Living the Legacy - Lessons
Civil Rights - Unit 1 - Personal Identity and Action
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Unit 1, Lesson 1 - Exploring My Identity
Go to lesson | PreviewExplore the complexities of our own identities, and how these identities shape the way we view and act in the world.
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Unit 1, Lesson 2 - How Does My Identity Inform My Actions?
Go to lesson | PreviewConsider how Jewish experiences and values – in both conscious and unconscious ways – informed the actions of Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, and inform our own allegiances and behaviors.
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Unit 1, Lesson 3 - Jews and the Civil Rights Movement: the Whys and Why Nots
Go to lesson | PreviewAssume the roles of Southern Jews participating in a Temple board meeting on whether or not to support Northern Jewish activists staging a protest in town.
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Unit 1, Lesson 4 - Power, Privilege, and Responsibility
Go to lesson | PreviewAnalyze how power and privilege shape our relationships and involvement in social justice and activism, using sources including clips from the film Driving Miss Daisy.
Civil Rights - Unit 2 - Defining Activism and the Civil Rights Movement
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Unit 2, Lesson 1 - Moments of Personal Resistance
Go to lesson | PreviewExamine how individuals take stands against racism and injustice using an essay by Grace Paley and three other short vignettes of individual protest.
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Unit 2, Lesson 2 - De facto segregation in the North: Skipwith vs. NYC Board of Education
Go to lesson | PreviewInvestigate the dynamics of segregation in northern schools through a New York City court case ruled on by Judge and Jewish activist Justine Wise Polier.
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Unit 2, Lesson 3 - Civil Disobedience: Freedom Rides
Go to lesson | PreviewDiscover the story of one young Jewish Freedom Rider and Gandhi's principles of civil disobedience, and prepare your own civil disobedience training video.
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Unit 2, Lesson 4 - Community Organizing I: Freedom Summer
Go to lesson | PreviewExplore the role of community organizing, Jewish values, and moral conviction in the lives of young civil rights activists as you imagine yourself a participant in Mississippi Freedom Summer.
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Unit 2, Lesson 5 - Community Organizing II: Wednesdays in Mississippi
Go to lesson | PreviewEncounter a little known story of women collaborating across geographic, racial, and religious boundaries through documentary clips of Wednesdays in Mississippi activists.
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Unit 2, Lesson 6 - Jewish clergy in the Civil Rights Movement
Go to lesson | PreviewUnpack the roles, motivations, and challenges of Southern and Northern rabbis during the Civil Rights Movement.
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Unit 2, Lesson 7 - The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Go to lesson | PreviewUse images, artifacts, and audio clips to develop a more nuanced understanding of the March on Washington.
Civil Rights - Unit 3 - Changes and Challenges
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Unit 3, Lesson 1 - Jews and African Americans: Siblings in Oppression?Go to lesson | Preview
Explore and interrogate the identification between Jews and African-Americans against the backdrop of the Passover seder.
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Unit 3, Lesson 2 - Growing tensions I: Black-Jewish RelationsGo to lesson | Preview
Analyze how underlying rifts in the relationship between African Americans and Jews brought these groups into more overt conflict in the late 1960s, with a focus on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school crisis and a poetry slam activity.
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Unit 3, Lesson 3 - Growing tensions II: Affirmative ActionGo to lesson | Preview
Assess Jewish attitudes towards Affirmative Action as an example of how individuals and communities try to manage competing priorities.
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Unit 3, Lesson 4 - Moving Inward: bringing liberation movements into the Jewish community
Go to lesson | PreviewAct out, through tableaux vivants, the ways Jews took what they had learned from the Civil Rights Movement and other liberation movements and used these insights to change the Jewish community.
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Unit 3, Lesson 5 - Civil Rights and Social Justice Today
Go to lesson | PreviewConsider what contemporary civil rights and social justice issues matter to us today, and how Jews and African Americans determine their priorities and responsibilities to effect social change.
Labor - Unit 1 - Jews and Labor
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Unit 1, Lesson 1 - Bread and Roses - Defining Basic Needs
Go to lesson | PreviewExplore the concept of “Bread and Roses” and ideas about work and dignity, with specific cases on education and culture, hats and clothing, poetry and song, as well as traditional Jewish texts about labor.
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Unit 1, Lesson 2 - From Suffering to Action, From the Individual to the Collective
Go to lesson | PreviewInvestigate the workplace conditions that led immigrant women to strike in the “Uprising of the 20,000” in 1909-1910, and the tragedy of the Triangle fire that led to lasting labor reform.
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Unit 1, Lesson 3 - Identity, Independence, and Becoming American Jews
Go to lesson | PreviewExamine inter-generational relationships among Jewish immigrants, and the role of work and workers’ youth culture in the Americanization process. Use art and writing to explore your own identity formation.
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Unit 1, Lesson 4 - Workers and Their Allies, Then and Now
Go to lesson | PreviewThrough the history of mutual aid societies, unions, and settlement houses, as well as contemporary organizations working for labor rights, consider the ways Jews have supported one another and also worked in solidarity with others to repair the world.
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Unit 1, Lesson 5 - Housewives and Consumer Organizing
Go to lesson | PreviewConsider the impact of consumer organizing by analyzing the day-to-day actions of the key players in the 1902 kosher meat boycott.
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Unit 1, Lesson 6 - Jews and Agricultural Labor
Go to lesson | PreviewDiscover the little-known history of American Jewish farming and explore the contemporary resurgent Jewish interest in food justice. Analyze traditional and modern texts about Jewish values and food production and consumption, and design your own vision for how society should produce, distribute, and consume food.
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Unit 1, Lesson 7 - Jewish Radicalism and the Red Scare
Go to lesson | PreviewExamine the rich tradition of Jewish radical politics and its repression in the McCarthy era, focusing on the history of Jewish radicalism in the entertainment industry and the Hollywood blacklists of the 1940s and 1950s.
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Unit 1, Lesson 8 - Contemporary Jewish Labor Campaigns: The Labor Movement Begins at Home
Go to lesson | PreviewExplore contemporary Jewish labor campaigns on issues such as the living wage and the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, and analyze how and why Jewish organizations are advocating in solidarity with oppressed workers.