The Impact of Hebrew School Education on Young Jewish American Opinion on Israel and Israel-Palestine

Data Collection: Israel in Modern Hebrew School Education

By running 55 Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Hebrew School websites from synagogues and Jewish centers in Bergen County, New Jersey through Voyant Tools, I was able to find the most common words throughout the curricula. The Cirrus Cloud below highlights the 35 most frequent terms throughout the website, and the larger the term, the more frequently it occurred. "Israel" ranks as the 19th most commonly used term out of over 5,000 words.


Voyant Tools also allowed me to view the most frequent links between words across the curricula. 



Through Voyant, I was able to go through the terms from the Hebrew School curricula, and search to see if certain terms had links to the word "Israel." These terms were as follows: homeland, home, identify with, mitzvot*, pride, culture, and connection. I chose these terms because, if linked to Israel, they would emphasize a positive relationship between Jews and the state of Israel. 
*Mitzvot: commandments, ordinances, laws, or statutes contained in the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and, for that reason, to be observed by all practicing Jews (Encyclopedia Britannica) 








It is clear that all of these terms are linked to the term "Israel."

Below is an interactive link to the Voyant Tools corpus I created. Type "Israel" into the box on the left side of the image below the visualization and select it from the dropdown menu to see the links between this term and other terms throughout the Hebrew School curricula. 

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