Stephen Wise Temple held a Zoom webinar on the evening of March 3 to discuss California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC).
Richard S. Hirschhaut, regional director of American Jewish Committee (AJC) Los Angeles, began the webinar by stating that the AJC’s view on the ESMC is that it’s important to find common ground with marginalized communities while also ensuring that discrimination stays out of the classroom.
“Our collective efforts helped to ensure that BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] as well as other anti-Semitic offensive material would be removed as well as discriminatory material about other ethnic groups,” Hirschhaut said, adding that “together we’ve advanced the importance of other ethnic groups” in the ESMC, including Sikhs and Armenians. The goal, he said, is to ensure that the final ESMC “teaches children about contemporary anti-Semitism and overall is balanced and inclusive.”
The webinar then turned to a panel consisting of Democratic State Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, Be’chol Lashon Program Coordinator Shekhinah Larks, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) Executive Director Sarah Levin and Daniel Gold, vice president of Israel Education and Advocacy at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Gabriel began by clarifying that the state government is required under a 2016 law to develop the ESMC; the legislature doesn’t draft the curriculum, but the state Department of Education does.
“The sentiment behind ethnic studies… is that this is really about fighting bigotry and racism,” Gabriel said. He pointed out that the state legislature recently voted on a resolution condemning anti-Asian bigotry, and he shared that two of his colleagues said that ethnic studies was a way to fight hatred.
Levin said that JIMENA has been fighting for the experiences of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews to be included under the “Asian-American Studies” section of the curriculum, given that they’re technically from Southwest Asia. JIMENA itself represents one million Jewish refugees from the Middle East. “Our organization said [that] we support ethnic studies,” Levin added.
Larks argued that the state’s current education curriculum puts Jews in a monolithic category and doesn’t examine the diversity within the Jewish community. “How are we fully educating them holistically… if we’re asking kids to leave half of their identity at the door?” Larks asked.
Larks argued that the state’s current education curriculum puts Jews in a monolithic category and doesn’t examine the diversity within the Jewish community.
Regarding the history of the ESMC, Gabriel said that the first draft in 2019 “caught everybody off guard” with its blatantly “deep anti-Jewish bias.” “We were not the only community or group to object to this,” Gabriel said, pointing out that Sikhs and Armenians also objected to the draft; The Los Angeles Times also wrote an editorial condemning the draft, and Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, apologized for it.
“[The California Department of Education] actually had to push pause on the curriculum and push it back by a year,” Gabriel said. But Gabriel praised the Jewish community for working on improving the draft and developing the shared goals of removing anti-Semitic stereotypes from the curriculum and ensuring that the draft reflects “the whole diversity of California” and enhances the Jewish community’s relationships with other communities.
Gold said that the current ESMC process of “very long periods of writing and public comment” is typical for “when any new… subject is introduced to the CA State Board of Education.” If the final draft of the ESMC is good, then the next step is to “get involved on the local level” and talk to school board members, Gold argued.
Gabriel pointed out that the fact that the original authors of the ESMC asked for their names to be taken off the current draft shows how “we’ve made enormous progress” on the matter. He concluded the webinar by recounting how the day after the Chabad of Poway shooting in April 2019, he brought Holocaust survivors to the legislature to advocate for security grants for communities at risk of hate-motivated violence. Leaders of other community caucuses stood with Gabriel and the Holocaust survivors as they spoke.
“That was one of the most powerful and meaningful moments [for me],” Gabriel said. He added that the bill ultimately passed, and Stephen Wise Temple received a grant, showing that the Jewish community is now safer due to partnerships with other communities.
