NATIONAL

H

ow and where do 
Jews fit into America’s 
minority communi-
ties?
That’s the question at the 
center of a debate that has 
raged for more than a year 
over new school curriculum 
guides that are being adopted 
in California. 
Jewish groups strenuously 
objected to the first draft of 
the Ethnic Studies Model 
Curriculum, or ESMC, saying 
it did not reflect the American 
Jewish experience and even 
advanced some forms of 
antisemitism.
Many of those same groups 
praised the third draft of 
the curriculum when it was 
released in December. The 
revision responded to their 
concerns, they say: Two sec-
tions of the curriculum deal 
principally with the American 
Jewish experience, and many 
of the sections that they had 
identified as objectionable 
were gone.
Not everyone is happy with 
the latest draft. On Feb. 3, the 

authors of the original curric-
ulum disavowed the project in 
protest of the revised versions, 
which they feel “silenced the 
voices of ethnic studies teach-
ers/educators, who are all 
from racially and politically 
underrepresented groups.”
And other Jewish activists 
say that regardless of how 
the project discusses Jews, its 
basic ideology is unacceptable. 
 
 
They see this as the latest front 
in an ongoing battle over criti-
cal race theory, an approach to 
education that views race and 
racism as embedded in, and 
central to, society and its insti-
tutions. Opponents of critical 
race theory see it as a threat 
to open debate and a return 
to classifying people based on 
their race, which they see as a 
danger to Jews.
In recent days, two long 
articles have been published 
in Jewish publications — 
both objecting to the revised 
version from those two 
opposing sides of the debate. 
Whatever the final draft looks 
like, California law does not 

require schools to use the pro-
posed materials it is making 
available.
After state lawmakers 
required an ethnic studies 
curriculum, a panel of 20 eth-
nic studies scholars convened 
and drafted a version focused 
on four minority groups: 
African Americans, Latinos, 
Asian Americans and Native 
Americans. 

JEWS EXCLUDED
But when the first draft of the 
curriculum was released in 
the middle of 2019, number-
ing hundreds of pages, Jewish 
organizations in the state and 
across the political spectrum 
were upset that it did not 
include the experience of 
California’s Jews. The state has 
more than 1 million Jews, with 
Los Angeles and the Bay Area 
hosting two of the nation’s 
largest Jewish communities.
In one example JIMENA, 
an organization representing 
the state’s Mizrahi (Middle 
Eastern Jewish) community 
was dissatisfied with the draft. 

The Mizrahi Jewish activists 
felt that their experience, 
which includes fleeing their 
home countries, was excluded 
from the curriculum, even 
though the experience of Arab 
Americans, whose commu-
nities hail from some of the 
same countries, were featured.
Jewish groups were upset, 
too, that the curriculum 
included a number of anti-Is-
rael sections. It counted the 
movement to boycott Israel 
among social movements 
to discuss positively along-
side Black Lives Matter and 
#MeToo, among others. 
Critics complained that the 
inclusion of the Boycott, 
Divestment and Sanctions 
movement effectively discrim-
inated against Jews and was an 
outlier among movements that 
otherwise focused on domes-
tic issues.
The initial draft also 
referred to Israel’s War of 
Independence as the Nakba, 
the Palestinian term for 
the conflict and meaning 
“catastrophe.” The curriculum 

Fair or Unfair 
to Jews?

22 | FEBRUARY 18 • 2021 

California revises proposed ethnic studies 
curriculum, but controversy remains.

BEN SALES JTA

An empty classroom 
in Hollywood, Calif., in 
August 2020.

RODIN ECKENROTH/GETTY IMAGES/JTA

