Ideas and Ideals of Jewish Education: Initiating a Conversation on Visions of Jewish Education
Source: Journal of Jewish Education, Volume 71, Issue 1 January 2005 , pages 53 - 66
Visions of Jewish Education edited by Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, and their colleague Daniel Marom, and 12 years in the making is a product of the Mandel Foundation's effort to generate "a serious conversation among proponents of variant conceptions of Jewish life and their attendant visions of Jewish education" (p. 13).
At its core, it contains a series of essays by four eminent scholars of Jewish Studies: Isadore Twersky, Menachem Brinker, Moshe Greenberg, and Michael Meyer. A supplement follows each essay, a kind of commentary on the text immediately appended to the essay itself, sometimes clarifying ideas in the light of the scholar's other work and sometimes adding material gleaned from the scholar's responses to groups of educators and others with whom drafts of the essays were shared.
In addition, the volume includes contributions from Michael Rosenak and Scheffler that provide perspectives on the project from Philosophy of Education (each of which also receives an interpretive supplement).
Finally, the volume also includes introductory chapters articulating the rationale for the project and explaining its history, and a concluding section with two further essays by Fox and Marom, which focus on aspects of the implementation of visions in practice.
The article is a critical review of the book and its ideas.