American Jewish Education Program

Through the American Jewish Education Program, AJHS is working to:

· Expand visibility and reach by connecting with wider audiences both onsite and online, supported by robust marketing and distribution for our content.

· Elevate scholarly leadership and prestige with the return of the Office of the Historian—a resident scholar who guides relationships with the Academic Council, American Jewish History journal, the Biennial Scholars’ Conference, and other vital academic programs. This role also strengthens public programming, fundraising, communications, and the cultivation of new collections.

· Develop scalable, accessible platforms and networks that bring AJHS’s vast collections to life, including documentaries, podcasts, lectures, community events, publications, and curriculum resources for classrooms and teacher training.

· Foster strategic partnerships with museums, archives, libraries, media networks, and educational technology leaders, reinforcing AJHS’s place as the nation’s repository for American Jewish history.

· Lay the groundwork for the Jewish American History Network, a collaborative initiative currently being piloted with the American Sephardi Federation, that will expand access to and awareness of Jewish American history across institutions.

In 2022, AJHS relaunched its website, creating a solid foundation to expand digital engagement with our archives. The site now makes it easier than ever to publish articles, showcase featured collections, and share videos, podcasts, curriculum materials, and more. Mobile-friendly across all platforms and devices, the AJHS website has become a true digital hub—reaching thousands worldwide and serving researchers, educators, students, and lifelong learners alike.

Online Content
Robust funding is critical to sustaining our ever-growing digital footprint. This includes expanding digital collections, producing engaging short-form videos that reach audiences of all ages, and ensuring the AJHS website remains a rich, one-stop resource for anyone seeking to learn about the extraordinary history of Jews in the United States.

Podcast Network
AJHS launched its first podcast, The Wreckage, in 2024 and it has quickly become one of our most exciting avenues of storytelling and outreach. Now in its third season—with Season Two nominated for a Webby Award—the series demonstrates the power of audio to bring our collections to life for diverse audiences around the globe. Building on this success, AJHS is laying the groundwork for a full podcast network, producing high-quality shows across a wide range of topics that highlight the richness of American Jewish history and culture.

Historian & Director of Academic Programs
As a crucial step in our growth, AJHS has hired a Historian & Director of Academic Programs to lead the development of both scholarly and public-facing content. This role produces a steady stream of articles, presentations, and other resources for AJHS Digital—our online hub for learning about American Jewish history—and strengthens AJHS’s partnerships with the Academic Council, the American Jewish History journal, the Biennial Scholars Conference, and other academic initiatives. The Historian also serves as a key collaborator in programming, research, and collection development, ensuring that AJHS scholarship is both rigorous and widely accessible.

Fellowship Program
To deepen our engagement with emerging scholars, AJHS is expanding its fellowship program, building on the success of the Lapidus Fein Fellowships awarded to graduate students each year. With additional support, we will extend these fellowships to more graduate students annually, broadening opportunities for research and nurturing the next generation of leaders in the field of American Jewish history.

American Jewish History Journal and Other Publications
As one of the preeminent peer-reviewed journals in the field, American Jewish History is a vital resource. AJHS is working to expand the Journal’s reach beyond the traditional academic audience, exploring new opportunities for digital content, licensing, and wider distribution. With sustained support, we will also explore partnerships with, and potential acquisitions of, smaller independent journals of American Jewish history to strengthen the field and extend AJHS’s publishing impact.

While investments in digital media are critical to a bright future for AJHS, onsite and live-streamed programs are a core element of achieving our mission. Hosting lectures, symposia, panel discussions, film screenings, book talks, family programs, and other opportunities to bring excited audiences into the building are a key part of bringing this history to life.

• Monthly Public Programs
  AJHS is seeking funding to underwrite our robust line of public programs. Since the return of in-person programming after the Covid closures ended, AJHS has hosted incredible authors like Matthew Dallek, Gary Shteyngart, and Pamela Nadell, filmmakers like the late Nancy Buirski, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, and many more.
• Increased Support for Live-Streaming and Recording
  Many in-person programs can live on as live-streamed and recorded videos, increasing our engagement and giving us opportunities to partner with media companies like the Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and C-SPAN. Last October’s symposium, Fighting Fascism, re-ran on JBS and was made available to more than 2 million households nationwide.

American history as taught in most K-12 schools does not currently give light to significant Jewish Americans as major players in key historical moments. The Jewish population of the United States is often not accounted for as a presence beyond topics such as immigration in the 19th century or the Holocaust. An intersectional history that includes multiple perspectives from numerous peoples offers students and teachers a more robust and effective understanding of history. Materials easily available for teachers that meet Common Core and other state specific curriculum requirements that include and illuminate American Jewish moments of impact in American history are difficult to locate and limited in scope.

• Curriculum Development
  Currently, AJHS has produced one curriculum project that is available online: the Emma Lazarus Curriculum Project which delves into topics like the arts, activism, immigration, and antisemitism and xenophobia. While this curriculum is easily accessible via our website, it reveals the need for a more comprehensive, flexible catalog of curriculum materials chronicling the American Jewish experience. Data released by Project Tomorrow indicates that roughly 50% of teachers customize digital content they find online to meet their class needs. This data also indicates that just 26% of first-year teachers and 33% of teachers who have been in the classroom 11 years or more feel confident regularly using online curricula. By encouraging teachers to use this online curriculum and adapt it to their classrooms, AJHS can have a much deeper impact in K-12 classrooms.
• Onsite and Online Engagement With Students
  AJHS will develop in person and online sessions with K-12 students to highlight the incredible stories in our collections. These programs will allow AJHS to connect with potentially thousands of students per year, and aid AJHS in gaining an increasingly large footprint in upper elementary and middle schools, potentially reaching tens of thousands of students per school year. Through strategic partnerships with organizations like the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the AJHS collections and mission will be brought to students and teachers who might not engage with us otherwise or know about our resources.
• Teacher Training
  Through strategic partnerships with organizations like the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, AJHS will continue its proven track record of training K-12 educators in the best ways to incorporate Jewish American history into their classrooms. Providing these summer sessions to teachers in social studies, language arts, and other cross-curricular subjects will maximize our efforts in support of our mission: that American Jewish history IS American history.