“Imagine that you could travel back to any period in history. What moment or event would you want to observe? What people would you want to meet? What would you ask them?” Many of us have asked and been asked these hypothetical questions. They are designed to inspire curiosity, drive thinking, and spark the imagination. They represent, to some extent, a considerable component of what historians try to do—to use the tools at hand, books, documents, records, artifacts, testimonies, and more to explore the past, and for some perhaps to create a virtual time machine through which they can re-create that past.

For this issue of the journal, we asked five thinkers, scholars, and doers who are familiar with the Jewish day school world from the inside to reflect on core questions facing those who teach and design the place of Jewish History in the classroom. We were fascinated by both the overlap and the remarkable diversity of ideas expressed. Their responses are presented here in alphabetical order of their last names: Professor Adam Ferziger, Peter Geffen, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Greenberg, Professor Marc Shapiro, Rabbi Berel Wein.

Shortly after I began teaching World-Jewish History at Ramaz in the early 1990s I had a clarifying moment that seemed to justify that school’s integrated approach to Jewish History education. My ninth-grade students were studying the Ancient World and the day’s lesson involved a primary source comparative analysis of the text of the Cyrus Cylinder and the first three chapters of the Book of Ezra. The former text extolls the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great for repatriating conquered people and restoring their temples, while the latter includes Cyrus’s edict allowing the Judeans to return from exile in Babylonia and the rebuilding of the Temple. I divided the students into small groups and provided them with an English translation of the Cyrus Cylinder

For years, Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg has urged history teachers to go “beyond the bubble” and teach students historical thinking rather than rote memorization. Preparing students to be historical thinkers by teaching them to read sources critically and contextualize information are the guiding goals of my history classes. When I teach World War I, for example, I ask students to evaluate primary sources by questioning their reliability and comparing them to other contemporaneous perspectives. When I teach Jewish History, I take the same approach to the study of Jewish texts, encouraging students to read them in their historical context: to appreciate the author’s intended audience and acknowledge the author’s purpose. But, unlike my teaching of World War

Jews remember. There are 169 places in the Torah which command us to remember, to recall, to not forget, and to commemorate. You might think that there would be an accompanying imperative to study history. After all, doesn’t memory require a knowledge of the content that we are supposed to remember? Yet there is no such imperative. It seems that, even though historical events represent the basis for memory, fulfillment of the commandments to remember in the Jewish tradition has very little to do with historical fact. The commandments instruct that we remember but offer little in the sense of rigorous requirements of what we are to remember (the exception being Rabbinic discussions of what to include in the recitation at the Seder).

I had an aunt and uncle in Atlanta; their home was filled with antiques—even mundane things like a laundry detergent bucket from the 1940s. It was just something that I found deeply resonant. I’m deeply interested in material culture; it transports me to a different time. When my mother and I were cleaning out my grandmother’s house after she passed away, we came across this envelope that my mother, when she was a kid, received from cousins who lived in Alabama. Attached to the letter inside was a Confederate $5 bill, with a paperclip rusted on the bill itself. That was so exciting; I had a personal connection to the civil war. Shortly after that I learned that when Lincoln was assassinated, he had a Confederate $5 bill in his wallet.

What if you could teach a subject that grapples with the most important issues facing Judaism today? What if you could teach a subject that offers students more growth in Jewish literacy per class period than any other? What if you could teach a subject that bridges the gap between your students and Jews throughout space and time? What if you could teach a subject that provides your students with wisdom from the past, gratitude for the present, and inspiration for the future? This is the promise of Jewish History.

The study of Jewish History builds Jewish pride, purpose, and belonging in students. Exploration of our 4,000-year past helps students develop into confident and empowered Jews who live with faith and commitment in the modern world. In principle, many Jewish day school leaders would agree that Jewish History ought to have a primary place in Jewish day school education, but they often find no easy path to develop an appropriate Jewish History program. Textbooks are rare, experienced Jewish History teachers are hard to find, and the dearth of resources makes it impractical to train novice teachers.