The Center for Jewish and Democratic Education

Center Members

Nurit Novis-Deutsch

I am a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Counseling and Human Development at and at the Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education at Haifa University in Israel. After completing my PhD in clinical psychology at Hebrew University, I was a Fulbright scholar and then a Goldman Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley in California. I also taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem's psychology department as a teaching associate. I currently research, teach and publish in Haifa, on the psychology of religion, cultural identity, pluralistic thinking, moral education, Jewish education, and Haredi society. I am also an active member and principal investigator of several international research teams.

In the context of Jewish education, I have been pursuing the following directions:

1. Educating towards pluralism: Both/and reasoning

Both/and reasoning is one of the unexplored prerequisites of pluralistic thinking. It is the metacognitive ability to recognize the multiplicity of thoughts and beliefs in the social world and an endorsement of their value and worth. Such reasoning can draw on the complexity of the social world, the limitations of any single perspective, or the richness, beauty or social utility of multiplicity My studies explore Both/And reasoning among adults and adolescents, test its relation to religiosity, test interventions to enhance it, and explore its effects on the willingness to embrace diversity. A recent study we have just begun targets Jewish Israeli secular and religious students in junior high schools, to test the effect of an intervention program to enhance Both/And reasoning on openness to others.

2. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) students in higher education.

I have explored, along with several colleagues, how Hardi women have been navigating their dramatic entrance into the world of higher education. We have studied the reactions of college professors to this population, interviewed and surveyed hundreds of Haredi students about their experiences, and developed explanatory models for their reactions to the difference in worldviews they encounter. We hope to embark on a study explaining the high levels of Haredi drop-out from higher education institutions and to explore what can be done to prevent this.

3. Holocaust education and teacher attitudes towards the Holocaust

Together with Prof. Arieh Kochavi, I am leading an international and interdisciplinary team of Holocaust-memory researchers under the auspices of the Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Research and the Weiss-Livnat international graduate program for Holocaust studies. Our comparative research project is exploring the changes taking place in Holocaust memory in Germany, Hungary, Poland, the UK, and France. Each of these countries bears a distinct Holocaust heritage and is also facing political and economic changes as well as challenges of refugee immigration. This intersection of past and present is expressed, among other ways, in a rise of nationalism, revisions to national WWII narratives, increased anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment. We are examining the relations between these phenomena in three domains: exploration of the national-political public discourse regarding WWII and Holocaust memory as it relates to anti-Semitic discourses and delegitimization of the State of Israel’s existence; a study of Holocaust educators using an innovative comparative Holocaust Education Attitude scale which I developed and a comparison to Israeli teachers; and an analysis of social media platforms to categorize and correlate references to the Holocaust, Israel, Jews and nationalism.

4. God concepts, and teaching children about God and critical thinking

I have conducted psycho-educational developmental work on children's and adults' God concepts, including the educational implications of these. I am now testing a third dimension in God concepts, beyond the two recognized axes of Loving/punitive and abstract/concrete, which is a dimension of unity/complexity. I am also testing the correlation between these dimensions and attitudes towards otherness, such as prejudice and Both/And reasoning.

Papers I have published on these and other topics related to Jewish education include:

Novis-Deutsch, N. (2018). The one and the many: Both/and reasoning and the embracement of pluralism. Theory & Psychology 28(4), 429-450.
Novis-Deutsch, N. & Rubin, O. Value and Worldview Management among Ultra-Orthodox Women Pursuing Higher Education. (2018) Studies in Higher Education
Novis Deutsch, N., Perkis, E. & Granot-Bein, Y. (2018). Six teaching orientations of Holocaust educators as reflections of teaching perspectives and meaning-making processes. Teaching and Teacher Education
Novis Deutsch, N. and Rubin, O. (2017) “I am studying for an exam and not for life” – A viable possibility? The shift from compartmentalization to a side-by-side stance among Haredi students managing cultural duality. Democratic Culture, 17 (1), 2-39
Rubin, O. and Novis-Deutsch, N. (2017). Profiles of Haredi women pursuing higher education: A cluster analysis of diverse patterns of motivations and concerns. Megamot: Journal for Behavioral Sciences, 52 (2) 109-140
Novis-Deutsch, N., & Lifshitz, C. (2016). When Bible and science interact: teachers’ pedagogic and value challenges in teaching religious minority students in higher education settings. Teaching in Higher Education, 21(5), 487-500.
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2015) Identity conflicts and pluralism – What can we learn from religious psychoanalytic therapists? Journal for the ‎Theory of Social Behaviour 45(4) 484-505.
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2015) Discussing God with children, from the skeptic’s position. In: Y. Tadmor & A. Frieman (Eds.) Education – The Question of Man. TA: Mofet Publishing. (Hebrew). Also, published in the New York Times in English
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2014) Narrative routes to Jewish religious pluralistic identities. In: Glaser, J. Mittleberg, S. & Cohen, E. (Eds.) Multiple Identities in Jewish Education. TA: Tel Aviv University Press.
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2013) ‎‎Narrative routes to Jewish religious pluralistic identities. International‏ ‏Journal ‎of Jewish Education Research, 5-6 91-118.
Novis-Deutsch, N. & Engelberg, A (2012) Meaning-making under the sacred canopy: Jewish Orthodox marriage guidebooks. Interdisciplinary Journal of ‎Research on Religion, 8
Engelberg, A. and Novis-Deutsch, N. (2010). Removal of Magic from Romantic Love and returning it to the Family: A study of Jewish religious marriage guidance books facing the challenges of western culture. Israeli Sociology 12(1)
Novis-Deutsch, N. Developmental psychology of religion and spirituality – a field of inquiry constructed and deconstructed. In: Wulff, D. (Ed.)The Oxford Handbook of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2005) Just War Theory and Pacifism in Judaism. in: War and violence in religion - responses from the monotheistic world. Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, Doshisha University.
Novis-Deutsch, N. (2002). An Idealization of Silence in a World of Verbal Battling: A Critical Reading. in: Women and Pirkei Avot, Yael Mishali (Ed.), Yediot Ahronot Publishing, pp. 149-162.