A group of 26 educators, rabbis, researchers, and principals met in New York with staff from the Visions of Jewish Education Project and the Mandel Foundation from June 24th to 27th, 2003, to study Visions of Jewish Education and its implications and applications for North American Jewish education. Participants explored the book’s guiding assumptions, Moshe Greenberg's conception, and future directions for the Visions of Jewish Education Project.

A special session on "Vision and American Education" was given by David Cohen, John Dewey Collegiate Professor of Education and Professor of Public Policy, School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Video proceedings of the seminar have been added to the Visions of Jewish Education Project Library, and we are pleased to provide excerpts in which participants voice their opinions with reference to particular questions. Selections from the seminar are organized around three major questions that emerged in our discussions.

Seminar participants looked critically at the difficulties of improving Jewish education, including challenges for teachers, policy makers, researchers and administrators. The following excerpts offer some of their perspectives:

• Seymour Fox, Director of Program, Mandel Foundation, on why vision is indispensable (10 minutes)
• Josh Elkin, Executive Director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), on the need for vision in day school education (13 minutes)
• Bob Abramson, Director of the Department of Education of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, on difficult realities confronting the project (5 minutes, 53 seconds)
• Bethamie Horowitz, Director of Research and Development, the Mandel Foundation, on working with vision in existing institutions (3 minutes, 30 seconds)
• Annette Hochstein, President of the Mandel Foundation, Israel, on the role of ideas in public policy (13 minutes)

The group devoted a significant portion of the seminar to in-depth study of a single aspect of Moshe Greenberg's conception: his views of spirituality. Participants reported that this detailed, collaborative reading deepened their sense of the conception’s relevance for their work. The excerpts below include some highlights of these conversations.

• Daniel Marom, Project Director, on the history of American education and a challenge to reform efforts posed by The Shopping Mall High School (9 minutes).
  Read an excerpt from The Shopping Mall High School
• Moshe Greenberg's mandate for Jewish education: a conversation on Greenberg’s idea of "the learner as a creature impelled by curiosity" (see Visions of Jewish Education, page 122) (12 minutes, 45 seconds)
• Texts as symbols (3 minutes)
• The spirituality of text study (4 minutes)
• The possibilities for spiritual education embedded in specific texts (1 minute, 45 seconds)
• Trust and suspension in text study (4 minutes)
• An American context for text study: The Closing of the American Mind (3 minutes, 30 seconds). Read an excerpt from The Closing of the American Mind

Participants articulated some of the uses of the book and its approach to vision that they are planning in their programs and schools and raised critical points about areas yet to be explored and challenges inherent in applying these ideas to their settings.

• Seymour Fox on how vision can be implemented (10 minutes)
• Bethamie Horowitz on using data and statistics (6 minutes, 50 seconds)
• Sharon Feiman-Nemser on DeLet (11 minutes)
• Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman on Jewish education beyond Jewish schools (1 minute, 25 seconds)
• Barry Holtz on teaching Greenberg at the Jewish Theological Seminary (11 minutes)
• Annette Hochstein on working democratically with ideas (1 minute, 50 seconds)
• Jon Levisohn, Brandeis University, on an academic settings workgroup (4 minutes)
• Philip Wexler, Hebrew University and the Mandel Foundation, on text, culture, and critique (8 minutes, 50 seconds)
• David Cohen on models for public education (14 minutes, 40 seconds)
• Can this be done in existing institutions? (1 minute)
• Gail Dorph, Director, Mandel Teacher Educator Institute, on vision vs. visioning (1 minute)
• Sara Lee, Director of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, on a pilot project (2 minutes)
• Is there a place for a common discussion of vision in North America and Israel? (1 minute, 25 seconds)