Institute for Curriculum Services, Textbook Reviews for K–12 Education, Oregon and Florida
The Institute for Curriculum Services: National Resource Center for Accurate Jewish Content in Schools (ICS) was launched in 2005 and is an independently funded national project of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The ICS textbook review project is a nationwide initiative that reviews K–12 social studies textbooks to ensure that the information about Jews, Judaism, and Israel is accurate. Examples of misrepresentations include:
- implications that the Jews crucified Jesus
- depictions of Judaism as a religion whose relevance ended when Christianity began
- portrayals of Judaism as a religion of harsh justice or violence
- misrepresentations of Jewish holidays and practices
- a one-sided perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that blames Israel
- omission of the fact that Arab countries refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist in 1948 and many still do not recognize Israel’s right to exist
- dwelling on the plight of Palestinian refugees while omitting the Arab countries’ expulsion of Jews, which created a comparable number of Jewish refugees
Each year, ICS reviews upwards of thirty textbooks, resulting in more than five thousand edits and at least four million K–12 students being impacted annually; the organization also reviews textbooks in development and on related digital materials.
The Jewish Week, The Conversation: Jewish in America, New York
This year is the seventh annual Conversation, an innovative initiative that each year brings together a wide-ranging group of about fifty American Jewish individuals who are prominent in their fields to discuss what it means to be Jewish today and the future of Jewish life in the United States. The Conversation creates an atmosphere that is engaging and creative, in which people with differing religious, political, and generational perspectives can meet and talk.
The Council for Economic Education, Finance Education Program, New York
Targum Shlishi and the Maytiv Foundation are supporting the Council for Economic Education (CEE) in bringing free training to teachers at New York–area Jewish day schools during the spring and summer of 2011. The goal of the initiative is to enroll fifty teachers from Jewish day schools in CEE workshops covering topics such as “Cultivating Your Financial Garden: Financial Fitness for Life Program for Teachers of High School Students,” “Virtual Economics 4.0: Re-tooled, Expanded, More Interactive, and the Answer to All Your Economics and Personal Finance Teaching Woes!” “Economics in U.S. History: Kicking it up a Notch with Innovative Lessons,” and “KISS Economics 101: Keeping it Simple for Students.” The experimental program hopes to be part of the solution to the absence of basic economic education in these otherwise multi-curricular schools. The Council for Economic Education (CEE) offers comprehensive K–12 economic and personal finance education programs.
Areyvut, Jewish Teen Philanthropy Program: Helping Organizations Provide Essentials, Bergen County, New Jersey
Targum Shlishi supported the program H.O.P.E. (Helping Organizations Provide Essentials), Areyvut’s Jewish Teen Philanthropy Program at Yeshivat Noam in Bergen County, New Jersey. The goal of the program was to provide sixth- and seventh-grade students with the opportunity to learn about philanthropy, its impact, and the meaning of giving Jewishly. The students determined two nonprofit organizations to support after reviewing grant requests and meeting with potential grantees from several organizations, and presented a total of $1,000 to the recipient organizations, The Friendship Circle (a Chabad-affiliated nonprofit that helps families of children with special needs) and Habitat for Humanity. Students were also provided with opportunities to actively volunteer at other organizations. A non-profit organization established in 2002, Areyvut offers Jewish day schools, educators, synagogues, and community centers unique opportunities to empower and enrich youth by creating innovative and meaningful programs that help to realize core Jewish values—chesed (kindness), tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (social action).
