The Only One in Class: Affirming the Dignity of All Students

ROGER BROOKS: Hello, everyone. I'm Roger Brooks, President and CEO of Facing History & Ourselves. Welcome to this webinar, "The Only One in the Class Affirming the Dignity of All Students." We're in a particular moment in time when we're witnessing an astonishing rise in acts of ampicillin antisemitism around the world. Our focus tonight on antisemitism as it affects our students is a full reflection of Facing History's mission, using lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.

But the topic is also intensely personal to me. I grew up in Minneapolis, a city that in the 1950s had a reputation as among the most virulently antisemitic cities in the US. To shield me from the contempt and hatred that was so prevalent during my parents' generation and even now, my father and mother gave me a name so that I could pass unsuspected of being Jewish.

So I'm going to introduce myself a second time. I'm Roger Lowell Brooks. You can't imagine how many times throughout my life and my career I've been asked, wait a minute. You're Jewish? I didn't bring my identity with me to school every day. I couldn't be fully present.

Tonight's webinar has a two-part title-- "The Only One in the Class." That's why this is so meaningful to me. "Affirming the Dignity of All Students." Those are the broader implications that each one of us must confront daily in our classrooms.

Arthur Ullian is a friend of Facing History of long standing, and I'm excited for him to share his story. David Rhodes, who's a program associate in our Jewish Education program will facilitate the evening. David, over to you.

DAVID RHODES: Thanks, Roger. I'm David Rhodes. I'm a program associate from the Jewish Education Team, and I work with teachers and school leaders as they bring in Facing History. Today I'm really excited to be in conversation with Arthur Ullian. And I feel like the power of this conversation, what we'll be exploring through the conversation, are the impacts of anti-Semitism and how that relates to Affirming the Dignity of All Students.

Before we get started, I'm going to play a short housekeeping video to familiarize everyone with the platform.

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DAVID RHODES: So here's our agenda for today. We're going to start with introductions and a quick overview of Facing History. Then we'll use some of our materials and our resources to explore the roots of anti-Semitism before we dive into the conversation with Mr. Ullian, drawing connections between the history and his experiences as the only Jewish student in a predominantly Christian school.

There'll be time for audience Q&A, using the questions that you bring to the Questions Box. And then we'll share some resources to continue your learning journey with Facing History.

As we start, it'll be great to get a sense of your familiarity with Facing History. So I sent a poll. And if you could share whether your new, just joining for the first time, or whether you've been with us on many webinars or in teaching Facing History in your classroom for years. It would be great to hear where you're coming into this webinar from.

And while you're filling out that poll, I'd just like to share our mission statement. Facing History is really about connecting the past to the present, and challenging teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. It raises a lot of questions. It's complex to get into these questions around what it means to stand up and how to challenge bigotry and hate. So we often bring in scholars, authors, storytellers, in support of our work and to further our mission.

As an eighth-grade social studies teacher, I experienced the power of Facing History firsthand. About 10 years ago was when I first encountered Facing History. And it really opened my eyes to what it means to do this work and to create space for students to really learn on this deep level and connect the dots between the past and present.

Looking at the results of the poll, it's great to see we do have people who are completely new to Facing History. We also have people who have been with us for a long time. So whether you're a seasoned veteran or whether you're just joining now, welcome. It's great to have you on the call.

And to give an overview of Facing History in a sense that really does connect to our work, I was coming into this conversation thinking about what it means to have a curriculum that's not only focused on content but is also about creating an inclusive classroom and bringing students into that sense of ethical reflection, and what it means to think about our values in action, both past and present, and how to engage in the work.

So tonight, what we're going to be talking about really relates to all three points of this triangle. We're going to be looking at the history of antisemitism, thinking about the intellectual rigor that would be involved in taking a deeper dive into that history. Emotional engagement, really thinking about the stories that Arthur will share, going into his personal experiences as a student. And the ethical reflection is really about our work as educators, raising important questions. These questions of how can understanding the roots and current manifestations of antisemitism impact a teacher's ability to create inclusive classrooms? And what steps can a teacher take to affirm the dignity of all students?

So now, it's my pleasure to introduce Mr. Arthur Ullian. Arthur has enjoyed distinguished careers in both real estate development, as founding partner of the Boston Land Company, and following a bicycle accident that left him paralyzed at age 51, in medical research advocacy on behalf of the National Institutes of Health. He actually doubled-- he helped to double the congressional appropriations to the NIH between 1998 and 2003, from $14 to $28 billion.

