Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 9, 2021

Anyone teaching the past by skipping over the unpleasant parts isnt teaching history. They are engaged in propaganda.

Jewish tradition understands this: Refusing to sugarcoat their own peoples culpability, the Sages themselves teach that the destruction of the Temple by the Romans is a consequence of baseless hatred among Jews.

Yet in nearly two dozen states, the movement to impose restrictions on the teaching of history is gaining momentum. Incited by a national hysteria over critical race theory, advocates of these educational fatwas are borrowing a page from authoritarian governments like Vladimir Putins Russia in a clumsy effort to avoid discussing the messy, controversial and painful moments in Americas history.

And as a professional historian, I can tell you that these bans will be terrible for anyone teaching or studying Jewish history.

What exactly is critical race theory, and how is it apparently in the words of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is seen as a potential presidential candidate teaching our kids to hate each other and hate our country?

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Critical race theory is a body of ideas associated not with the discipline of history but with the practice of law. Adherents believe that the legacy of slavery is baked into American society and culture to such a degree that African-Americans continue to suffer long-term, systemic economic harm. It suggests that discussing reparations should be on the national agenda (hence the origin of these ideas among legal scholars).

The impact of systemic racism may be measured, for example, in things as diverse as the wealth gap between white and Black Americans with similar educations and the declining tree cover in neighborhoods with majority African-American populations. Critical race theorists look to the history of government policies from the 1930s like redlining, under which the Federal Housing Authority refused to underwrite mortgages in African-American neighborhoods with the explicit goal of separating incompatible racial groups. Blacks were, like Jews, forbidden to buy homes in newly developed suburbs, while white Americans received help from the government to purchase homes in these leafy neighborhoods and to build generational wealth.

The CRT framework, decades old, gained popularity (or notoriety, depending on whom you ask) after the summer 2020 wave of protests that followed the murder of George Floyd.

The bans on teaching with a critical race theory framework arent really against history per se, which is in the past and therefore stubbornly resists regulation. Rather, these decrees fall more precisely within the category of what are called memory laws. Historian Timothy Snyder described these laws as government actions designed to guide public interpretation of the past by asserting a mandatory view of historical events, by forbidding the discussion of historical facts or interpretations or by providing vague guidelines that lead to self-censorship.

Putin, however, pioneered a new approach to memory laws: Rather than protecting the weak, they also can be weaponized to strengthen the powerful. In the context of Russian history, the counterpart to American slavery is the Holodomor, a terrible famine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932-1933. Beginning in 2008, Russias Duma assembly passed legislation that forbade the discussion of Russian government policies that contributed to the genocidal nature of the famine, and established entities like the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russias Interests (an ideological antecedent to thenow-defunct 1776 Commission, then President Trumps last-minute attempt to promote a pro-American curriculum).

This is the intellectual home of the CRT bans. They share educational space with Polands ridiculous, offensive and dangerous 2018 law that criminalizes the suggestion that Poland bears any responsibility for the crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. The object of Polands memory law is not to prevent the resurgence of extremist antisemitism; it is to prevent Poles from confronting the complex legacy of collaboration with the Nazi occupation.

This brings us to the American versions of the memory laws. Tennessee, for example, recently passed SB 623, which lists 14 directives all tied to state funding. The requirements oscillate between the painfully obvious and the absurdly comic. On the one hand, Tennessee does not prohibit the impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history, or even the impartial instruction on the oppression of a particular group of people. On the other hand, it bans teaching that an individual, by virtue of the individuals race or sex, is inherently privileged (forestalling, presumably, lessons in how the redlining in the 1930s led to white wealth accumulation today, or how men enjoyed privileges over women well, at just about any point in history). The prohibition sits within the same category as promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government!

Despite the 1776 Commissions promise to unite, inspire, and ennoble all Americans, these laws will chill honest engagement with hard truths, forcing teachers to lie to their students, even if only by omission.

Furthermore, anyone teaching Jewish history will be challenged to find a way to present the legacy of antisemitism without running afoul of these regulations. The historical linkage between Catholic theology and the persecution of Jews, for example, is rife with difficult topics. They range from the medieval charges of host desecration and the horrendous blood libel to the popes kidnapping of 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara in 1858 (we could, unfortunately, continue at length). Protestants would also be discomfited by Martin Luthers anti-Jewish screed, On the Jews and their Lies (1543). The list of countries where Jews have lived in their diaspora is pretty much identical to the list of countries that have discriminated against Jews.

Obviously, the presentation of challenging material must be titrated to the specifics of the classroom, considering factors like the age and background preparation of the students. No responsible teacher wants to teach students to hate each other or hate America. But we all participate in a sacred covenant with our students: They expect us to tell them the truth. These memory laws, if enforced, would ask us to betray that covenant. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

Read more:

Banning critical race theory will gut the teaching of Jewish history - The Jerusalem Post

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