

Overview
About This Lesson
This is the first lesson in a unit designed to help teachers have conversations with their students about contemporary antisemitism in a safe, sensitive and constructive way. Use these lessons to help your students reflect on antisemitism – how it manifests in contemporary society and its impact – and consider what needs to be done to challenge it.
This lesson is a means of introducing students to antisemitism, its impact, and some key antisemitic lies and myths in a brave and supportive learning environment (the second lesson in the unit provides space to explore antisemitic tropes in further depth). This lesson frames the focus of the unit. The activities help students to understand that antisemitism is rooted in malicious rumours, lies and myths that were first spread millennia ago, subsequently becoming entrenched as tropes; to reflect on the human cost of antisemitism and how it impacts those who experience it; and to start thinking about the process of standing up against antisemitism.
It is important to note that young people are particularly at risk of being exposed to antisemitic content. Social media platforms have created spaces in which all antisemitism, regardless of the motivating force behind it, has been allowed to flourish: memes and posts containing antisemitic ideas have been spread across platforms, sometimes by people who are naive to their antisemitic content.
Educating young people about antisemitic tropes, their history and how they appear in the present day can challenge antisemitism both by helping young people understand the destructive and painful past and present of antisemitic myths, making them more likely to stand up against such prejudice, and by preventing them from sharing antisemitic content unsuspectingly.
Preparing to Teach
A Note to Teachers
Before teaching this lesson, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.
Lesson Plans
Activities
Extension Activities
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