Children's Learning About Israel
The Children’s Learning About Israel project studies how American Jewish elementary and middle school students think and feel about Israel, and how that thinking changes over time.
Find out more about the findings of this study and view the Zoom video from the workshop, Through the Lens of a Child: Understanding how Children View the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, led by Project Director Sivan Zakai.
Available from NYU Press, My Second-Favorite Country, winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in the "Education and Jewish Identity," draws from the compelling empirical data from the Children's Learning About Israel project. Learn more about the book from our June 2022 book launch webinar.
The American Jewish community is investing unprecedented time and money into cultivating young people’s connections to Israel. While there is an emerging body of empirical research to help us understand the roles that Israel and Israel education play in the lives of American Jewish teenagers and young adults, there is virtually no comparable knowledge about children.
To build this knowledge base, the project made an unprecedented effort to gather data from children as young as five and six years old, through special techniques designed to elicit their associations with images and sounds as well as by using more traditional interview techniques.
Working with a cohort of children from the Los Angeles area, the project tracked the students from kindergarten (the 2012–13 school year) through eighth grade (the 2020–21 school year). These children come from a range of Jewish ethnic and denominational backgrounds. Over the nine years of this study, children attended a range of schools including public, charter, independent, Jewish day, and home schools.
Related Public Scholarship
- Taking Children Seriously on Israel (podcast)
- How to Talk to Children about Israel Today (webinar recording)
- How to Talk to Kids About What’s Happening in Israel Right Now
- Walking the Tightrope: Talking About the Current Situation in Israel with Children
- How to Talk to Kids about the Violence in Israel and Gaza
- Here’s How to Talk to Your Kids About the Violence in Israel and Gaza
- What do My Children Understand - and What Should I Tell Them - about the Israeli-Palestinian Violence?
- Teaching Israel and the Pandemic
-
The Other Conflict: Teaching Children to Understand Wedge Issues in Israeli Society
-
Don't Avoid Talking to Your Kids About the Pittsburgh Shooting
-
What Voldemort Can Teach Us About Jewish Education: The Missing Palestinian in Israel Education
-
Why Jewish Parents Should Talk About Neo-Nazis with Their Children
-
From Multiple Choice to Multiple Choices: Rethinking Israel Literacy in Our Schools
-
How to Talk to Your Kids About the Violence in Israel and Gaza
Academic Publications
- Sivan Zakai, “We’re Not Friends Anymore Because I Support Israel”: Evolving Beliefs about Israel Politics from Elementary to Middle School, Contemporary Jewry, May 2024.
- Sivan Zakai, “It Makes Me Feel Many Different Things”: A Child’s Relationships to Israel over Time, Journal of Jewish Education, July 2021.
-
Sivan Zakai, From the Mouths of Children: Widening the Scope and Shifting the Focus of Understanding the Relationships Between American Jews and Israel, Contemporary Jewry, May 2019.
-
Sivan Zakai, “Bad Things Happened”: How Children of the Digital Age Make Sense of Violent Current Events, The Social Studies, January 2019.
-
Sivan Zakai, Connection and Disconnection: The Paradox of Israel Education in the Digital Age, CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2018.
-
Sivan Zakai and Hannah Tobin Cohen, American Jewish Children’s Thoughts and Feelings About the Jewish State: Laying the Groundwork for a Developmental Approach to Israel Education, Contemporary Jewry, April 2016.
-
Sivan Zakai, “Israel Is Meant for Me”: Kindergartners’ Conceptions of Israel, Journal of Jewish Education, March 2015.