A recording of our recent Q&A webcast with Jewish partisan Sonia Orbuch is now available on Youtube! JPEF Executive Director Mitch Braff interviewed Sonia at her home this Tuesday, with over twenty schools watching the live stream. During the broadcast, students had the opportunity to ask Sonia questions via Facebook, email, and Twitter.
Watch the video below:
Pictures of Resistance, the Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman opened March 15 at the Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel. The exhibit includes 30 photographs from Schulman, the only known Jewish Partisan Photographer. JPEF Board Member Ada Horwich and her husband Jim hosted a private reception for JPEF’s Los Angeles stakeholders.
JPEF's Executive Director Mitch Braff gives a tour of the JPEF’s Executive Director, Mitch Braff, gave a private tour of the exhibit to the guests that included two Jewish partisans, Jeff Gradow and Martin Petrasek. Petrasek, a Jewish partisan from Slovakia who is featured in JPEF’s film “Antisemitism in the Partisans”, was impressed, “I have never seen photographs like this before. They are incredible.” (Petrasek is also the author of “Broken Promise”, which was turned into a feature film that JPEF co-produced in 2009.)
From left to right: JPEF Executive Director Mitch Braff,The exhibit is on display at UCLA through April 30. A second copy of the exhibit is also on display at the University of Illinois in Springfield, where Braff spoke at a reception for the exhibit on April 9. For more information, click here.
In Jewish schools and homes everywhere, teachers and parents are preparing their children for the Passover holiday and the celebration of the Jewish people’s deliverance from the bondage of slavery. They are encouraging the youngest to recite the ma nishtana (the four questions) and engaging the older students in the retelling of the Exodus from Egypt. The celebration of Passover lends itself to one of the most significant learning experiences a Jewish child can have and one that is forever imprinted in his/her mind and heart.
On Passover, even while we celebrate our freedom from slavery thousands of years ago, we recite v’he sheamda and are reminded, “in every generation there are those who have risen against us to destroy us.” Last week we were brutally reminded of this declaration when Rabbi Jonathan Sandler (z’’l), his two sons Aryeh and Gavriel (z’’l), and a third student, Miriam Monsonego (z’’l) were gunned down as they entered Ozar Ha Torah Jewish Day School in Toulouse, France.
Rabbi Sandler was a devoted Jewish scholar who dedicated his life to instilling a passion for learning and a love for Judaism in every child. He spent several years studying and teaching in Israel and was a fervent advocate for bringing a quality Jewish education to children with learning disabilities. He returned to France a few years ago to teach in the same Jewish day school he attended as a child. In 2010, Rabbi Sandler participated in a seminar on Holocaust Education at Yad Vashem, where he asked penetrating questions and sought innovative ways to approach Holocaust education. Although, one of many participants, Rabbi Sandler left an indelible impression, declaring that his goal as a Jewish educator was to “educate the next generation to act as moral human beings.”
Sadly, there are three Jewish children who will never again ask “Why is this night different from all other nights?” and with the loss of Rabbi Sandler, thousands of others who will not learn the answer to this question under his gentle guidance. In the wake of this knowledge, our responsibility as Jews becomes increasingly clear. We are citizens of free countries and have the right, and therefore the obligation to speak out and to act. It is our duty to defend the vulnerable, challenge the aggressor and protect and promote human rights and human dignity everywhere. As we take up this charge, we draw courage from ancient Jewish heroes like the Maccabees and more recent inspiration from the Jewish partisans, who in the face of insurmountable odds, fought back against the Nazis to save thousands of lives and help bring an end to the Holocaust. We are empowered by the rebellion of those in the Warsaw ghetto, who on the first day of Passover, April 19, 1943, launched an uprising against their attackers that lasted until September – longer than both France and Poland were able to stave off German occupation.
Interfaith rally after the shootings (credit: AFP)As we begin our own holiday preparations, we mourn for Rabbi Sandler, a lover of our tradition and for his children and students who will never again gather around the Seder table, nor grow to adulthood and experience the fullness of life. We stand together, shaken by an act of hatred and with a renewed awareness that as Jews we must be vigilant in combating antisemitism and tyranny wherever it breeds.
The Exodus from Egypt is widely regarded as one of the most significant events in the history of the Jewish people and Exodus 13:8 commands us to tell the story to our children so that it is passed from generation to generation. In fact the word Haggadah is derived from the verb “to tell.” Recounting the Passover story is the basis for the education of children in each generation to acquire the social and ethical values of the Jewish people. On Friday night, when you sit down at your Seder table and begin to read from the Passover Haggadah not only will you perform a mitzvah (commandment) but you will take the first step in fulfilling Rabbi Sandler’s dream to educate the next generation to act as moral human beings.
Chag Sameach.
-Sheri Pearl
Sheri Pearl is JPEF's Director of Development and holds two degrees in Judaic Studies from UCLA and Brandeis University.