Documentary Film, Mrs. Judy’s Secret, New York
Targum Shlishi is providing seed funding for research and development and spearheading an online fundraising effort to support the making of a documentary film titled Mrs. Judy’s Secret, which is about the largest rescue of Jews by an individual since the Second World War. The film will follow the story of Judy Feld Carr, who rescued more than three thousand Syrian Jews, liberating them from Syria’s extremely oppressive climate toward Jews. The rescue, which took place from the mid-1970s until 2001, was accomplished in secrecy by Carr, a Canadian mother of six, grandmother of thirteen, and music professor. Despite having no initial connections or resources, over the course of almost thirty years Carr bribed, ransomed, and smuggled Syria’s Jews to safety. She kept meticulous records and has agreed to grant the filmmakers of Mrs. Judy’s Secret unprecedented and exclusive access to her papers and to tell her story on film for the first time. The film will also include stories of five of the rescued families, located throughout the world, and it will trace the oppression of Jews in Syria. Mrs. Judy’s Secret is directed by veteran filmmaker Daniel Anker, an Academy Award–nominated and Emmy-winning producer and director.
Tulane Hillel, Shabbat Dinners, New Orleans
Targum Shlishi and the Maytiv Foundation are supporting the Council for Economic Education (CEE) in bringing free training to teachers at New York–area Jewish day schools during the spring and summer of 2011. The goal of the initiative is to enroll fifty teachers from Jewish day schools in CEE workshops covering topics such as “Cultivating Your Financial Garden: Financial Fitness for Life Program for Teachers of High School Students,” “Virtual Economics 4.0: Re-tooled, Expanded, More Interactive, and the Answer to All Your Economics and Personal Finance Teaching Woes!” “Economics in U.S. History: Kicking it up a Notch with Innovative Lessons,” and “KISS Economics 101: Keeping it Simple for Students.” The experimental program hopes to be part of the solution to the absence of basic economic education in these otherwise multi-curricular schools. The Council for Economic Education (CEE) offers comprehensive K–12 economic and personal finance education programs.
Moment Magazine, Editorial Projects, Washington, D.C.
Moment Magazine is an independent publication founded in 1975 by Elie Wiesel and Leonard Fein. The publication is dedicated to serious, literate, intellectual journalism that provides the American Jewish community with an independent forum, with no ties to any organization, denomination, or point of view. As cofounder Fein wrote in the premier issue, Moment includes diverse opinions “of no single ideological position, save of course, for a commitment to Jewish life.” The publication strives to counteract anti-Semitism and to encourage constructive, meaningful discussion about Jewish history, life, and the future. Moment has one hundred thousand print readers and two million web readers. Targum Shlishi supported the development of editorial content for the magazine.
Targum Shlishi, Dissertations in Jewish Studies, Miami, Florida
For the fifth year, Targum Shlishi has awarded grants to support research for dissertations on topics related to Jewish Studies to doctoral students from the United States and Israel. Research topics vary widely in both subject matter and field of study. A total of eight grants were awarded at two different levels of support: four grants of $2,500 and four of $1,000.
The awardees receiving grants of $2,500 are: Caroline Block, The Spirit of Tradition and the Institution of Authority: Knowledge and Community in American Orthodox Women’s Talmud Programs, Johns Hopkins University (Anthropology); Joseph Ringel, The Sephardic Rabbinate, Sephardic Yeshivot, and the Shas Educational System, Brandeis University (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies); Joshua Z. Teplitsky, Between Court Jew and Jewish Court: David Oppenheim, the Prague Rabbinate, and Eighteenth-century Jewish politics, New York University (History and Judaic Studies); and Polly Zavadivker, Soviet History, Jewish Fate: The War Writings of S. Ansky, Isaac Babel, and Vasily Grossman, 1914–1948, University of California, Santa Cruz (History).
The awardees receiving $1000 grants are: Yonatan Adler, The Archeological Evidence for the Observance of Ritual Purity Laws during the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, Bar-Ilan University (Land of Israel Studies and Archeology); Debra Caplan, Staging Jewish Modernism: The Interwar Yiddish Art Theater Movement in Poland and the United States, Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations: Program in Yiddish Language and Literature); Efrat Sadras-Ron, New Israeli Jewishness, Michigan State University (Anthropology); and Zach Mann, The Rabbi as Public Intellectual: Jacob Agus and American Judaism, Jewish Theological Seminary (Modern Jewish Studies).