(Press Release) To help advance the White House’s recently released U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) has curated a collection of lesson plans and educational units on antisemitism and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, all of which are available at no cost to state departments of education, school districts, and individual schools.
“These resources will help students understand the many ways antisemitism manifests and the diversity of Jews impacted by it,” says Sarah Levin, executive director of JIMENA. “We were privileged to be a part of the development of the National Strategy. Now we need to play a role in its implementation.”
The lesson plans were produced and published by different groups, including PBS Learning Media lessons from Simon Schama’s Story of the Jews, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, California’s State Board of Education, UCLA’s Fowler Museum, JIMENA, and Centropa. Select lessons meet state and national education content standards.
“This is only the beginning,” adds Levin. It is our hope to raise the funding to produce more lessons on Nazi camps in North Africa, the Farhud in Iraq, Convivencia as a model to fight antisemitism and bigotry of all forms, and other country-by-country lessons.”
Levin was privileged to participate in White House listening sessions when they were designing this historic strategy. While there, she shared how JIMENA has seen antisemitism manifest in K-12 schools and curriculum, particularly in California, strategies JIMENA uses to counter this, and additional national strategies that are solely needed.
Strategic Goal 1.1 of the National Strategy aims to “Increase School-Based Education about Antisemitism, Including the Holocaust, and Jewish American Heritage.” That section includes this language:
In addition to learning about the horrors of the Holocaust, students should learn about global histories of antisemitism. This should include histories of antisemitism experienced by Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews—who trace their ancestry to Spain, the Middle East, and North Africa—and their stories of exclusion, persecution, and expulsion. Students should also learn about the history of antisemitism in the United States as well as contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. Educators need readily available quality resources to enable such education.
The national strategy also encourages state and local governments to include Jewish studies in ethnic studies and history curricula. This new collection includes the California State Board approved lesson plan, Antisemitism and Jewish Middle Eastern Americans, which JIMENA produced for the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.
When the National Strategy was released JIMENA welcomed “this important development, which aligns with our vision to achieve universal recognition of Sephardic and Mizrahi histories. This is a historic moment for Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish Americans as the importance of teaching our histories has now been recognized and affirmed by the White House.
“As a long-standing leader in educating the public on the histories of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries, JIMENA looks forward to continuing our work with federal and state level agencies toward achieving this strategic goal.”
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Preceding provided by JIMENA