He was educated at Lawrence University and the London School of Economics, and he's received numerous awards for his unique role in medical research advocacy. Following his life changing accident in 1991, Mr. Ullian began to realize that not only did life in a wheelchair make him feel different, but that he had always felt like an outsider to some degree because he was Jewish.

He subsequently embarked on a journey that involved an extensive research into the origins of anti-Semitism and Jewish Christian relations, as well as deep reflection on his experiences as the only Jewish student in the elite prep schools that he had attended as a boy. His process of research and self discovery ultimately led him to write a book that is part memoir, part history, entitled , Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Me. Growing up Jewish in a Christian World.

So, Arthur, welcome. It's great to have you on the call. And before we look at some of the research that shines a light on the history of antisemitism, I'd like to start with an open question about your connection to Judaism. I mean, within the world of Judaism, there are so many different ways to be Jewish. So the question really, to start out, is what did it mean for you to feel connected to Judaism as a child?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, thank you for that introduction. By the way-- and Roger, my name is Ullian ending in I-A-N. So a lot of Armenians think I'm an Armenian. And also, by the way, I didn't choose to go to a school where I was going to be the only Jew, obviously. It was my mother who, like everyone else, wanted to assimilate and become an American. But she did it to an extreme and put me in a school where I was literally the only Jew in the entire school. So I did do that. I did go to those schools.

Assimilation goes back a long way. Jews started to assimilate when Alexander the Great brought Judea into the Greek empire. And we changed our names to Greek sounding names. And it was probably the same old joke that goes around today, where the parents want to come over to see their son's new apartment but they never come up. So the son calls the mother, ma! Where were you? Oh, we were downstairs. So why didn't you come up, he says. Because we forgot your new name.

And that's what Jews have been doing forever. And they did the same thing when they joined the Roman Empire. And they do it obviously today.

DAVID RHODES: So Arthur, for you, though, for you as kind of thinking back on your childhood, how would you describe what it felt like to be Jewish? What was your connection in your family, in your practice as a family?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, I was born, like the rest of my classmates, in 1939. That was when the Germans invaded Poland. When the war ended, I was five or six. And I understood, from listening to conversations in our house, or what was going on in Germany, where they talked about the Holocaust, they talked about all kinds of things. They talked about how Jews weren't coming into this country.

My parents, my father had sponsored a part of that, of people to come to the United States, several doctors. And they were involved in that.

I went to a very conservative temple, the Temple of Israel, where they even ate lobster. So I had kind of a Jewish upbringing. And we obviously went on the high holidays, and I enjoyed that. But that was the extent.

I mean, I knew I was Jewish, and everybody else did, too, even though the name didn't sound Jewish.

DAVID RHODES: And when you would go to the high holiday services, what would that feel like when you would walk in with your family? What was the experience like?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: I loved that. Everybody was there, people you knew. There was a sense of warmth. And we observed all the holidays, ate all the same food, and enjoyed our cousins as they would come over almost every other weekend to have Sunday dinner. It was lovely. It wasn't so great at school, however.

DAVID RHODES: Yeah. So I think that's the question we'll really be getting into. We actually start, at Facing History, with the question of how you saw yourself, before we get into how other people would see you, and the story of Judaism that you would want to tell. So thank you. You painted a picture of that warmth, of walking in and feeling like you knew everybody, and having that experience of the holidays together, and family and cousins.

So if that were the story that you had heard in school, you probably wouldn't have written a book, right? And the reality is that before we get into the stories of how other people might see Judaism, it's so important to start with that positive picture. Because what we will get into right now is thinking about the ideologies, the dynamics, of "we" and "they," the human psychology that has to do with "in" groups and "out" groups that we see on a universal level. Now we're going to talk about what that looks like in the particular of antisemitism.

So we know that history goes back a very long ways. There's no way we're going to cover all of that history by any means. We're going to actually look at a particular aspect in terms of the Christian roots of antisemitism. And we'll start with a short video from Facing History that'll just help create a shared language and some shared context around these ideas. So I'm going to play the video, called The Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism.

