Chris Nowinski is a former football player at Harvard University and professional wrestler with WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. After enduring a career-ending head injury, Chris has dedicated his professional life to serving patients and families affected by brain trauma, particularly Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that develops after repeated head injuries. Jay and Chris discuss the state of head injuries in American athletics, the difference between advocating for head safety at youth and professional levels, Chris’ newest research, and much more. Episode Chapters (00:00) Intro (00:50) changes in the culture around concussions in the past two decades (02:39) padded helmet technology (03:55) concussion reporting in the NFL (10:35) Chris’ career path and concussion history (14:52) connecting with activists who haven’t themselves suffered a traumatic brain injury (17:42) SHAAKE - a new sign to identify concussions (20:53) Unions can help players advocate for safety policies (23:10) final thoughts and goodbye For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/…

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Learning About Learning: Conversations with Scholars of Jewish Education
Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University
There is great scholarship being done in the field of Jewish education, but it’s not always accessible. And even when it is, it’s not always obvious why people in the field of Jewish education should care about it. That’s what this podcast is about—making really interesting scholarship on Jewish education accessible and talking with scholars about why it matters. Learning About Learning draws on live conversations, originally conducted as Zoom webinars. Regular episodes feature discussions b ...
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Episode 32: Fluid Meanings of the Yarmulke Across Educational Contexts | Dr. Anastasia Badder
29:14
In her article, "When a Yarmulke Stands for All Jews: Navigating Shifting Signs from Synagogue to School in Luxembourg," Anastasia Badder asks: How do congregational school students experience moments in which they were confronted with Jewishness outside of the classroom, in their secular schools and public spaces? And taking a material approach, h…
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Episode 31: Jewish Creativity: An Essential Aspiration for Jewish Education | Professor Miriam Heller Stern
30:48
Habits of creative thinking have sustained the Jewish people through centuries of crisis and opportunity. How might the enterprise of Jewish education reclaim and teach creativity? Weaving together a wide range of theory and research, including affective neuroscience, Jewish philosophy and education, and studies of creativity and arts education, Mi…
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Episode 30: Spotlight on Jewish Education after October 7
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1:05:21The attack on October 7th, the ensuing war, and the changed environment in the US have all led to questions about how American Jewish educational institutions have responded, and how they should. What do we know about the impact of the last year on schools, synagogues, camps, Israel trips, and other initiatives? How have educators been affected? Ho…
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In his recent book, Shaul Kelner recounts the compelling stories of heroism that helped to free Soviet Jews. In this session, he discusses how this activism reached Jewish educational spaces — through bar and bat mitzvah twinning, school field trips to rallies, summer camp programming, and much more — and reshaped the Jewish American experience fro…
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Episode 29: How Educators Can Overcome Barriers to Engaging with the Conflict | Dr. Keren Fraiman
29:50
There is a growing consensus that successful and holistic Israel education demands a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with critical questions within Israel, and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This feels especially pressing in a post October 7th world. Despite this critical need, many educators continue to express reticence abo…
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Episode 27: Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field | Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold
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1:04:59How do educators from differing pedagogical orientations learn, undertake, and ultimately improve the work of teaching Israel? In this conversation, Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field editors Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold discuss the complex issues facing those who teach about Israel, along with respondents Lisa Grant (Hebrew Union…
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Episode 26: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in Jewish Education
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1:10:23In this special event, authors from a recent themed issue of Journal of Jewish Education discuss their articles on race, ethnicity, and immigration in Jewish education. The issue spotlights the experiences of underrepresented individuals and serves as compelling testimony to the diverse array of Jewish experiences and identities, challenging prevai…
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Episode 25: Visualizing Jewish Texts and Practices through the Graphic Novel | Dr. Talia Hurwich
28:08
What happens when students of classical Jewish texts encounter visual representations of those texts, not just words? In her recent study Reconsidering Religious Gender Normativity in Graphic Novel Adaptations, Talia Hurwich learned that students often respond in deeply personal ways to visual representations of topics that may otherwise be suppres…
