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Margot Stern Strom, who founded pioneering Holocaust education program Facing History, dies at 81
(JTA) — Margot Stern Strom, who drew on the pain of her Jewish childhood in the Jim Crow South to create one of the most widely used Holocaust education programs in American schools, died March 28 at her home in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was 81.
The Boston Globe reported the cause as pancreatic cancer.
Strom was a schoolteacher in 1976 when she co-founded Facing History & Ourselves, which drew on draft lessons piloted in her classroom. For three years in the mid-1980s, the U.S. Education Department denied funding for the Holocaust curriculum, in part because of consultants opposed to the curricula and because of right-wing groups, such as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, that objected to the program.
However, due to persistent congressional support for the grants, the program finally broke through in 1989 and began to receive federal funds. During the nearly 40 years Strom spent as head of the nonprofit until her retirement in 2014, its curriculum expanded into classrooms in all 50 states and more than 100 countries.
In recent years, in addition to training thousands of teachers, Facing History brought aging survivors of the Holocaust and other important historic events into hundreds of classrooms to share their stories.
“Margot Strom is a visionary,” former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow said when Strom received the 2015 Massachusetts Governor’s Award in the Humanities. “She had a unique idea and she has translated that idea into an organization that has an impact around the world.”
Margot Stern was born Nov. 10, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois to Fan and Lloyd Stern. After the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, she was exposed to the racism facing Black people and the intolerance that extended to her small Jewish community. “One Jewish cheerleader at a time was the custom on our high school squad,” she recalled, according to a reminiscence by Facing History. “We had Jewish high school sororities and one Jew a year was chosen as an honorary member of a Christian sorority. We all lived by these rules.”
In 1964, Strom earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After graduating she became a teacher, starting out in Skokie, Illinois and eventually moving with her husband Terry Strom and their young family to the Boston suburbs, where she taught eighth grade language arts and social studies.
In the spring of 1975, according to Facing History, she and fellow teacher Bill Parsons attended a workshop on the Holocaust and realized how little they taught and how little their students knew about the genocide of Jews during World War II. (Parsons, who would later serve as chief of staff at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, died in 2016.)
They went on to secure interest and funding from local philanthropists and educators to expand her lesson plans into a curriculum used in classrooms around the country.
“As an educator, Margot believed in her students — whether they were in middle school, high school, or if they were teachers themselves — and their capacity to think deeply about history, about the world we live in, and about how our choices shape society,” Facing History said in a statement. “She imbued in them the ability to act as moral philosophers, and apply the lessons they learned in class to the world around them.”
Roger Brooks succeeded Strom as Facing History’s president and CEO on Dec. 1, 2014. “She deeply understood the need for upstander education and used her charismatic leadership skills to impart this import to teachers and students around the world,” he said in a statement, using a word popularized by Facing History to refer to the opposite of “bystander.”
In comments that presaged the current debate over teaching about racism and gender in public schools around the country, Strom once commented on the schoolroom atmosphere she faced when first promoting the Holocaust studies curriculum.
“There was a powerful silence about race and racism and no mention of antisemitism or the Holocaust,” she wrote in a personal history of the organization. “‘Bad history’ was best forgotten. The Civil War was the War Between the States and we were taught how the South won the major battles. In my Tennessee history class I did not learn who lost the Civil War.”
Strom is survived by her son, Adam, the executive director and cofounder of the Boston nonprofit Re-Imagining Migration; daughter, Rachel Fan Stern Strom of Brooklyn; and four grandchildren. Her survivors also include her brother Gerald Stern, who was an attorney with the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department under then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and her sister, Paula Stern of Washington, D.C., who formerly chaired the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Her husband, Terry Strom, a renowned researcher in organ transplant immunology, died in 2018.
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The post Margot Stern Strom, who founded pioneering Holocaust education program Facing History, dies at 81 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza
(JTA) — James Talarico, Texas’ Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, said he holds Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than the Israeli people, responsible for civilian devastation in Gaza.
Talarico, a Texas state representative, is running neck and neck against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a race whose results could affect which party controls the Senate this November. Israel has been one of many sources of disagreement among the candidates, who have sparred on issues ranging from affordability to immigration to reproductive rights.
“I believe that Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend its people,” the candidate said while fielding questions on Wednesday at a CNN town hall. “But I don’t believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has a right to wage war against civilians or use collective punishment or restrict aid to civilians.”
A Texas Politics Project poll, issued by the University of Texas this week, showed Paxton trailing Talarico by 3 percentage points, with 47% to the Democrat’s 50% and a margin of error of 3.34 percentage points.
Talarico said in August that he supported stopping arms sales to the Netanyahu government and conditioning military aid “on ending the death and the destruction in Gaza and the West Bank.” He declined to call the crisis “genocide,” noting that the term is being litigated in the International Court of Justice. But he said he’d “use every bit of our nation’s diplomatic and financial leverage to protect the lives of Palestinians.”
When he was pressed further by Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn of Congregation Beth El Binah in Dallas during the town hall, Talarico stressed the importance of directing his criticisms “toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Israeli people.”
Addressing Israelis’ trauma, Talarico acknowledged that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel “was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Cohn pushed back on his comments regarding aid restrictions, noting Israeli support of humanitarian efforts and arguing that there’s much more going on in the country than the media may be projecting.
Talarico told the rabbi he recognized that his “words carry weight” and gave her his word that he’s “going to continue to listen to all sides of this conflict.” He also expressed hope that “we can all come together to fight for a two-state solution where we have security for Israel and we have freedom and self-determination for Palestinians.”
