Remembering Professor Seymour Fox, z"l (1929-2006)
Letter from Jon Levisohn, Assistant Academic Director of the Mandel Center, announcing the passing of Seymour Fox:
July 10, 2006
Dear friend of the Mandel Center,
With great sorrow, I'm writing on Sharon's behalf to share the news that Professor Seymour Fox died suddenly this morning in Jerusalem. Sharon is currently on her way to Israel, where the funeral will be held tomorrow.
As you know, Seymour had been Director of Program at the Mandel Foundation, a position from which he had announced his retirement just last week. He had planned to continue working as a consultant to the Foundation, and he and Sharon had talked within the last few days about his ongoing role as an advisor to and advocate for the Center. Annette Hochstein, President of the Mandel Foundation-Israel, told Sharon this morning that he had seemed particularly energized this past week after making his announcement, looking forward to his new role.
Seymour's career in education and Jewish education was long and distinguished. He was a founder of the Melton Research Center at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a leading figure at Camp Ramah in the 1960s, was director of the School of Education at the Hebrew University in the 1970s where he was also a founder of the Melton Centre for Jewish Education in the Diaspora, and served as advisor to Israel's Ministry of Education. He began working full-time for the Mandel Foundation in 1984. He was a guiding visionary behind the Commission on Jewish Education in the late 1980s, the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows program, and the Mandel Leadership Institute, as well as the Mandel Foundation's initiatives at Hebrew University and here at Brandeis. And of course, he was responsible for the Visions of Jewish Education Project. In each of these projects, Seymour had a profound and lasting influence on dozens or even hundreds of leading educational practitioners and theorists.
A devoted student of Joseph Schwab at the University of Chicago, and of other luminaries such as Ralph Tyler and Bruno Bettelheim, Seymour first worked on Freud and published Freud and Education in 1975. In 1977, he co-edited From the Scholar to the Classroom: Translating Jewish Tradition into the Curriculum; in 1983, he edited Philosophy for Education; and in 1990, he co-edited A Time to Act. Other publications included “Vision at the Heart: Lessons from Camp Ramah on the Power of Ideas in Shaping Educational Institutions" in 1997, and "Jewish Education & Jewish Continuity: Prospects & Limitations," with Israel Scheffler, in 1998. In 2003, the Visions of Jewish Education Project published the volume Visions of Jewish Education, of which Seymour was co-author and co-editor. And just last year, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, he was honored with the publication of a two-volume festschrift entitled Educational Deliberations, edited by Mordecai Nisan and Oded Schremer.
Seymour was a mentor, a teacher, an advocate for the Center and for serious research in Jewish education, a trusted advisor, and a friend.
Yehi zikhro barukh; may his memory be for a blessing.
Sincerely,
Jon
Jon A. Levisohn, Ph.D.
Assistant Academic Director
Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education
Remembrance of Seymour Fox by Israel Scheffler, Mandel Center Scholar-in-Residence:
Seymour Fox
I first met Seymour Fox not long after he became Director of the School of Education at the Hebrew University after the Six-Day War. He came to Harvard and invited me to join the external committee he was forming at the School to advise him on appointments, programs, and various initiatives he was planning. Having accepted his invitation, I came to Jerusalem with my wife in 1968 for the committee’s first meeting, and met the other members, including Ralph Tyler, Joseph Schwab and Ernest Hilgard. Seymour had arranged for us a memorable program lasting for over a week, incorporating not only reviews of the School’s academic programs and plans, but also extensive travel throughout the country, to acquaint us with Israel’s geographical and cultural landscape and give us an extended opportunity to get to know one another. This committee, later augmented by Lawrence Cremin, continued for a number of years after that first meeting, and returned to Jerusalem several times for further advisory sessions.
Seymour and I clicked from the start, sharing similar backgrounds and outlooks. We both grew up in Orthodox families, his in Chicago, mine in New York, both educated in traditional yeshivot, then in research universities and the Jewish Theological Seminary where I, older than he, graduated seven years before he did from its Rabbinical School, then both pursuing careers involving education. Moreover, we were temperamentally both traditionalist and modernist, loyal to the substance and human values of the Jewish religious heritage and intensely committed to blending such loyalty with the methods, results, and ongoing critical studies in all areas of the humanities and sciences.
In all the many institutions that Seymour designed and brought into being, this outlook shines through brightly, evincing an overarching love of the Jewish people, as well as an overriding respect for scholarship, whether traditional or modern, and reflecting both the human values of Jewish religious life and the single-minded Talmudical devotion to logical argument bearing on issues in contention.
It is to Seymour that I owe my involvement in Jewish educational matters relating particularly to curriculum, policy and practice as well as theory. He was for nearly four decades my treasured friend and inspiring colleague, as well as a consistently pioneering contributor to Jewish education and the living tradition that it sustains. I will forever feel his loss.
Israel Scheffler
Mandel Center Scholar-in-Residence
July 11, 2006
Read the tribute by the Mandel Leadership Institute
Other remembrances:
"Visionary in education, Shlomo Fox, 1929-2006" in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (July 12, 2006)
"Education Giant, 77, Left Major Legacy" by Barry W. Holtz in the Forward newspaper (July 14, 2006)