National History Day Collaboration

A secondary school teacher's resource guide on American Jewish history has been published in partnership with National History Day and edited by the Institute's Managing Director, Miriam Eve Mora. The publication led to a wider collaboration between the Raoul Wallenberg Institute and the National History Day initiative. The Institute will provide the scholarly leadership on the next volume in the Moving Freedom Forward series, which will examine key moments in American History through the lens of intersecting religious and ethnic intolerances. It will demonstrate to educators how to incorporate concepts of intolerance and bigotry to historical analysis, giving new frameworks to histories they already teach, and showing how American communities respond to injustice and work to promote a more pluralistic American society.

Teaching Jewish American History in the Classroom is the second volume of the Moving Freedom Forward series. Part of NHD’s Expansive History Initiative, this series brings the latest scholarship to educators to help them teach American history in more expansive ways and increases access to the NHD program.

Teaching Jewish American History presents wide-ranging accounts that aim to capture how the history of Jews in America is a story of continuity and change, rejection and acceptance, departures and arrivals.

Contributors to the volume include historians, museum professionals, and educators, all of whom offer insights into how and why to teach Jewish American history. The volume contains a series of articles and lessons that aim to help educators and their students understand the vastness of Jewish American experiences, while remaining as approachable as possible. The lessons are classroom-ready and provide models for developing further lesson plans. Together, these materials offer educators a range of perspectives, primary sources, and strategies to deepen students’ understanding of Jewish American experiences as an integral part of U.S. history.