Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

This past week, a Tennessee school board banned Art Spiegelman’s seminal novel on the Holocaust, Maus. This is just one of many examples of how book banning has proliferated in the last year — not only censoring Jewish history but also Black history, the history of Indigenous peoples, and works in which LGBTQIA kids can see their own stories.  

How we equip our kids for the world they live in is yet another area in which our country is polarized — divided between giving them access to the information they need to live compassionate and meaningful lives and leading our kids toward a world of ignorance with selective exposure to history and past life experience.

As an important aside, the rancor over Critical Race Theory is a disingenuous attack on something that is taught only in some graduate school programs. What is really under attack is an accurate account of African-American history.

While I have been very discouraged by the proliferation of book banning, and taking curriculum decisions away from our teachers and education administrators, who have the expertise and experience to make the best decisions for our kids, I was pleased to hear a presentation by Dr. Mark Bedell, the superintendent of the Kansas City School District, for our MORE2 (Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity) Clergy Caucus.

Dr. Bedell did carve out time for us to celebrate the district’s accreditation. He went on to talk about the lessons learned from living through a pandemic, and the need to change the way we look at educating our kids — flexible scheduling for our high school students who help their families make ends meet by holding down a job, more opportunities for after-school programming, curriculum that equips our kids for the jobs of the future.

What particularly caught my attention, however, was Dr. Bedell’s expressed commitment to design a curriculum in which every student is valued: Black students, Latinx students, immigrants from all over the world whose families have made Kansas City home, with  language inclusion, cultural programs, and an open and accurate representation of our history. In the Kansas City School District, every student will feel valued and see themselves in the curriculum, regardless of their background. It is a curriculum that values full and accurate knowledge rather than hiding the “uncomfortable parts.”  

As Jews, we have never fared well in societies and countries in which censorship is practiced amidst an authoritarian rule. We know the dangers posed by Holocaust deniers. As we demand that our stories be heard (the Auschwitz exhibit at Union Station is an incredible and important example of our story being told to many who had not previously heard our story), we must ensure that the marginalized in our country have their stories told and heard as well. Our survival as Jews depends on establishing communities without censorship — censorship of anyone’s story, censorship of a full accounting of our history.