. Methodological workshop

   Anatoly Podolsky (Kiev). Jewish history in Kiev pedagogical college. The curriculum. (text in Russian)

   Author a leading Ukrainian methodologist in the sphere of teaching Jewish history. The course is aimed at the 4th year students. The curriculum is rather full and professional one, it can serve as the base for a Jewish highschool curriculum.

   Anna Molchanova (SPb). World of Jewish tradition at the lessons of reading. (text in Russian)

   Methodological work on teaching Jewish tradition with the help of children literature. The author is a leading CIS methodologist in teaching Jewish literature in primary school, member of Pedagogical Club (St. Petersburg)

7. School and Community

   Gisiana Velichko (Dnepropetrovsk). Teaching the topic of "tsdaka".

   The curriculum and a lesson-to-lesson methodological work based on the book by Shoshana Kligman "Tsdaka". The article by G.Velichlo helps to use the book by an Israeli author translated into Russian as a school textbook.

8. Literary page

   Alexander Lvov (SPb). Good bye, Leviafan. Pure chance. (text in Russian)

   2 essays. The 1st deals with the image of Leviafan in Jewish sources and in contemporary mind. The 2nd is a philosophical parable about the scroll of Torah thrown as unnecessary to the garbage and picked by the hero of the story – a Jew who has returned to the Torah. The hero tries to return life to the tortured scroll.

9. Chronicles

   Irina Berent (Nizhny Novgorod). A family seminar in Nizhny Novgorod. (text in Russian)

   A story by a young kindergarten teacher about the seminar for preschool children and their parents during which an attempt was made to form a kernel of a Jewish kindergarten. The successes and failures of the organizers will be helpful for those who are engaged in pre-school and family upbringing.

Arye and Hana Rotman. Teacher's Day congratulations.

Dr. Yonatan Cohen. Maimonid's "The Laws of Alien Service" as a pedagogic paradigm.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam). "The Laws of Alien Service". Excerpts.

The Torah of life.

Zvi Adar. Aims and methods of teaching Tanakh. Tradition and humanism.

Zvi Kurzweil. M. Buber and modern pedagogical thought.

The main idea of St. Petersburg Pedagogical Club "New Jewish School" is teachers' and pupils' natural growth on the base of Jewish tradition. This idea is also the focus of the issue.

It begins with the introduction addressed directly to a teacher: “Teacher, teach yourself!”, which tells about St. Petersburg Pedagogical Club New Jewish School, a non-formal organization of teachers, and its activities in the field of teachers' mutual help and self-education.

In the section Jewish pedagogical thought Boris Bernstein tells about the school Evrabmol founded by his father in Odessa in 1920-ies.

The rubric Pedagogical University contains Dr. Tatiana Shimmel's "Plants in the Jewish calendar," which can be helpful for use at lessons of Jewish tradition and biology.

The depth of Jewish tradition and the methods of teaching it — this is what a reader will gain when reading Dr. Gabriel Haim Cohen's "Should we judge the heroes of the Script?" and Haim Zvi Enokh's "The Book “Devarim” in school."

The new and provocative rubric, Teachers' cloakroom contains an article by Mr. Fondman "Man and wife He made them" about the role of a woman in Jewish community.

One of the main ideas of the almanac is to give a teacher the possibility to tell his colleagues about his achievements. The rubric Exchange of experience contains 2 articles discussing different methods of teaching Hebrew, by Galina Grabarnik from Dneprodzerzhinsk "Teaching Hebrew to pre-school children through theater" and by Alla Zlobinskaya from Moscow "On the harm of water-melon."

The articles of the rubric School and community are dedicated to St. Petersburg Chabad Lubavich kindergarten Chaya Mushka. These articles raise the question of how a kindergarten may become a school for young parents and serve a means of involving them into Jewish community life. One of them, written by Sofia Efremova (St. Petersburg), is a "CHILDREN TAKE THEIR PARENTS WITH THEM".

Two articles of the issue are dedicated to the most modern and progressive technology of our time  — Internet. One of them, written by Anna Fein from Bar-Ilan University, is a "Guide in Jewish Internet for a teacher". The aim of this article is to make the Internet help Jewish teachers increase their qualification. The same aim is being realized by ORT, to the 120-th anniversary of which the article by Zakhar Rochlin "Petersburg long-liver" is dedicated.

Literary page contains poems by Arye Rotman, the managing editor of the almanac, and by Evgeny Shesholin , a little-known poet with tragic fate.

Alexandra Chernina answers readers letters, Marina Karpova tells about the seminars organized by "New Jewish School".

The edition is published
by Pedagogical Club “New Jewish School”
with the help and support of the Jewish Community Development
Fund in Russia and Ukraine (New York)
and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture

The central topic of The New Jewish School # 8 is Holocaust. The issue is preceded by two attached publications. The first one is devoted to S. R. Girsh and includes an article on his life and works by A. Sorsky, as well as the fragments of his school program addressed to the pupils' parents. S. R. Girsh lived in the epoch of the crisis in Jewish historical conscience. Biblical and Talmudic sources of this conscience are dealt with in the 1st chapter of a well-known book by J. Ch.  Jerushalmi translated into Russian for the first time.

