Explore our wide variety of lesson plans that address topics such as Jewish women’s involvement in the Civil Rights and Labor movements, the developing role of women in Jewish ritual life, Jewish women’s contributions in fields from art to politics, and so much more! Our lesson plans are highly adaptable; we encourage all users to pick and choose the content that they want to use, and to integrate our lessons into their own curricula.
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Writing Home: A Letter from an Early American Jew
Learn about Jewish immigration and the development of the Jewish community in America through a 1790s letter, originally written in Yiddish by Rebecca Samuel to her parents in Hamburg, Germany, describing her life in Petersburg, Virginia.
Aya Baron
Tefillin Barbie: Considering Gender and Ritual Garb
Using the provocative image of "Tefillin Barbie"—created in 2006 by soferet (ritual scribe) Jen Taylor Friedman—examine the relationship between gender, body image, and ritual garb.
Bread and Roses - Defining Basic Needs
Explore 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.
Growing tensions II: Affirmative Action
Assess Jewish attitudes towards Affirmative Action as an example of how individuals and communities try to manage competing priorities.
Power, Privilege, and Responsibility
Analyze how power and privilege shape our relationships and involvement in social justice and activism, using sources including clips from the film Driving Miss Daisy.
Hurricane Katrina: Community Responsibility and Tikkun Olam
Explore Hurricane Katrina as an example of how Jews respond to catastrophe. Gail Chalew, a Jewish reporter from New Orleans, tells the story of Haley Fields, a thirteen year old girl from Los Angeles, who came up with her own unique way of helping those in need.
Jewish Diversity and Innovation: The View from the Kitchen
Discover how recipes can tell stories about Jewish history and its ever-changing rich cultural diversity.
Eve the Mother
Learn about Eve’s role as the first mother, and consider what her story might teach us about going through a difficult experience without sufficient support.
Yiftach’s Daughter At Stake
Learn about the disturbing story of Yiftach’s Daughter (“Bat Yiftach” in Hebrew), and consider how it reflects the importance of balancing religious beliefs with the reality of the world we live in.
Moving Inward: bringing liberation movements into the Jewish community
Act 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.
Hannah Raises Her Voice
Learn how Hannah attempted to change her life by calling on God for help, and consider the power of asking for what you need or want in your own life.
Community Organizing I: Freedom Summer
Explore 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.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Use images, artifacts, and audio clips to develop a more nuanced understanding of the March on Washington.
Jews and African Americans: Siblings in Oppression?
Explore and interrogate the identification between Jews and African-Americans against the backdrop of the Passover seder.
A Young American Jew in Israel, 1947-1948
Learn about the founding of the State of Israel from the perspective of Zipporah Porath, a young American woman who joined the Zionist effort in 1947.
Jewish clergy in the Civil Rights Movement
Unpack the roles, motivations, and challenges of Southern and Northern rabbis during the Civil Rights Movement.
Jewish Radicalism and the Red Scare
Examine 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.
Contemporary Jewish Labor Campaigns: The Labor Movement Begins at Home
Explore 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.
Michelle Boyle
Michelle is sixth-grade Humanities Teacher and Middle School Advisor & Community Engagement Coordinator at the Jewish Community Day School in Watertown, MA. Her lesson plan, “What Does It Mean To Be A Jewish Feminist?,” is an elective for students in grades 5–8, who learn how women and men might define themselves as feminists, then conduct independent research and present their findings to the class.
What Does It Mean To Be A Jewish Feminist?
Contemporary Labor Issues (Module #4)
Examine modern labor justice issues to allow students to consider their own stance on events like the 2013 collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh or the reports of poor working conditions in Chinese factories that produce iPhones and iPads.
Museum of Family History
In this activity, students learn about a part of their own family history and have the opportunity to practice interviewing and writing skills. To showcase their learning, students curate their own museum of family history artifacts.