The seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), was perhaps the twentieth century's most well-known Orthodox Jewish leader. For over forty years, as spiritual leader of the Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic Movement, he spearheaded the worldwide reconstruction of post-Holocaust Jewish religious life, inspiring a re-awakening of Jewish awareness and observance in as many as fifty countries. His initiatives impacted on many individuals formerly far removed from Jewish living. This work is the culmination of five years of intensive research into Rabbi Schneerson's writings undertaken for the doctoral degree within the Graduate School of Education at Melbourne's La Trobe University. It is the first systematic analysis of Rabbi Schneerson's educational philosophy conducted according to strict academic criteria.

The seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson (1902-1994) was perhaps the twentieth century's most well-known Jewish religious leader, best identified for spearheading the world-wide reconstruction of post-Holocaust Jewish religious life and inspiring a re-awakening of Jewish awareness and observance. Overseeing a primarily educational organization in over fifty countries, he addressed a vast range of educational matters in his correspondence, essays and public addresses. This book, the fruit of the author's exhaustive research, closely examines Rabbi Schneerson's substantive corpus and identifies the cohesive educational theory that underlies it. The defining elements of that innovative theory are shown to provide a vision for education that is of practical relevance to communities and individuals far beyond the Jewish community and for the wider world. After illustrating how Rabbi Schneerson's practical agenda is a consequence of his theory, implications of his educational theory for current educational practice and policy in the wider setting are found to frequently surpass the limitations of popular educational thinking about religious and moral education. Cosmic Education illustrates a new, sometimes radical, model of "theosocial" education.