Jewish Identity And Perception: It’s Complicated

Note to teachers:

The teaching materials that follow will help students develop History’s Habits of Mind. They are grouped according to the three waves of Jewish immigration.

• Part One: “To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance” features the first wave of Sephardi Jews in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.
• Part Two: “A Jewish Identity Within a Christian Country” recounts the second wave of Jewish Immigration, that of German Jews in the mid-19^th century.
• Part Three: “The “Largest Jewish City in the World” tells a story with which students may be more familiar. This is the classic story of the huge wave of immigrants to America in the post-Civil War industrial age.

These lessons have implications for understanding challenges of the present. As America again discusses the importance and restriction of immigration, as we struggle with accommodating, integrating and assimilating new religious and ethnic groups into a nation whose motto is E Pluribus Unum, these lessons can help students develop perspective on their own times.