This site aims to help students achieve the following learning goals:
- Understand what brought Jews to the Americas and where they came from
- Understand where Jews settled in the Americas and when
- Understand Jewish daily life in early America
- Understand the diversity of Jewish experience in early America
- Understand Jewish religious practices in early America
- Understand what historians mean by “history,” and what counts as evidence.
This site is also designed to allow sync with National Teaching Standards for U.S. History grades 5-8 and National Teaching Standards for World History grades 5-8. In particular this site aims to help students achieve the following objectives:
NSS-USH.5-12.2 ERA 2: COLONIZATION AND SETTLEMENT (1585-1763)
- Understand why the Americas attracted Jews, and where they settled
- Understand which Europeans brought enslaved Africans to their colonies, and how slavery reshaped Jewish life in the Americas
- Understand how Jewish religious institutions emerged in the English and Dutch colonies
NSS-USH.5-12.4 ERA 4: EXPANSION AND REFORM (1801-1861)
- Understand the sources and character of cultural and religious movements in the antebellum period
NSS-WH.5-12.6 ERA 6: THE EMERGENCE OF THE FIRST GLOBAL AGE, 1450-1770
- how the transoceanic interlinking of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas 1450 to 1600 led to global transformations.
NSS-WH.5-12.7 ERA 7: AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS, 1750-1914
- the causes and consequences of political revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
- the causes and consequences of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, 1700-1850.
- patterns of nationalism, state-building, and social reform in Europe and the Americas, 1830-1850
- How Jews fit into major global trends from 1750 to 1850.