The Education of American Jewry: The Past is a Prologue

In The Education of American Jewry: The Past is a Prologue, Eduardo Rauch surveys the way that questions of education helped define American Jewish life in the first three decades of the 20th Century. What are the limits of assimilation? What is the proper role for Jews of American institutions such as the public school? What institutions of the Jewish community could best help build a future in the American landscape? These questions were at the center of Jewish communal life and helped define the future of the American Jewish community. Rauch explores many of the key crises of that period and examines the responses of major Jewish leaders such as Mordecai Kaplan, Horace Kallen, Samson Benderly and Judah Magnes. In the final chapter Rauch takes the insights of history and applies them to his own vision of a Jewish future: How might what we learn from our past help imagine new directions for Jewish life and Jewish education?