 

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NARRATOR: Stereotypes and myths are often at the heart of hatred. Stereotypes evolve over time and can be used to motivate and justify prejudice and discrimination. Antisemitism can be understood as a convenient hatred. Ideas about Jews have been impacted by the societies in which they live.

In the ancient world, it was not easy to tell who was a Jew and who was not Jewish. They did similar jobs and lived in houses that weren't all that different from their neighbors. One difference, however, was that in a time when most people prayed to many gods, Jews were monotheists, praying to only one God.

The Jews religious differences were seen by some as a challenge. Could they be trusted? When Greek and Roman rulers conquered Israel, the center of Jewish religious life, Jews began to move and form communities across the ancient world. As they did, they had to adapt to life as newcomers. And then, in a time when the Romans ruled Israel and brutally suppressed challenges to their power, a new religion emerged-- Christianity.

Jesus was born and lived as a Jew, and the earliest Christians thought of themselves as Jews, as well. But eventually, in order to win new followers and protect themselves from Roman persecution, Christians began to try to separate themselves from Judaism. This changing attitude toward Jews and Judaism is reflected in the Gospels included in the New Testament, written one to two generations after Jesus's death.

JONATHAN JUDAKEN: With the emergence of Christianity, and in the sacred texts of Christianity when they became canonized, what we end up finding in that literature are key images that end up having an enormous afterlife. One is Matthew 27:25, repeated differently in John, in which you have standing before Pontius Pilate a group of Jews who hope for the death of Jesus, bay for the blood of Jesus. And then in Matthew 27:25 say, as a group, "His blood be upon us and upon our children."

That line becomes fateful because it seems to implicate not only those Jews who were there at that time, but the inheritors of that entire tradition over time.

NARRATOR: The charge that the Jews were responsible for killing Christ has been refuted by historians because crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish punishment, and Jews would almost certainly not have had the power to impose the death penalty in the way it was described in Christian texts. However, the myth that the Jews were Christ killers was impactful because Christians believed if a people were capable of killing their God, they were capable of anything.

JONATHAN JUDAKEN: So there's the image of John 8:44, in which you have, in the mouth of Jesus, speaking to a group of Pharisees and other Jews around him, Jesus saying, "You are of your father, the devil." That one-liner will later be picked up in terms of associating Jews with the devil. This is the single most important association in the history of Judeophobia.

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DAVID RHODES: So in exploring this history and thinking about what we just saw, the point is not to denigrate Christianity. It's really not to hold up Judaism above other religions. Facing History is about looking at history, the history and the impacts of antisemitism. It's not about making theological claims.

And looking at this history, thinking about it through the lens of "us" and "them," Father Robert Bullock has had an incredible impact on how Facing History started and how it developed. He was inspirational as a thought leader. And know he would ask this question-- he started his life's work to really look at the triumphs and failures of the past, and try to create a better future.

And part of that was to look at these questions of where does anti-Jewish thought by Christians come from? Where did the negative sentiments, the malleus complexity of anti-Jewish thought, come from in Christianity? And in looking at that question, this is what he-- this is what he said.

He said, that we have made it a theology. God is involved. Christism in the fourth century said God hates the Jews and always has. Augustine, the leader of Christian thought for a millennium, has a list of accusations and the diatribes against Jews. Synagogues are houses of demons, he said. He said Jews could be tortured in order to make them convert. It is a theology. Jews are accused, stand accused of deicide and of rejection.

And he goes on to tell the story-- Father Bullock tells a story of a nun who came up to me and said, you know, I have never heard that message. I never thought about it that way. And his response is really interesting because it frames it not so much as a conscious and explicit perspective on Jews and Judaism. But he'd say, you know, you'll say, I didn't hear it that way. If you went to church today, I don't think of it in those terms. We don't have to think of it in those terms.

95% of our thinking is unconscious. It enters in. It becomes part of the public consciousness. It is a theology about which we should gasp for comprehension, to become alert to those subtle, lethal teachings of contempt and opposition. He actually referenced the deicide charge in the church service for that day.

So to think about what this means, what does it mean for something to be kind of unconscious, to just become part of the consciousness, as opposed to something that's really explicit and unconscious? Those are some of the questions that will really relate to our conversation tonight.

So Arthur, coming back to your story, right these ideas and this history are essential to understanding your experiences as a student, particularly your experiences of the curriculum you're exposed to. And curriculum can mean many things. It can be about content. It can be about the dynamics of a classroom. It can be about student voice and agency.

