American Jewish Education Program

Through this new initiative, AJHS will:

• Expand the Society’s visibility and audiences both onsite and online through increased marketing and distribution for produced content.
• Heighten prestige, garner donor faith and enthusiasm, and enhance our standing, both within in the scholarly community and at large, with the return of the Office of the Historian, a key role that will serve as AJHS’s resident scholar and manager of the relationship with the Academic Council, the American Jewish History journal, the Biennial Scholars’ Conference, and other crucial academic programs. The historian will also be a key partner in public programming, fundraising, public relations, and the cultivation of new collections.
• Develop scalable, accessible platforms and networks that promote AJHS’s vast collections and allow users to find information about American Jewish history and culture, including documentary productions, podcasts and other audio and video content, public lectures and programs, community events, and print and digital publications, as well as classroom curricula and teacher training.
• Foster strategic partnerships with organizations including museums, other archives and libraries, distribution media networks, and educational technology producers to increase AJHS’s footprint and reputation as our nation’s repository for American Jewish history.
• Establish the foundation for the creation and wider adoption of the Jewish American History Network, currently being piloted in partnership with the American Sephardi Federation.

In 2022, AJHS relaunched its website, creating a solid foundation from which to expand digital engagement with the archives, allowing for publication of articles, access to featured collections, production of videos, podcasts, curriculum materials, and more, with ease. Updated to be mobile-friendly across all operating systems and devices, the new website has increased our online visitorship tenfold, reaching thousands of people worldwide.

• Online Content
  Robust funding is critical to sustaining our ever-growing digital footprint, supporting growing needs for digital collections, “snackable” video content to engage audiences across all ages, and ensuring the AJHS website is a rich, one-stop shop for researchers of all stripes - lay, professional, academic, family, etc - to learn about the extraordinary history of Jews in the United States.
• Podcast Network
  AJHS has seen immediate and great success with the launch of our first podcast in May, which augurs well for our plans to grow our media presence; The Wreckage already has listeners in 48 states and 35 countries, including Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Australia, with numbers growing daily. We have surpassed 8,000 listens in our first season, and have now entered the top 7.5% of podcasts, worldwide. We seek to expand into a full podcast network, producing high-quality shows covering a broad variety of topics, and making full use of our collections and the stories they contain.

• Hiring of Historian & Director of Academic Programs
  A crucial component of our growth and engagement potential, the Historian & Director of Academic Programs will be responsible for the creation of public-facing content, producing a steady stream of articles, presentations, and other key content for AJHS Digital, AJHS’s online repository for learning about American Jewish history. Additionally, this position will work directly with the AJHS Academic Council on academic programs, including the Biennial Scholars Conference, the American Jewish History journal, ensuring its adherence to intentional, cultivated scholarship, and other scholarly initiatives as identified.
• Fellowship Program
  As we seek to deepen our relationships with early career scholars, AJHS will expand our fellowship program to build upon the success of the Lapidus Fein fellowships that are awarded to graduate students each year. Adding funding to this initiative will allow us to extend these fellowships to 3 additional graduate students each year, and nurture the next generation of scholars.
• American Jewish History Journal and Other Publications
  A vital resource and historic in its own right, American Jewish History is one of the preeminent, peer-reviewed journals in our field today. An infusion of support will allow us to reimagine the Journal for distribution beyond the small scholarly community, create additional opportunities for licensing and corresponding digital content, and to partner with and potentially acquire smaller independent journals of American Jewish history, such as the Southern Jewish Historical Society’s annual to expand our publishing reach.

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.