Talarico also gave a “shoutout” to a local rabbi, Neil Blumofe at Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin. “I spent my first year of my seminary studies learning the Hebrew scriptures from a local rabbi,” he said. “Shout out Rabbi Neil Blumofe!” Cohn grinned.
The post Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference
(JTA) — DUBLIN — An Irish Jewish leader said a Dublin hotel canceled rooms reserved for European delegates after learning that they were visiting for an antisemitism conference.
Maurice Cohen, the president of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said he booked over 70 rooms at the Herbert Park Hotel for people attending a meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA).
The envoys, who included Jewish community leaders, diplomats and government ministers from across Europe, were invited to the conference this week organized by the World Jewish Congress and the European Commission. The event was tied to Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which rotates between EU member states, and included delegates meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Most of the government-appointed special envoys are not themselves Jewish.
Cohen said he met with Herbert Park Hotel’s general manager in May to inspect its conference rooms and explained the purpose of the event. According to Cohen, the manager responded by asking, “Will the IDF be involved?”
That question “shocked” Cohen, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I said, this is about antisemitism. It’s not about Israelis, it’s not about Israel, it’s not about the IDF,” he said.
Cohen said the manager told him she had to consult with the hotel owners to determine if his booking could be accepted. The next day, he learned that the rooms were canceled without explanation. The Herbert Park Hotel did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
Cohen booked rooms for the delegates and the conference at different hotels. He described the cancellation in a speech at the SECCA meeting on Tuesday, calling it an example of “contemporary antisemitism.”
“How quickly does the word ‘Jewish’ change a conversation?” he said to the attendees. “How easily does a gathering about antisemitism become associated with the Israeli army? And how quickly can people who were welcome when they were simply 70 hotel guests become something rather different once they are known to be attending a Jewish conference?”
Yoni Wieder, Ireland’s chief rabbi, suggested that the hotel could have based its decision on fears of controversy.
“It’s possible that whoever took the decision had no objection to the conference itself,” Wieder told JTA. “They may simply have wanted to avoid the possibility of protests outside the hotel or some other backlash.”
Ireland’s government has been sharply critical of Israel. The country has recognized Palestinian statehood, barred Israeli far-right ministers from entering its borders and in July passed a law that banned imports from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Martin has said that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel vigorously rejects. He has also condemned rising antisemitism in Ireland, which is home to about 2,200 Jews.
Herbert Park Hotel is “actually quite familiar with Jewish guests,” according to Wieder, who said that he has overseen kosher catering at the hotel.
Cohen, who has lived in Dublin all his life, said he had fond memories of the hotel. For years it was his favored site for meetings, New Year’s Eve celebrations and his mother’s birthdays through her 93rd.
“Over time the hotel became associated in my mind with friendship, celebration and my mother,” he said in his speech. “So it was strange that, many years later, the same hotel would acquire a very different place in my memory.”
The post Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference appeared first on The Forward.
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Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to build a case to strip Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her citizenship and eventually deport her.
It is my hope that American Jews — even those who do not like Omar and can recite every questionable comment she has made over the past 15 years to illustrate why — will understand this as offensive and outrageous not only because they are Americans, but because they are Jews.
The Trump administration may claim that it is building a case against Omar due to paperwork (reports suggest that they are interested in whether her father listed her age as 17 on her citizenship application when she was really 18). It is similarly filing dozens of lawsuits attempting to denaturalize citizens by trying to prove they lied in the process of gaining citizenship. However, that this is happening now, ahead of the midterm elections against a sitting member of Congress, a high-profile progressive whom the president has said should “go back” to her country of origin, suggests that it is, to put it mildly, politically motivated.
Evidently, the Trump administration sees citizenship not as a right or a responsibility but as a reward, one that can be taken away if that is seen as useful to the president and his adherents. That use could be silencing political opposition or something as simple (and callous) as an opportunity to brag about the sheer number of attempted denaturalizations.
Jews, too, have found themselves on the wrong end of political denaturalization. I do not mean to compare the Trump administration to the Nazis, but the stubborn fact is that Jews were indeed stripped of their citizenship as part of a political project in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And in the early 20th century in the United States, it was Jews who politicians claimed were incapable of assimilating, of ever really being a part of the United States. These arguments culminated in legislation that kept out Jews who could have found refuge here. The threat of denaturalization and the experience of perpetual otherness is a grievous part of modern Jewish history; we should be offended by its presence in our political present.
Jewish tradition as well as history encourages us to stand up to authority when that authority is wrong. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman; Nathan yells at King David for sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband killed; Moses famously urges Pharoah to change his oppressive ways. Even God is on the receiving end of pushback when Abraham pleads and negotiates to spare Sodom.
I do not think one needs to be Jewish to be outraged by the attempt to denaturalize Ilhan Omar. I think it is also bone-chilling as an American who believes we, including our elected officials, have the right to openly oppose our president, and I am worried as a person who thinks it would be good to continue to live in a democratic republic. And I am sure that there are Jews who will say that Omar deserves to lose her citizenship because she has said things about Israel they do not like.
But the Jewish lens through which I see this is that it is right to challenge power when it is abused, and it is wrong for the powerful to make a show of trying to cast their opponents out of the country.
The point is not whether Trump can make good on the threat to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, but that it is obscene to use denaturalization as punishment for being a high-profile political opponent in the first place. If he is trying to make it more dangerous to speak out while being from the “wrong” country, then the rest of us need to say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an American citizen.
We should do this because we are Americans and we should do this because we are Jews. We should do this because of the ways in which our American and Jewish identities bleed into one another. And, we should do this because we may not know exactly whether it is as Americans or as Jews that we know we have to protect the right to speak truth to power, but we know we need to do it all the same.
The post Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable appeared first on The Forward.