So starting just with the sense of content of the curriculum, how do these ideas relate to what you experienced in the schools you attended as a boy?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Yes. Now, do you want me to-- an I on now?

DAVID RHODES: Yes.

ARTHUR ULLIAN: OK. So I did hear-- actually, let me go back to Bob Bullock. We used to go-- and Lee actually led trips to Israel, and to actually Egypt, as well as to Jordan. In one of the first groups, we had the head of the American Jewish Committee in New England. He was a rabbi. Together with Bob Bullock, who I hadn't met before. And we did, I think, three or four trips altogether.

And I was standing with him, overlooking Jerusalem from the mountain across, from Mount Scopus. This is where Titus observed the destruction of Judea and the temple. And Bob said to me, you know, it's all political. The Jews did not kill Christ. It was the Romans.

And that set me off on a route to really figure out what was happening because it lifted from me a sense of guilt. And I thought, well, I wanted to lift the sense of hating, which is a difficult thing to have in one's heart, from my Christian classmates.

DAVID RHODES: Could you tell the story of where that hate and that sense of guilt came from? Where did that show up in the curriculum?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, not only did I-- it was chapel and church choir. We had to go to-- we had a little replica of an Episcopal church right on campus. And every morning, we would go there. Or every Wednesday, we would go there. And I was the brunt of most of the service. The blood is on your children and your children's children.

And this was crazy. The whole school was looking at me. I didn't even have a girlfriend, let alone children.

And then there are other parts, too. We were accused of usury, which made me feel very guilty about even asking anybody for money, if I lent them any money. I was a usure. You know, I would hear, "He Jews me down."

Now, none of the kids in my class accused me of anything. They weren't bullying me. They were literally my friends, and there are many today.

But all these accusations, which then spills over into literature which we study in class, and in the art that we saw and studied, like "The Last Supper." Now, "The Last Supper" is a very good example. We studied this but the teachers never really told us exactly what was going on, except one did.

In "The Last Supper," Jesus is sitting in the middle and all the apostles-- this is the one by DiVinci. And the apostles are shocked. They're standing up, and they're all pointing a finger. They're pointing at this person, Judas.

Now Judas is the only person, the only apostle, with a name that sounds like Judea. It certainly sounds like a Jew, because the other apostles were named Bartholomew, and Thaddeus, and a bunch of John's. And also, all these apostles actually look pretty much like my classmates.

And that was one of the questions I was going to ask the teacher, but I started laughing too much to myself. I couldn't ask her. But the teacher then says, "Why is everybody standing up and pointing? They're not even eating. What's happening?" And nobody knew what.

And what it is, is that Jesus had just said, "On this night, I will be betrayed." And that starts the whole story of Judas. And that never happened. Nor could it have happened for various reasons, which I'll tell you in a minute.

 

We read Shakespeare, obviously, and The Merchant of Venice, and spent a lot of time there. And I was Shylock. I felt I was there, sitting around the oblong table, where we would have discussions. And I was simply Shylock, disguised in my blue blazer, which I still have on today, from the fifth grade.

And then again, in Chaucer, we read The Canterbury Tales. And there, the prior says-- the prior, who is the head of a monastery-- tells the story about how we killed a child, as we needed to do, in order to make matzo. And this is a long story, and it actually is talking about an incident that happened in Norwich, England. And it created this enormous myth that the Jews were able to kill children.

And as the film said, we were also called the devil by the Gospel John. And that's also in Chaucer, where he calls us of the father. Our Father is the devil and capable, therefore, of doing anything we wanted.

So I spent years researching all of this. And under Roman law, it was against the law to claim that you were king of anything. Only an ambassador, only the emperor could appoint a king. And if you did that, it was a capital offense.

Under Jewish law, he did not commit an offense. All he said is, "I am the Son of God," which every Jew believes, which means we're all equal.

The other-- there's one last thing and I'll stop here. The concept of usury, and that the temple had money changers in it, or at least in the court of the Gentiles outside of that. And that's what it was used for. And Jews believed that, and so did the Jewish scholars writing books.

But what was happening-- and I got into this because I studied economics. So I was interested in economics. And if you look at a map, where you go and Google trade routes in the Roman Empire, you'll find that the entire empire was stretched from Great Britain all the way down through Africa and over to the Balkans, which encompassed an enormous amount of diverse people.