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Episode 24: Spotlight on the Gap Year
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1:08:09For over a generation, many American Jewish young adults have spent a year between high school and college in Israel—the “gap year.” How does the gap year contribute to North American Jewish education? How does it complicate that work? What does it mean for young adults to go from “here" to “there" to participate in this important educational exper…
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Over the last two decades, talk of Yiddish as an alternate path of engaging with Jewishness comes up in the Jewish press almost cyclically — a journalistic evergreen. In this session, historian and Yiddish podcaster Sandra Fox explains how Yiddish became culturally significant, why young people are flocking to learn Yiddish in larger numbers than e…
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Like other immigrants, many Israeli expatriates find themselves asking how they can maintain their culture on American soil. But what happens when their children learn their heritage language in American educational settings? In this session, Hannah Kober discusses the surprising finding from her recent research that the long-held narrative about I…
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Episode 21: Navigating Ideological Differences in Pluralistic Jewish Schools | Dr. Esther Friedman
32:37
How and why does the ability to navigate ideological differences within classrooms matter to Jewish education — and beyond? In this session, Esther Friedman discusses her recent study on the lived experiences of Orthodox teachers who teach Bible in pluralistic community schools and the institutional-level challenges they face. Originally recorded: …
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Episode 20: Spotlight on Jewish Learning: Past, Present and Future
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1:04:45What have we learned about Jewish learning in the past, where are we today, and what do we still need to learn for the future? Join MCSJE for this special Spotlight Session in honor of Brandeis University’s 75th anniversary, at which Brandeis scholars of Jewish education share some of the most important developments in the field of Jewish education…
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Beyond lifting the spirits of teachers and students, play in Jewish education spaces can also shape moral development and character. Drawing from his new research, Judd Kruger Levingston shares how teachers and administrators can cultivate "a moral ecology of play" in classrooms, hallways, gathering spaces, and playgrounds. In this session, Levings…
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Episode 18: What 19th Century Jewish Education Can Teach Us about Jewish Education Today | Professor Laura Yares
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Most histories of American Jewish education deride 19th-century Jewish Sunday schools. But when Laura Yares looked more closely at the curricula, the operative philosophies and the experiences that students and teachers had in these schools, she found that they did important cultural work. In this session, she discusses her recent book, Jewish Sund…
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Episode 17: What We Can Learn from Seymour Fox and the Visions of Jewish Education Project | Professor Jon Levisohn
27:54
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Jewish educators and educational institutions started talking about “vision” in a new way, prompted by the efforts of the Mandel Foundation and especially its influential leader Seymour Fox. For many, the publication of Visions of Jewish Education (2003) was a landmark event in the field. Jon A. Levisohn discusses …
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In the past, Jewish families, like many others, offered girls fewer educational opportunities than boys. But that has not been the case for some time now. In her recent scholarship, Ilana Horwitz demonstrates the ways that girls raised by Jewish parents complete more years of college and attend more selective schools than girls from comparable soci…
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Episode 15: Spotlight on Mahloket
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1:00:34Mahloket—that is, dispute or principled debate—has long been celebrated as a Jewish ideal, not only within Jewish texts (where sages debate laws, interpretations and principles) but within the practice of engagement with those texts (where, for example, students might engage in debate about laws, interpretations or about principles). What does Mahl…
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Children’s ideas about the world are rich, nuanced, sometimes amusing and surprising, and for Anna Hartman, always fascinating. In this session, she shares her doctoral research in the field of early childhood Jewish education, in which she explores the theories about Judaism that are held by young children, and provides a window into their process…
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Episode 13: Why Jewish Day Schools Should Teach Students to Read Torah | Professor Ziva Hassenfeld
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Jewish day schools expend significant time and energy in teaching Torah. But what are they trying to accomplish in this work? In this session, Ziva Hassenfeld discusses her soon-to-be published research on students’ learning to read Torah, in order to argue that Jewish day schools can induct students into a way of reading texts that will serve them…
