Seminar on Guiding Principles in Jewish Education
Beginning in 1959, Seymour Fox z”l expressed his concern that Jewish educators were, as he wrote, “aimless.” In subsequent decades, the Mandel Foundation continued to elevate the importance of vision for Jewish educational leaders, including most prominently in the publication of Visions of Jewish Education (edited by Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler and Daniel Marom, 2003).
Fox and his colleagues were and are correct about the importance of principles to guide practice. But there is another approach to develop guiding principles for Jewish education, that begins bottom-up from the practice of thoughtful educators and educational institutions rather than top-down from the minds of scholars.
In 2025-26, a cohort of educational leaders from diverse institutions in the Boston area will gather to explore both the theory and practice of vision-guided Jewish education, and will work toward developing their own guiding principles for practice.