They believed, the Romans did, in complete tolerance because they were an incredibly diverse society. Everybody traded with everybody else. And you'll see, when you look at the routes, that ships came across the Mediterranean into Caesarea. Judea itself was right on the trade routes. And consequently, there was no war.

And then, when you read a book by Raoul McGlothlin, who's an archaeologist and an economist, he finds that where all this trade took place was right next to all the temples, all over the empire, and the pagan temples, including the temple in Judea. So that's what it was for.

So when Jesus comes into Jerusalem for the night before Passover, and he comes in, turns the tables over in the temple, they were never over in the temple. He would have known that because trade was going on for 300 years before it, and it continued for another 300. So that's a terrible myth.

DAVID RHODES: So this is the history, I feel like. And this is where you are motivated to really understand the history, to unpack the experiences you had in school. And so bringing it back to the classroom-- and there's so much importance. I mean, you point to the need to create space to really get into this history.

Bringing it back to the classroom, you were getting this message from a religious standpoint. You were reading literature. You tell the story of a teacher asking the class, "who killed Jesus?" And I feel like the way you tell that story is really powerful because he turns to the class. He turns to the class and he's asking that question. And what was that experience for you?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: And then I'm waiting for someone to say, "I know. Like across the table said, "the Romans." He says, "Yes, and who else?" And now I'm waiting, staring at the table, for somebody to say, "You mean Arthur?" Which obviously, nobody did. And then he started yelling, "The Jews, the Jews, the Jews." Just like what you hear in Chapel and church all the time, and driving it home.

The tragedy is that the beauty of Judaism-- and I learned a lot about Judaism by studying all of this. I read everything, and dug up some of the great disputations that were done in Barcelona and in Paris, and learned-- because this was a debate between Christians and learned rabbis--

DAVID RHODES: Before we get into the debate, I think this is important to just dwell on this for one minute though, because you're sitting there in this classroom, and you're hearing this teacher say, "The Jews, the Jews, the Jews." And there's a line in your book that's so powerful because you say, "didn't he see me sitting there? Didn't they see me sitting there?"

And I feel like it conveys something so important because on some level, clearly they did. Clearly they saw you sitting right there. But what didn't they see? And I feel like the larger question here, around your experience as a student, is what did it mean for you in terms of either feeling included or feeling excluded? Growing up as a teenager, where your social identity is so important, how did that feel for you in that context, in that space?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: It was just a terrible awful experience. I mean, I was just isolated from everyone else. It gets worse because they would take attendance at a church that you had to go to on Sunday. And then, in the dining room, one of the teachers got up with his clipboard-- because they took attendance. And he'd ask, where were you Frank, or you Kevin? And then, where were you, Ullian? And I had-- I don't know what I said.

If I had known my history, and if I had known who I really was, I would have said, "I went to Michigan [INAUDIBLE]. We celebrate our day of rest on Saturday. Sunday happens to be the first day of work. I don't know what you guys are doing, celebrating on the wrong day. I mean, that would have been very refreshing.

But I think what's so terrific is that not only do Jews need to understand their own history-- here's an example right now. There's a movie called, Judas and the Black Messiah.

DAVID RHODES: Wait. Before we get into the present, though, let's just hold off on the present because I want to stay in the classroom for a minute because this is-- thinking about our audience and there's so much we can get into. You have so many stories to tell about what was your experience as a student and how the other students treated you.

Because on the one hand, you said these are your friends. They're still your friends. So there was not this sense of being beat up and violence going on. So what did the exclusion-- when you said you felt isolated, what did it mean for you to feel isolated? How did that manifest?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, in the first place, the connection with my classmates ended at the end of the day. I was never invited to their home. They never told me when a party was. There were cotillions all the time, and coming out of parties. And I was just excluded. I crashed a couple of them with my friends, and was waiting.

I remember one, in the [INAUDIBLE] fancy, very, very fancy, exclusive club. You were also not allowed to get into yacht clubs. They wouldn't allow you to get into a hotel because they were all restricted. And you couldn't join a law firm. You couldn't become a resident at the Mass General or the Brigham and Women's. All of that has changed.

But in the days-- I mean, that's why Jews went into their own businesses, because they were never going to get into those businesses that were conducted by non-Jews. So that was a sense of exclusion.