The theme for this year’s International Holocaust Days of Remembrance (April 15-22) is “Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue”. The Jewish resistance movement is rife with stories of partisans liberating fellow Jews from work camps and smuggling them out of ghettos. The Jewish partisans fought not only for survival and vengeance, but also to rescue Jews and other victims of Nazi oppression from the horrors of the Holocaust. JPEF offers a variety of resources and study guides that are ideally suited for exploring this theme with your students.
JPEF Resource Directory on Jews Rescuing Jews
Online Courses – jewishpartisans.org/elearning
Note: for classroom use, we recommend selecting chapters ahead of time and skipping “How to Use This in the Classroom”.
Lessons and Activities – www.jewishpartisans.org/resist
Partisan Webcast: April 17, 2012, 10am PST – www.jewishpartisans.org/webcast
Additional Resources
Jonathan leading an impromptu partisan workshop.
Room where the opera Brundibar was performed. The Terezin
For the first part of the tour, I felt both sadness and shock, but when we stepped into the crematorium, the reality of the horror hit me: the scale of the room, the meticulous engineering of the ovens. I purchased a candle, and was touched when one of the teachers on the tour asked if she could light one with me. However, that was nothing compared to the emotions I experienced when nearly the entire tour said Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) with me. Words do not describe the feeling of support and compassion from this group of strangers — almost all non-Jewish — who stood with me. It was a transformative experience.
I can not thank our tour leader, Trudi van der Tak of the American School of the Hague in Amsterdam, enough for the sensitivity, depth of knowledge and sense of humanity that she brought to the experience. I am also grateful that she invited me to speak about the Jewish partisans at the end of the tour.
JPEF Education Manager Jonathan Furst recently returned from a trip to Prague, Czech Republic, where he attended the 26th European League for Middle Level Education (ELMLE) Conference for European International School middle-school educators. The trip included a pre-conference tour of the Terezin ghetto, and was followed by a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. He shared the following reflections.
Read Part II here.
Read Part III here.
Part I - Prague
“Question what matters”. When I saw these words on the conference website, I knew it would be worth attending. Doubly so when the 2012 European League for Middle Level Education (ELMLE) conference brochure introduction
asked if our thinking is “radical enough” for today’s students.
The International Schools (IS) network represents a true global community – over 6,000 schools and 3 million students in 236 countries*. The students and teachers come from around the world, and there are international schools on every continent. The IS network is an excellent opportunity for new teachers who would like to live abroad, and there are great opportunities for retired teachers or those who would like to travel for a semester through their international substitute program. Most classes are taught in English and one other language (in Europe, generally Spanish or French).
Mindfulness is a key new trend in the International Schools community. Mindfulness in the classroom goes far beyond relaxation techniques to teaching students to be mindful in all their choices.
It is being integrated into nearly every subject – Social Studies, Physical Education (P.E.), Sciences, Language Arts, etc. – to promote ethics, tolerance, critical thinking, standing up to bullying, and more. Interestingly, several teachers said that JPEF’s ethics and leadership materials would fit right in: mindfulness does not mean passivity, and ethical resistance provides examples of proactive, engaged forms of mindfulness.
Mindfulness in the classroom could also help save lives. Kevin Hawkins, Middle-Level Principal at the International School of Prague writes, “according to some research, the onset of recurrent depression is most common in 7th grade” and that, “depression is one illness that has been clinically proven to benefit from treatment by developing a mindfulness practice.”
Other interesting trends include:
Hidden History
Even in Europe, the history of the Jewish partisans is nearly absent. Outside of the the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, most teachers I talked to had never heard about the Jewish armed Resistance. Even the greater partisan movement, which was instrumental in turning the tide of the war on the Eastern Front, is little-known outside of Eastern Europe.
It was gratifying to find out that not only History and English educators were excited to use our materials, but Math, Science, Spanish, and French teachers as well. Even a couple of P.E. teachers said they would try to find a way to bring the partisans into their classes.
Call for Ideas: Has anyone used – or have ideas for using – the Jewish partisans to help teach any of these subjects? (I suggested that building a zemlyanka would be a good team-building exercise for P.E.)
Send your suggestions to education@jewishpartisans.org and we will share them in our next newsletter. Thanks!
* IS statistics from www.iscresearch.com.
Part 2 — Terezin: Healing Through Art and Storytelling
Part 3 — Auschwitz/Birkenau: The Heart of the Beast
We’re happy to announce a rare opportunity to bring Jewish partisan Sonia Orbuch to your classroom or desktop via a live Webcast with Q&A.
More resources on Jewish Women in the Partisans - including online videocourse, film and study guides:
Students can ask questions ahead of time. Twitter #JPEFWebcast or e-mail webcast@jewishpartisans.org. If you are unable to make the live event, we will send you a link so you can access the videorecording online.
"There is such a thing as fighting back… If I was going to die, it would be as a fighter. Not as a Jew."
– Sonia Orbuch