An article by an American Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim opens the selection of Holocaust articles. His theological and philosophic speculations are supplied with a short reference book on Holocaust by Arkady Rybakov, a Moscow teacher of history. All the necessary data for this period are given there in a brief systematized form. Flora Shevelenko (Kiev) discusses the problem of teaching Holocaust at literature lessons. Musical and literary scenario for a school performance by Irina Berent & Natalia Gutkina (Nizhny Novgorod) is composed in memory of Janusz Korczak. Petersburg historian Valery Stolov speaks about teaching Holocaust in Russian schools. A small study undertaken by a German researcher Aljona Duwe depicts that anti-Semitic atmosphere in Germany, which enabled the fascists to come to power.

The new rubric “The fruit of studies” contains school compositions and diaries of the children who have faced the terrible truth of the Holocaust. Sites and virtual museums of Holocaust are listed and commented by Sergey Mitrofanov (St.  Petersburg). A review of literature on this topic is given by Anatoly Podolsky (Kiev). The rubric also contains some other materials.

This issue contains the review of readers' letters received in the past half a year. The number of letters has increased; the two-way connection with readers has strengthened. St.  Petersburg teacher of history, Sergey Mitrofanov, shares his ideas on teaching tolerance in school with the readers.

The rubric Chronicles contains an important document approved by the Association of the directors of Jewish schools. It also tells about the trip of the members of “The New Jewish School” editing board to the Volga cities.

The edition is published
by Pedagogical Club "New Jewish School"
with the help and support of the Jewish Community Development
Fund in Russia and Ukraine (New York)
and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture

-The central theme of the issue is Jewish identity. The 4th chapter of the book Zakhor by I. H. Jerushalmi translated here in Russian just deals with the problem of Jewish "historical memory". The next two articles, Jewish education and the quest for national identity by Larisa Lempert (Vilnius), and the research paper, concerning the ideas of national identity of non-Halachic Jews, Intermarriage children: Peculiarities of national identity by Polina Rumyantseva (St.  Petersburg) both discusses the same problem on the practical level, from the pedagogical and sociological point of view.

-The next topic of the issue, Midrash and its studying as the basis of Jewish identification, is opened by the chapter from the monographic research Belt Midrash in the mirror of Haggada by Jonah Frenkel translated from Hebrew, followed by two original essays Aesthetics of the Sages by a recent repatriate from Kharkov Eduard Bormashenko and The Sleeper by a Petersburg philologist Igor Vdovenko, both trying to establish the bridges between the modern scientific and cultural consciousness and the traditional Jewish one. The original work From studying the text towards studying the Torah: The book of Ruth by Arye Olman, a repatriate from St. Petersburg, is of methodological character.

-Some articles arc dedicated to the problem of complex teaching of the Torah and Literature, which is so important for Russian Jewry. The article by Tallinn teacher Irina Tzareva, Tanakh fragments at Literature lessons, will be very useful from this standpoint. The biblical, prophetic roots of the Russian classical literature are demonstrated also by Simona Brodotskaya (St. Petersburg) in the article The category of "phenomenon" in the lyrics of Pushkin. Acute problems of teaching Russian and Hebrew literature in Jewish school, of anti-Semitism and Holocaust are raised in the popular essay by a teacher from Kherson Vitaly Bronshtein, Byalik and Gogol against the background of the Sokoryansky family portrait. Olga Lyakhovetskaya from Dnepropetrovsk presents The program on children's Literature for the Dnepropetrovsk pedagogical college. The same college is described in the information notice Pedagogical school "Beit Hana" in Dnepropetrovsk.

- Problems of the Jewish education in different epochs have much in common. We publish the report by an outstanding Petersburg cnlightcner of the early XX c. Grigory Goldberg, On training teachers for elementary Jewish schools.

-The rubric Exchange of experience contains the article by Gita Umanovskaya (Riga), Quiz games at school, club, community center, and Svetlana Yatskina's essay about the Jewish library in Tallinn.

-Holocaust is ever-lasting pain of the Jewish people. In this issue the theme of teaching the history of Holocaust is also discussed. It was started in the previous issue of the almanac and is continued in this issue with the lecture by Olga Kopylenko (Almaaty), Social roots and consequences of the Catastrophe, and the course for the 10th grade by Sergey Mitrofanov (St.  Petersburg), History of anti-Semitism and the Catastrophe.

- The issue is adorned by verses of an outstanding Russian poet, Yelena Ignatova, who now resides in Jerusalem and writes about this city. The literary page of the issue contains also the selection of new verses by Arye Rotman, the managing editor of the almanac.