This site is a professional resource for the Department of Jewish Zionist Education. We hope it will motivate people and stimulate new initiatives in the field. For those within the Department, the site offers theoretical guidelines and practical suggestions to enhance their work. For our partners from outside, the site is a valuable asset offering internet publications: policy papers, research papers, books, articles and "best practice reports" emanating from Jewish communities around the world, on issues related to the Jewish People and Jewish Education. As the "Moriah" project progresses, this site will become an extensive archive of initiatives, experiences and accomplishments in Jewish Education.

   A Window on the Department

"Moriah" offers the Department of Jewish Zionist Education the opportunity to publish a great deal of its own theoretical and practical work that has so far not been available to a world-wide audience of Jewish educators. This work spans a wide variety of fields, in which new projects are designed and operated in partnership with Jewish communities and other institutions around the world. Training programs have been tailor-made to suit the special needs in the field, while new curricular materials have been produced to meet a wide scope of educational challenges. This site will make the rationale behind the Department's initiatives available on the internet and offer both program descriptions and progress reports of "pilots", and other new ventures. Sharing our ideas about theory and practice is especially important to us in those areas where our experimental work has implications that should be valuable for educators around the world. This includes those whose professional interest lie beyond the immediate scope of our field.

For example, we will invite Directors and co-ordinators of selected projects within the Department to describe their rationale, outline their objectives and share the results of their internal processes of evaluation. In particular, the Department is currently investing its resources in developing new approaches to E-Learning and Educational Data-bases. "Moriah" will find the best ways of formatting this material and making it accessible to the public. In this way we hope to turn the site into a "Think Tank" of ideas and discussion.

   The Agenda of Jewish Education

Research is conducted all over the Jewish world; papers are published in journals, presented at congresses and best practices are discussed in educational seminars. The agenda of Jewish Education for the next decade can be more or less determined from this plethora of scholarship. Scholars, lay leaders and professionals who are already involved in setting the agenda will be invited to write policy papers, addressing the published material available in ways that are practically useful for the Department and its partners. Issues and topics that may be of interest here include, for example, suggestions for improving Jewish Education in Europe. Another example might be a research paper that evaluates the feasibility of a "virtual" supplementary school; another the teaching of Hebrew in kindergartens. Over time, the "Think-Tank" will accumulate papers covering a wide variety of concerns in educational theory and practice that can be of use to the Jewish Education community.

Position Paper on Research Unit.

"Moriah" will invite scholars and/or educators from within the Department and from the outside and give them the opportunity to devote time and energy to their research interests and practical projects. The results of this work will be published on the site. It is our intention that hosting these scholars-in-residence and senior educators will bolster the partnerships between the Department and Jewish communities, research institutions, educational institutions, schools and so on, throughout the world.

Setting up the "Moriah" web site will be a gradual process. Hopefully this emerging resource will stimulate professionals within the Department to revisit their own work, in some cases with the help of consultants and researchers, creating an impetus for improvement. The Department will also benefit from the input of the various outside researchers and consultants engaged in the project. Most importantly, the site will function as the Department's 'address' for those lay leaders and professionals as well as our partners in the Jewish world who we invite to contact us in order to share ideas, initiatives and research that will be conducive to maintianing the highest standards of educational practice.

July 2002