May 19, 2025
By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear Amber share her story—rich with history and informed by research—as a Black Jewish American living in Israel.
Do you know the name of your great-grandfather?
How about your great-grandmother’s brother?
How about the name of your great-great-great-great-grandmother?
May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and in addition to sharing resources for teaching your students about Jewish American Heritage, I’m delighted to share my conversation with Amber, a writer and techie who knows her history very well.
Amber grew up in the United States and now lives in Israel. She is Black and Jewish. In our conversation, she speaks about the intersection between those two identities and identifies themes that resonate in both Jewish and Black culture, including resilience, family bonds, and the power of oral history.
I encourage you to listen to our conversation and share it with your students.
Amber offers a unique perspective that will surely spark curiosity about the history of Jewish Americans, the history of Black Americans, and…history in general!
Amber is remarkable in how well she knows her own family’s history. She has researched her family’s DNA, looked at resources in the Library of Congress, and examined census data. She not only knows the name of her great-great-great-great-grandmother, she knows her ancestors’ history, and she’s uncovering more of it all the time. Amber’s story offers a powerful example of how, and why, to teach students to research their own family history.
Our conversation concludes with Amber’s excellent advice on teaching young people to be curious and respectful, and to resist antisemitism, anti-Black racism, and other forms of hatred. Spoiler alert: It begins by helping them develop a strong understanding of their own identity and building pride in who they are.
Enjoy Amber’s story. I learned a lot from her, and I hope you and your students do too.
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
