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Music & Social Impact
Songs can provide entertainment but can also help to bring people’s attention to world problems and to inspire people to seek solutions to those problems. Songwriters often use the lyrics of songs to educate, inspire, influence and change society, and provide social commentary. In this lesson, students will discuss how music was used to inspire, motivate, or teach about the movement to free Soviet Jewry.
Image Credit: http://kosharovsky.com/
June 7, 2018
Jewish Identity
In this lesson, students will explore Jewish texts that deal with questions of identity and belonging. They will then create identity cubes, using symbols and/or imagery that represent various parts of their identities. These cubes will, in turn, help the students identify how they can each contribute to the Jewish community, uniquely.
Image Credit: http://kosharovsky.com/
Make Your Own Haggadah
One of the tenets of celebrating Passover is to pass the story from generation to generation and to internalize it as one’s own. This may seem hard to imagine, but recent Jewish history witnessed such an event: hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union left an oppressive regime with open support of the government after fighting for this right for years.
In this lesson, students will use texts to analyze different elements of the story and cultural cues to envision themselves as if “they themselves came out of Egypt.”
June 5, 2018
The Origins of the Soviet Jewish Community
In this lesson, students will learn about the origins of the Soviet Jewish community leading up to the Revolutions of 1917 and will learn about the roots of soviet anti-Semitism.
The Power of the Individual
In this lesson, students will learn about the figure of Avital Sharansky and will compare her story to the events of the Purim story.
Text Study on Jewish Activism
In this lesson, students will read key Jewish sources on political activism and will analyze the role of activism as a core Jewish value.
June 3, 2018
Avital Sharansky at Oz veGaon – Hebrew Version
Duration:50 Minutes Link Avital Sharansky tells her personal story of growing up in the Soviet Union and fighting for the release of her husband Natan.
May 29, 2018
Avital Sharansky at Oz veGaon- English Version
Duration:50 Minutes Link Avital Sharansky tells her personal story of growing up in the Soviet Union and fighting for the release of her husband Natan (dubbed over in English).
“Parallels, Events, People” Documentary Series on the Soviet Dissident Movement
Duration:16 Minutes Link A three-part series on the Jewish movement in the USSR.
Not Alone, The Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
Duration:8 Minutes Link Archival material from Natan Sharansky’s release and after.
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