But I think that obviously, a lot of that has changed. Because the yacht club that I belong to was restricted, as they all were.

DAVID RHODES: At that time, you were feeling that. You were feeling a sense of exclusion from parties, from these places. Would you be able to go to your friends' homes? Would you go to outside extracurricular activities? What would they be doing that you wouldn't be doing?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, we would go together while we were boarding there on Sundays and to Boston Common. And even in Boston Common, on one of those trips, we were walking through the Common. And there at the corner of Beacon and Charles, I remember, there was Father Pheeney standing up there. This is in the '50s, yelling and screaming the same words right out of Nuremberg rallies. It was all around us, even after the Holocaust.

DAVID RHODES: Did you ever talk to your friends' families? Did you get to know any of your friends' parents?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: I did with several of them, but not very many. My good friend, Peter, I went to his house on Marlboro Street, and also his summer house. But he was about the only one. And later, actually, I met him prior to his early cancer, when he actually died. And he had remarried to a beautiful Jewish girl, which was interesting in the first place.

But that sense of exclusion is very hurtful. For teachers, I think, sometimes we just don't understand things that are hurtful to somebody else, like the statues of Confederate soldiers put in prominent places in the South. That's offensive to Blacks, and we need to understand that.

DAVID RHODES: There is a broader question, then, of what it means to raise awareness. That's kind of going ahead to that question of the reflection for teachers. What should teachers think about? And I think it really does speak to exactly what we're doing in Facing History, which is to say, what is that sort of reflection that we need to both model and bring to the way we design curriculum, design the spaces. Curriculum in terms of the content. Curriculum in terms of the spaces that we create. The dynamics in terms of how we bring that to students.

So it sounds like you have this insight into the kinds of questions teachers need to ask themselves. How would you describe what you would say teachers need to think about that you didn't experience teachers speaking about as a child?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, I think that people really have to delve into not only their history, but into the history of the people who they're teaching. We used to play cowboys and Indians. And the Indians were just desecrated. Nobody had good words for them.

But I think it's very important for Jews to know their own history so that they can be able to stand up and say, "no, there was no way that the Jews killed Christ."

And there is a wonderful book by Haim Cohen, who was essentially the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. And he wrote a book called, Trial of Jesus. And there's only a few books like that. And he looks at both laws-- Jewish laws under the [INAUDIBLE] Heidrun and the Roman laws. And that's where I found, how under Roman law, it was a capital crime to call yourself-- and then an easy answer.

And then, of course, when I did find out, as I explained before about trade, we had nothing to do with usury. And also what happened under Constantine, where Saint Augustine is found, which Bob Bullock talked about. He wrote this huge book called, City on a Hill, in like five, six volumes.

And in those volumes, he lays out a process where he says Jews should be made miserable, but don't kill them all because we need them to be there as a remnant for the Second Coming.

Now, there were eight million Jews in the first century. And in a census taken in the late 1800s, it was exactly the same number. And had we multiplied the way the rest of the whole world population had, by a factor of 18, there should be 135 million Jews today. That's what has happened.

DAVID RHODES: And you really took the time, over the course of-- once you launched into this history, to think about how you could essentially do what you just described, students, young people need to learn, which is to counter the stories to feel that confidence to speak out.

So in your book, there is a really powerful chapter where you write about what you would have said. What would you have said? And thinking about that, what do you think would have helped you feel like you could have said something in that time? What would have helped you feel like you could have had that sense of agency, that voice, as a student?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: If you're an adolescent, it's hard to absorb all the history. But I think if in Jewish schools or in temple, they began to teach you so that you could appreciate what Judaism was-- I mean, we stand up when the Ark is opened because we worship the law. And that's what it is.

I had a wonderful conversation just the other day with a rabbi who is in Israel. And he was the Ambassador actually, to Ireland. And he wrote this wonderful article about racism in Genesis. And he talks about how it was not allowed. We were very firmly against it. And all the stories about how someone calls a Black person from Ethiopia something that was not kind. That person then turns into a completely white Albino as a punishment.

It's a beautiful article, actually. His name is Rabbi-- I can't remember his name.

DAVID RHODES: The idea that that's a punishment is problematic in itself, too. Like, what does it mean to counter those messages? And I think there's something really important that you're pointing to, in this idea of looking at this history and saying, there are ways that the story, that Judaism can be told to confront these messages, to confront stereotypes. And how do we learn that story, how do we teach that story can be really important.

