Educators' Guide: Jewish American Heritage Lesson Plans

If you can only teach one or two lessons, start with the “Who is the Jewish Community in the U.S.?” lesson to help your students gain general information about the Jewish community. Then select another lesson based on the following factors. 

Select a lesson or two that is most topically relevant to your subject matter. For example, if you teach social studies, you might teach "Jewish Immigration to the U.S.” If you teach ELA/English, you can teach the ”Using Poetry to Reflect on the Jewish Experience” lesson plan.

If you teach Advisory or an extended Homeroom, you can divide the lessons into two shorter ones or select activities within the lessons to use or incorporate into your curriculum. 

You can do some lessons from the collection in class, and then assign others to students for homework by utilizing the online student-facing Sutoris for each lesson. 

Let your students decide! Provide some information about each lesson and let them vote on what they most want to learn about. This builds investment and engagement in the learning process. 

To teach the lesson plans included in this collection, students will not need any background reading or background information.

If you do want to provide some background information, each of the lesson plans includes reading material which you can assign before teaching the lesson. Each lesson also has an “Additional Reading and Resources” section and you can choose additional background reading for your students from this list. 

If students do have prior knowledge about Jewish people, culture, Judaism or the history of Jewish people in the U.S., it will enhance their experience with this collection. 

If your students enjoy this topic and want to learn more, you can use our other resource to bring Jewish American Heritage Month to your classroom. 9 Ideas for Teaching Jewish American Heritage Month includes suggestions, activities and resources for K-12 classrooms that incorporate the arts, literature, history, important people and events, antisemitic bias and more. 

You can also integrate the study of Jewish people, history and culture into different parts of your curriculum. For example, when you are teaching world history or the history of immigration, include the Jewish experience, as well as other group’s experiences. When teaching English Language Arts, include stories and narratives by and about Jewish people.

For elementary and middle school, ADL’s Picture and Chapter Books to Celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month book round-up includes book suggestions and discussion guides.

When discussing issues of identity in general, make connections to the religion and cultural aspects of identity—and include the Jewish experience. 

Before you teach any of these lessons, introduce or reinforce classroom guidelines for establishing a safe learning environment. 

Be aware that you may or may not know whether there are students in your classroom who identify as Jewish; therefore, do not make assumptions about which students may relate directly to the content. 

Be mindful that Jewish students in your classroom likely have a range of emotions and perspectives about discussing a topic that is about their identity. 

As you would with learning about groups of people, approach the topic with a positive learning approach. Share with students that Jewish identity is diverse and people who are Jewish have other intersecting identities, similar to all groups of people. 

Emphasize that there are different ways of being Jewish, both in terms of religious observance, beliefs and values and cultural practices.

Reinforce with students that the reason we are learning about Jewish people is to gain understanding and empathy, learn about the Jewish experience in its complexity and, in so doing, counteract stereotypes, misconceptions and misunderstandings. 

If bias and stereotypes do arise, be very clear in explaining that bias and stereotypes are not okay in your classroom. If this occurs, remember that Jewish students in your classroom will likely feel harmed so it is important to protect and support them, and bring in other school support if needed. Check with your school guidelines and policies if this rises to the level of an incident, and follow up accordingly.

If stereotypes or misconceptions arise that are genuinely based on a lack of knowledge—as opposed to bias—share information you have to dispel them. If you need more information, tell students you will share more at another time.   

No group of people should be known based on the trauma, bias and injustice their community has faced. No community should be primarily portrayed as victims of this bias. Injustice and trauma may be part of the history, but it never tells the entire story. 

Bear in mind that what many people learn about the Jewish experience is focused on trauma and injustice like the Holocaust, antisemitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc. If applicable, share with your students that this experience of focusing on trauma and hatred when it comes to Jewish people, is common, unbalanced and unfortunate. 

Central to this learning is the exploration the culture and joy of the Jewish people as well as the shared experience of harm that comes from antisemitic attitudes and actions. This should help students recognize that while antisemitism has had an impact on Jewish identity, Jewish identity is not and should not be defined by trauma and injustice.

A powerful way to address and challenge antisemitism is to facilitate learning about Jewish people and the Jewish experience—who Jewish people are, what they believe in, their culture, hopes and dreams, their diversity and complexity. Learning about Jewish people humanizes Jewish people and ideally conveys nuance in understanding Jewish people. This is the focus of this lesson plan collection.