CBHS seniors in Dr. Keith Wood’s Facing History and Ourselves class virtually attended Memphis Jewish Federation’s 60th Annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration in April. Wood takes pride in the a-ha moments the curriculum delivers to his almost exclusively non-Jewish students, guiding them to reexamine their relationships with Jewish friends and neighbors and making them lifelong allies.
“A comfortable place to be uncomfortable.”
That’s how Christian Brothers High School Social Studies educator Dr. Keith Wood describes the Facing History and Ourselves class he has taught to an almost exclusively non-Jewish group of students for 18 years. Last month, he encouraged his Facing History and Ourselves class to come back to school on a Thursday night to watch the Memphis Jewish Federation’s 60th Annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration via Zoom, where they heard the conversation between Elisha Wiesel, son of Elie Wiesel, and Rabbi Abe Schacter-Gampel, grandson of Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a U.S. Army chaplain and liberator of Buchenwald death camp where Elie Wiesel was a 16-year-old boy at the time of liberation.
“More than half of my Facing History students came back for the program,” said Dr. Wood. “I don’t have any Jewish students this semester, and participating in Yom HaShoah is a really unique thing for them. At the end, one of my kids who is Catholic said, ‘Wow, we have a lot more in common than I knew.’ I love conversations where a light switch is flipped for these boys. If we had more a-ha moments, antisemitism would be on the downturn and not on the uptick.”
Facing History and Ourselves, a global nonprofit with a branch in Memphis, uses lessons of history to challenge a network of over 100,000 middle grade and secondary teachers and their students to stand up to hate and bigotry in all its forms. Annually, they receive a grant from Memphis Jewish Federation’s Annual Community Campaign.
Facing History teachers, who are faculty members at public and private middle and high schools all over the world, are trained in a standardized way to educate students not only about the history and reality of brutal injustices, but also about rising trends in bigotry and hatred, like data showing that while Jews make up less than 2% of the U.S. population, they are the targets of almost 60% of faith-based attacks.
“I grew up in Schenectady, New York, where my friends were Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and African-American. One of my best friends was a 6 foot 5 guy who played basketball and was in the band, and was Jewish,” said Dr. Wood, who, like most Facing History educators, was drawn to the organization by his passion to fight back against bigotry, hate, and injustice, a characteristic that makes them what Facing History calls Upstanders.
“Once I said something I had heard said by my father, something antisemitic. And my friend was like, ‘Do you realize what you just said, dude? Are you serious?’ I had to take a step back and think about why I had said it to my friend,” said Dr. Wood. “I had an a-ha moment. I hope that Facing History delivers a-ha moments to these boys. It’s a safe space to have conversations so that we can make these mistakes and immediately grow from them and move forward.”
This semester, Dr. Wood offered his Facing History seniors the opportunity to virtually attend Yom HaShoah and write an essay instead of taking the final exam. From the contents of the essays, it’s safe to assume the a-ha moments were abundant.
“I got a glimpse at the spiritual connection that Jewish people have. Their community has withstood an insane amount of discrimination throughout history and to see two Jewish men have this connection without knowing each other was very exciting,” wrote Andrew Doggett. “Before this talk, when I thought about Jewish people I thought of the Holocaust. Now I think of what it really means to be Jewish and how they (strive to) overcome discrimination just to be themselves. Overall, this conversation gave me more insight into Judaism than (about) the Holocaust and it has changed my perspective on the Jewish faith. Being able to see the Jewish community interact (in this way) was something that a book could never have taught me.”
“I know a couple of Jewish individuals and what I learned from Rabbi Schacter-Gampel and Mr. Wiesel only fortified my beliefs on how strong and united they are. I will understand the events after the Holocaust by listening to my Jewish peers and hearing how they have handled antisemitism and how they respond with prayer and faith instead of violence and rash behavior,” wrote Anthony Larizza. “(Yom HaShoah) widened my understanding of the Holocaust and the tsunami effect it has had on the second and third generation survivors.”
“Throughout my Facing History and Ourselves class, I have learned about perspectives, obligations, the way we treat people, and the horrors of mistreatment. No class has made me think about things as much as Facing History has,” wrote Ben Evangelisti. “I have learned new perspectives and have been taught new ways to think about situations. This talk between Elisha Wiesel and Rabbi Schacter-Gampel was icing on the cake of a very interesting and eye-opening class.”
“The last talking point that Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Abe Schacter-Gampel covered was standing up for other Jews. Elisha kept mentioning taking small steps rather than big ones. Big steps are hard to take alone but small steps are easy and if everyone can take them together we can all stand up for the Jewish community,” wrote Erik Martinez.
“In my decades-long search for answers about inequality, I’ve found that I have a voice and I can’t be silent. I try to always be an Upstander. I may not be liked, I may lose friends over it, but I can’t sleep at night when I know bigotry happens without constantly playing an active role against it,” said Dr. Wood. “At Christian Brothers I’m having these conversations about antisemitism and about racism in our city with the boys that are going to be the power brokers in this city politically and economically. Hopefully, these boys will now be asking different questions earlier, and confronting ideas they inherited, and will be in a better place to shape our city’s culture differently in the future.”
“Memphis Jewish Federation is grateful for its partnership with Facing History and with courageous and forward-thinking educators like Dr. Wood who are in the trenches of educating against antisemitism and hate,” said Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, Federation’s Executive Vice President. “We look forward to strengthening community partnerships in order to educate and raise awareness of these scourges.”