And I feel like there's something about being seen in-- so part of it is what a student can do, and hopefully teachers can help teach. But in terms of what a teacher can do with students of any background, when you say, "didn't they see me sitting there," what would it have meant for you to actually be seen? What does that mean to be seen by a teacher?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, it would have been wonderful if the teacher had said-- and knew something. And it's just like Bob Bullock said, the Jews had nothing to do with killing Him. And be able to cite the law, to Roman law, that was proof.

And the same thing about usury. When you hear somebody say, "oh, you Jewed me down," to explain to them that we never committed usury. That what happened is that under both Greek and Roman way of governing was total tolerance. Because they figured out very quickly that with a diverse society, with every kind of race, you have to be tolerant of everybody.

And Constantine, who became Christian and took away the love that Jesus talked about, that we hear about in the Beatitudes and we sat-- on these trips we took mainly Christians , and members of Congress, and so forth. And we were up on the Mount, and sat down on the ground.

And Bob Bullock read from the Beatitudes. And that was all that Jews would have said-- love thy neighbor, feed the poor, heal the sick. And those are beautiful things.

Then all of a sudden, you see in the same Gospel, we're the devil. We're vicious. And then on the other hand, there was as a priest from Ireland, Dominic [INAUDIBLE] who says, this is so strange. Either Jesus changed his mind, or Matthew changed his Jesus.

DAVID RHODES: So it sounds like what you're pointing to is the need for a teacher to be able to say, hey, this is a history that you can understand in a way that's actually affirming of the dignity of people who we're talking about, and not denying them that dignity. And what would it mean to learn about your Jewish students, and to recognize where the messages might come from on conscious and unconscious levels, and where might that play out with other groups, as well.

And I feel like there's a question-- and to bring in the audience here, one question that's coming up is, is it really about your hope? Because so much of this story and what you're sharing is about the years and years, millennia of these negative stories being reinforced and retold. And so, where do you see the direction going, if you were going to tell a hopeful story of where it could go?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Yes. And it's really a wonderful thing. A slide is down at the bottom of the page here, showing these-- that's it there.

So here is the contrast. On the left, you see the Church, a woman standing straight, looking at the synagogue, which is depicted by the woman, head bowed, her staff broken. And this is from Constantine. And it's the defeat by the church over the synagogue.

And then on the right, you see a brand new sculpture, which sits outside of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where the young boy is reading from the Torah on the left, and the Christian reading from the New Testament, and warmly looking at each other.

Now, Pope Francis was there and prayed in front of that. And this comes on the front page of a report from the Church of England, authorized with a forward from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which says, "What we have been preaching has caused so much suffering of Jews over the centuries that we need to admit that. And it's caused the Holocaust." And the Anglican church has gone so far as to change the words in their Book of Common Law. Not Common Law but Common Service.

And because I did go to London School of Economics, I got involved with them because they have a huge faith center, as 2/3 of the student population are from foreign countries, 120 of them, with every conceivable religion. And this faith center's purpose, which is so lined up with Facing History, that the two could work together nicely to fight the far right globally.

And I say this with great hope for us. It's the first time in almost 2,000 years that they've had the courage to admit that.

DAVID RHODES: So that story and that potential idea of partnership, where can people who share this mission come together and further the work, is really something that we would love to continue to talk about. It's not something we'll be able to really dive into right now, but you're again pointing to the need to really have this conversation extend , and bring other voices into this conversation to think about where it could hopefully go.

ARTHUR ULLIAN: The teachers who are listening could simply go online and click on God's Unfailing Word and you can get it downloaded for free on Google. God's Unfailing Word from the Church of England, which is the third largest church in the world, by the way-- the Episcopal Church here.

DAVID RHODES: And I wanted to bring in one last question from the audience, which is, what do teachers need to know about their own biases, more broadly? Thinking about the question of what you would say teachers need to understand. Because it's one thing to know your students. It's another thing to really reflect kind of internally, regardless of who your students are.

Because you're teaching whichever students are in front of you. And you're choosing a curriculum, you're choosing a way of teaching, your choosing your words. What does it mean to reflect on biases in the way that you're describing?