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Episode 12: How Debbie Friedman (and CAJE) Gave Jewish Education a New Soundtrack | Professor Judah Cohen
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In this session, Judah Cohen discusses his recent article on the crucial role that Debbie Friedman played in making song leading a core part of the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE). He also addresses the changes in Jewish education that resulted from this alliance, and why it still matters. Originally recorded: 11/17/22 At the …
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Episode 11: How Do Jewish Day School Kids Think About the Holocaust? | Professor Meredith Katz
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Holocaust education is a staple of Jewish day school education. What messages do day school students take from this education? In this session, Meredith Katz discusses her recently published study, which explores how a group of day school kids navigated questions of particularism and universalism, and how Holocaust education helped them to see them…
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Episode 4: Spotlight on Adult Jewish Learning
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1:00:21Adult Jewish learning is flourishing in synagogues, JCCs, board tables, leadership cohorts, service cohorts, and of course, online. This session is an occasion to talk with a group of experienced educators about what they learned from their studies of adult Jewish learning opportunities—who the learners are, why they participate, what happens, and …
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Episode 5: Spotlight on Daf Yomi
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1:06:12Rabbi Professor Jane Kanarek (Hebrew College), Rabbi Avi Killip (Hadar), Professor Barry Wimpfheimer (Northwestern), Sara Wolkenfeld (Sefaria), moderated by Professor Jon Levisohn (Brandeis University). For decades following its invention in 1923, Daf Yomi was practiced by experienced, mostly haredi Talmud scholars, and criticized by many as well. …
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Episode 7: Inside Jewish Day Schools Book Discussion | Dr. Alex Pomson and Professor Jack Wertheimer
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1:03:19What can we learn from carefully crafted portraits of nine well-regarded Jewish day schools that vary in size, location, sponsorship, ideological orientation? How do these schools go about their work and how do school leaders respond to the pressing challenges that day schools face in the 21st century? Authors Alex Pomson and Jack Wertheimer share …
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Episode 10: My Second-Favorite Country Book Discussion | Professor Sivan Zakai
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1:06:00Israel has long occupied a prominent place in the lives and imaginations of American Jews, serving as both a symbolic touchstone and a source of intercommunal conflict. Sivan Zakai's book, My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think About Israel, is based on the major findings from her research project with MCSJE on Children's Le…
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The Jewish overnight camping industry was on the verge of major changes in the late 1980s, when Shelly Dorph became the head of the Ramah National Commission. Jonathan Krasner discusses the case of Ramah and how it reflects on the challenges and opportunities that Jewish non-profit summer camps faced in the 1990s and early 2000s, and what it means …
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Most analyses of Jewish education, like most analyses of general education in Western, liberal society, emphasize the individual student. But some communities approach education very differently. Mijal Bitton discusses her research into how the Syrian Jewish community educates its members, formally and informally, to maintain bonds of commitment. O…
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The term "Jewish education" is used to refer to a broad array of practices, approaches, and institutions. Ari Kelman has written a new book, Jewish Education, forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in its Key Words in Jewish Studies series. The series includes books designed to "provide clear and judiciously illustrated accounts of terms current…
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What can we learn about society, people's relationship with Israel, Jewish people, and themselves, through Hebrew accents? Possibly quite a bit! This conversation focuses on Sharon Avni's recent work on how the everyday acts of speaking, learning, and engaging with Modern Hebrew inform our understanding of contemporary American Jewish life. Origina…
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How does a Jewish theater company draw upon Jewish history to wrestle artistically with universal human questions? How do they weave new narratives through the work of interpretation? Miriam Heller Stern, in recent work published as a chapter of the edited volume Portraits of Adult Jewish Learning: Making Meaning at Many Tables, addresses these que…
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What happens when young adults visit a Jewish museum? What do they learn about Jews and Judaism, and how are they changed by what they see, touch, hear and feel? In this talk, Laura Yares discusses findings from a pre-pandemic study of 30 young adult visitors to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and describes the rich …
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