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Writer and lifelong student.
Ask Your Colleges and K-12 Schools to Celebrate Jewish Heritage Month
With Jewish Heritage Month coming up in May, now is the perfect time to ask your family’s colleges, universities, and K-12 schools to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month.
With so much of the Jewish community’s energy drained by the Hamas-Israel War and the global surge in Jew-hatred, Jewish Heritage Month offers the opportunity to remind our communities — and ourselves — that Judaism has thousands of years of deep and profound history, and there is so much more to Judaism than a 75-year-old country immersed in internal political battles and endless military conflicts.
For outreach to your schools, you can consider some or all of the content below, making locally-specific modifications with ideas and suggestions as relevant.
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Dear (school administrator),
I am reaching out to offer to help you plan our school’s celebration of Jewish Heritage Month in May.
Some relevant background:
- Judaism has existed for thousands of years, with extensive contributions to the arts, science, medicine, feminism, civil rights, cross-cultural relations, music, entertainment, literature, psychology, comedy, film, and other areas.
- More than half of Israeli Jews are people of color — they are Mizrahim, having come to Israel from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East.
- There is a large global population of Jews of color. The Jews of Color Initiative offers resources that our school could likely incorporate into celebration of Jewish Heritage Month.
- Martin Luther King was a champion of Black-Jewish relations, working closely for years with one of his most trusted, Jewish advisers, Stanley Levison, and walking side by side at Selma with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
- In the Boston area, Lenny Zakim and Charles Stith created and led together the first ever Black-Jewish seders. Boston’s Zakim Bridge is named for Lenny Zakim, as a symbol of his cross-cultural bridge-building.
- The first ever Passover seder in the White House was hosted by our first ever Black First Family, Barack and Michelle Obama, in coordination with some of their young, Jewish aides.
- Hatred of Jews has risen dramatically in the US since October 7th, 2023, including within our school’s community, and local Jewish students and families are often targets, despite having no connection to or influence over the Israeli government.
- Detroit has a Coalition for Black and Jewish Unity, perhaps one of the strongest such alliances in the country, and could likely offer resources for honoring Jewish Heritage Month and the deeply cross-cultural nature of global Judaism.
I look forward to working with you and will do my best to accommodate your schedule for a preliminary meeting to discuss our school’s plans for Jewish Heritage Month.
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Do you have feedback or questions on this column? Please feel free to use the Contact Me link above to reach out.
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