Posted By  richards on January 1, 2014    
				
				    Each May, EDSITEment celebrates Jewish American Heritage Month    by pointing to the rich array of educational resources on this    subject. Many of the programs listed below are films which    appeared on PBS as stand-alone specials or as part of    long-running series such as American Experience and American Masters. Many of them have been    funded in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities over    the past decades. Each of them is accompanied by a multimedia    website or Web page, which extends the life of the program with    video clips, images, and interactives that can be used by    teachers in their classroom or students doing research.  
    The idea of America as both a haven and a home for the    religious faiths of the myriad diverse groups who, over the    centuries, have immigrated to the United States is one that    deeply resonates with most Americans. The blessings of    religious and political liberty that these immigrants found in    America were captured eloquently in George Washingtons letter to the Hebrew    Congregation at Newport, Rhode Island in 1790. In this    letter, Washington quotes a sentence from the Book of Micah of    the Hebrew Bible:  
      May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in      this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the      other inhabitantswhile every one shall sit in safety under      his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him      afraid.    
    A few sentences earlier Washington addresses American Jews as    equal fellow citizens (the first time in history that any    national leader had done so):  
      It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it      were the indulgence of one class of people that another      enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for,      happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to      bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires      only that they who live under its protection should demean      themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions      their effectual support.    
    Washington's letter was in response to one written by Moses    Seixas, Warden of the Jeshuat Israel Synagogue in Rhode Island.    The    EDSITEment-reviewed Bill of Rights Institute has a lesson    in which students can read and compare the two letters via an    interactive. A related lesson plan on        Washington and Religious Liberty is available on the    NEH-funded website Rediscovering George Washington. The principles of    civil and religious liberty extolled in this letter and    embodied in our Constitution encouraged and rewarded active    participation in the social, political, and cultural life of    the nation with results that can be celebrated in this feature.  
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    A good place to begin if one wants to understand Jewish life in    America would be The Jewish Americans, recently    broadcast on PBS stations and partially funded by NEH. This series offers a    treasure trove of video clips, images, and student interactives    on such topics as the Diaspora, which sent millions of Jews to    the United States, the challenges of assimilation, the rise of immigrants from street peddlers on    the lower East Side of New York city to sophisticated and    wealthy merchants in the fashion industry, and the critical role that philanthropic    organizations and education plays in the Jewish American    community. The witty essayist Joseph Epstein wrote about    this program in his article Hebrew National for Humanities magazine.  
    A related NEH-funded website Jews in    America: Our Story documents the growth of the Jewish    community from a group of 23 refugees fleeing from the    Portuguese Inquisition in 1654. This comprehensive website on    the history and culture includes an interactive historical    timeline, with a gallery of over five hundred artifacts drawn    from the library, archival, and museum collections of the    Center for Jewish History and its partners. Another article    from Humanities, Jewish Pioneers tells the stories of the    new lives that European Jews made for themselves west of the    Mississippi in the 19th century. According to one scholar    there wasnt a single settlement west of the Mississippi of    any significance which had not had a Jewish mayor in 1900.  
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Jewish American Heritage Month | EDSITEment
				
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