Jewish learning has profound roots and far-reaching implications. Yet Jewish education is often treated in local and prosaic terms, concerned with means rather than ends, with instrumentalities rather than ideas. This book represents an effort to deepen and broaden the enterprise of Jewish education by eliciting variant visions of its rationale and import, relating educational activities to their bases in the learning of the past and in reflective anticipation of the future. We hope the book will stimulate philosophical approaches to education by all, whether Jewish or not, who consider themselves stewards of a precious heritage responsible for its creative preservation and renewal.

Our book is a product of intensive and continuous collaboration over a period of many years. We are jointly and fully responsible for every chapter not signed by a particular author.

We thank the various scholars who wrote the signed chapters. Without their essential contributions, there would have been no volume at all. We are grateful to the group of Jewish educators who participated in our deliberations. We are happy to acknowledge the work of our outstanding editor, Nessa Rapoport, of the Mandel Foundation, who was an active partner in developing the plan and content of the volume as a whole; we could not have brought the book to successful completion without her acumen and dedication.