Getty Images Israel’s Education Ministry has left Israeli parents asking how young is too young when it comes to Holocaust education. Yesterday, on the Israeli Holocaust memorial day, Yom Hashoah, kindergartens began following a new government directive to teach the Holocaust. But is this really the right decision? First, it’s not just that every parent…
A Jewish boy wears a yellow star like those forced on Jews during the Holocaust / Getty Images “So, children, tell me how you came to Theresienstadt.” Thus began my seventh grade intro to Shoah education. Not that we hadn’t been learning about the Holocaust for most of our day school careers. There was the…
Israel will teach the Holocaust in the country’s schools beginning in kindergarten under a planned curriculum released by the Education Ministry. The curriculum, which appears on the ministry’s website, is titled Bishvili HaZikaron, or Memory Is For Me. It was released several days before the start of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Experts from…
The First Baptist Church is on a dead-end street in Spring Valley, N.Y., hard up against the railroad line that peters out a few blocks north. Adam Baldachin, a 30-year-old Conservative rabbi, stood at a podium under a fluorescent light in the church basement, backed by two-dozen religious leaders including black pastors in collars and…
Guy Adam In the fall of 2010, I had recently arrived in Tel Aviv and had started my New Israel Fund Fellowship at ASSAF, a humanitarian aid organization helping asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. I met Guy around then at the ASSAF offices. He spoke English, so I explained to him that I was…
Let’s begin with a truth: Much of what gets published by and in the Jewish communal world is pure self-promotion. Look around, and you’ll see articles, comments, essays, posts and tweets whose chief purpose is to extol the virtues of this or that Jewish communal organization or program. Most authors of this material don’t even…
Passover at the University of Texas at Austin this year will feature matzo with a hint of jalapeño. The Haggadahs will be in Hebrew, English and Spanish. The celebration will feature the sounds of a mariachi band, and the taste of guacamole will replace the more familiar maror and charoset. If past years are any…
Thousands of students from around the world head to Israel every year to discover the country and its culture. And what do they learn? “In general, Israel education is about falafel, geography and one directional learning about Israelis,” quipped Shana Zionts, director of student life at Columbia/Barnard Hillel. This winter, a delegation of young adults,…
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