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, I think that it's very difficult when you go to church and you happen to be a teaching Christian, or at least not Jewish, to try to-- because you've heard all these things against the Jews so dramatically put in the New Testament, and to preach to them. And then you see it in stained glass.

And to be able to say, well, these are all myths. How do you do that when it's part of your belief? But as they've learned at the London School of Economics in the Department of International Relations-- let me tell you one last story, which is a lovely story.

So during spring break, the Anglican priest who is the head of the department at LSE tells this story. So he brings Christians, and Jews, and Muslims to Israel during the winter break. And it's time for the Muslims to pray. And so, they don't know what to do. And they're in the [INAUDIBLE], which is the Holocaust Museum.

And they look around and they lay their rugs down in a little place way in the back, near where the commissary is. And some [INAUDIBLE], and they lay down and started praying. And the guy behind the window starts banging on the window. And the guide and everybody else is very, very nervous. And he comes out and he says, "Mecca is that way." It's a beautiful story that could really choke you up.

DAVID RHODES: That really-- and that's actually a beautiful story in terms of what we might think coming into it, and what was really happening. And to really take that in to approach situations with that kind of sense of curiosity and that sense of hope, which I think that story captures. So I think it's actually a perfect note to end on for today.

And like we've said multiple times in this conversation, this needs to be a longer conversation. The history you're talking about, there's so much more to get into-- the people and the resources, the organizations that you're connected with. We'd love to continue the conversation with you through time.

Unfortunately, we're out of time for tonight. So I just I really want to say thank you for taking the time with us and for bringing your book to the world.

ARTHUR ULLIAN: Well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm happy to Zoom with any classes you have anytime.

DAVID RHODES: Great. Thank you. And going forward , I do want to share some Facing History resources that we want to make accessible to our audience, how to continue learning with Facing History.

So at this point, there's resources that take a really deep dive into the history of antisemitism. And you can really take lots of time getting into where it gets started, and what are the origins, and how it can trace [INAUDIBLE] for teachers to really [INAUDIBLE].

It's really about the universal question. It's about creating [INAUDIBLE] for students to feel like they're actually being seen. They feel a sense of belonging and included in the classroom. They feel like their voice can be heard in the conversation, and their voice really matters.

How do you create that sort of space, especially dealing with different conversations rather than shying away from them. To really say, no, we need to have these conversations. How do we do it in a way that brings students into that experience of agency, and feel like they can share their views and listen to others, and try to empathize and approach the questions with curiosity. So Fostering Civil Discourse is really just a way for teachers to develop those practices in their classrooms and across contexts.

And then, The Roots and Impacts of Antisemitism is a lesson that incorporates the video that we were watching earlier on the Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism. And there are ways to bring teachers and students into the questions that video raises, in ways that focus on the particulars of anti-Semitism and that also speak more broadly to the questions of "in" groups and "out" groups and how we need to be so attentive to the way those histories and those stories are connected to the present, and what we need to understand about our own voices and our own role. And that really gets to the heart of Facing History. So those are some resources to look at.

I also want to share that we have upcoming events. There's a webinar actually coming up in a couple of days with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. And it's really about culturally and historically responsive literacy which, in some ways, we're really getting into tonight, which is what does it mean to really be responsive to the people who are in front of you.

She's the Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University. And she wrote a book called, Cultivating Genius, An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. So she really gets into, in her talk, what are some of those practices and what does it mean. What are the implications for teaching for equity and justice?

And then, some people on this call, I'm sure, have been in or are taking the Holocaust and human Behavior seminar. It's a really deep dive that goes through the Phase in History journey, from questions of identity, to questions of "we and "they," and "in" groups and "out" groups to really trying to understand the history of the Holocaust in ways that bring the stories of perpetrators, bystanders, and upstanders into the questions and think, what does it mean to learn about this history? And to also think about the legacies of this history and how it relates to the world. What connections can we make? And how do we stand up today. What does it mean to choose to participate? So really powerful seminar that really brings teachers into the experiences that they can then bring to their students. So that's in August.

With that, I think we are at time. So I just want to say thank you all for attending. If you look at the resource widget, there are lots of other resources that you can access and continue learning with Facing History, including a way to bring this webinar, a webinar reflection guide, to think about key takeaways, questions that are raised, and how to bring learning into action from a webinar like we just had today, the conversation we had today.

So thank you again to Arthur Ullian, and thank you all for being with us tonight.

 

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