Linda K. Wertheimer - Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance

Beacon Press
Boston, Massachusetts
www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

2015 by Linda K. Wertheimer
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Text design by Ruth Maassen

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wertheimer, Linda.
Faith ed : teaching about religion in an age of intolerance / Linda K. Wertheimer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8070-8616-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8070-8617-9 (ebook) 1. Religion in the public schoolsUnited States. 2. EducationCurriculaUnited States. I. Title.
LC111.W47 2015
379.2'80973dc23

2014046389

For my parents, who always made me believe I could be a writer; for my husband, Pavlik, who was there for me every step of this literary journey; and for my son, Simon. May this book make a difference for his generation.

In memory of Kevin Lee Wertheimer (19621986), my fun-loving brother who lived some of the stories in this book with me.

I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the worlds religions is a sacred duty.

Mahatma Gandhi (18691948), from All Religions Are True

I sat in the safest place I knew, stunned by what I was hearing:

A swastika and the words Jews Kill Them All etched on a playground slide.

Swastikas painted on the boys bathroom at the high school.

A pair of first-grade boys playing a game they called Jail the Jews.

THESE INCIDENTS all happened at schools in Bedford, the suburban Boston town next door to mine. In March 2014, I sat among nearly two hundred people in my temple sanctuary as rabbis, parents, and the superintendent of Bedford schools described what had happened. My temple and the town I have lived in for a decade are the safest havens Ive known as a Jew. But on that night, I no longer felt so at ease as a Jew in my town. I wasnt afraid for myself but I feared that my sons innocence could be shattered if the anti-Semitism spread.

What shook me most were the ages of the children who played a game with an anti-Semitic undertone. They were just six or seven, a year older than my son at the time. How could any child think it was okay to play a game called Jail the Jews? It was, in fact, a Christian boys parents who had alerted the school system to the game. The parents were mortified. Where did such young children come up with such a name for a game? They must have heard that language from adults. I did not believe children that young created the game out of hate. They created it out of ignorance.

Hearing about the game and the swastikas painted on school walls and etched on playground equipment stirred painful memories. When I was nine, my family moved to a rural Ohio town where my brothers and I were the only Jewish children in our school and where there were no temples. We were the target of anti-Semitic remarks but never complained. We figured it would further single us out as different. As an adult, I chose to live in a town with many Jews and several synagogues because I did not want to relive the experiences of my childhood. When I became a mother, I wanted to shield my son from the hurt Id once felt. He should never feel ashamed or scared to identify himself as a Jew, as I had been for years.

Many people lined up to speak as meeting organizers sought comments at the forum at my temple. Their willingness to tell their stories helped me move from desolation to optimism. There was little anger that night. Instead, there was talk of hope. A group of town clergy was creating a campaign called Love Your Neighbor to bring different religious groups together. Bedford High School decided to introduce a curriculum about the history of anti-Semitism and of hate toward other minority groups, and the school system started examining more ways to teach elementary students how to respect differences. There hadnt been just one incident at the towns two elementary schools, the superintendent told us. Jewish students, while the target in most cases, also eagerly participated in a game of tag called Jews versus Christians. A Christian child threatened to destroy a classmates country because the girl was Jewish. In a conversation about Hanukkah, Christian children accused Jews of killing Jesus Christ.

That night at my temple, memories of the past led me to walk from my seat in the second row to the front of the sanctuary. I stood at the microphone on the carpeted floor below the bimah, where the rabbis give sermons. These things will stay with you forever, I said, my voice cracking as I referred to remarks Id heard throughout childhood. Others who spoke proposed fixes, though none of them quick ones. A Christian woman who married a Jew and was raising her children Jewish talked about the need for schools to teach children that they have the power to say something to fellow students who malign another group. A sophomore at Bedford High School remembered how peers in middle school threw pennies at her as a jab at the stereotype about Jews and money. But she did not think the principals recent talk to students about anti-Semitism had made a difference. Many teens shrugged his words off. Rather, this teen wanted to see her school attempt to teach students about many religions instead of focusing on one. The students at her temples religious school toured other houses of worship and talked with people of different faiths, including Buddhism and Christianity. She and her Jewish peers realized how little they had known about other faiths and had shed some of their misconceptions.

The teens idea could not have been better, given how the debate about religions place in the schools has shifted. No longer are we arguing about whether teachers can lead students in the Lords Prayer and recite Bible verses. The Supreme Court settled that about fifty years ago by ruling that it was wrong for schools to promote one religion over another. Today, many schools are sorting out the best ways to reduce ignorance about religion. Religion became a dividing line for some children in Bedford, a scenario that can and does happen in schools across America. Religious minorities have faced much worse than graffiti and prejudicial remarks, both inside and outside classrooms. Children have yanked off the turbans of young Sikhs as they waited to board a school bus, and they have taunted Muslim peers on anniversaries of the 9/11 attacks. Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus live in my community and in nearby towns. So do atheists. All of those groups can easily be targets because their beliefs are rarely understood. Can education soften the divisions? What can schools do and what are they already doing to ensure the next generation will not need to hold forums to confront religious intolerance?

SHARON PETERS reached into a hot-pink cloth bag and pulled out an abaya, a full-length body garment for women, from Kuwait. As if she were modeling for a fashion show, the world geography teacher stuck her arms out sideways and held the garment against her to show how far it stretched, from the tips of the fingers on one hand to those on the other. She slipped her arms through, letting the black polyester cloth hang loosely from her shoulders to her moccasin-clad feet. She apologized for her inauthenticity; normally she would wear sandals. Next, she held a black, filmy veil to her face, then repeated what she always said to her freshman advanced geography students in Lumberton, a dot of a town one hundred miles east of Houston, near the Louisiana border. I want you to put it in front of your face so you can see how others in the world live, she said. Imagine, she added in her native southeast Texas twang, what it would be like to see the world through gauze.