Introduction:  25 bright and impassioned teachers from all over the country are sitting in a large circle in a nondescript room of a Sheraton Hotel in a suburb of Boston. But what they’re talking about is far from nondescript. This is day one of the Jewish Women’s Archive's Institute for Educators, four intensive days focused on a cutting edge curriculum called Living the Legacy, which brings to life the rich and deep history of American Jewish activism. At the core of the curriculum lie stories, sharing them, living them, cultivating them, and in the words of Judith Rosenbaum, the Archive’s Director of Public History, letting them cultivate us.

[Excerpt from podcast transcript:]
Judith: “Here … we unpack a little piece of the past, and what we discover is that it’s not really past. And that’s also how I look at history. We think of history as what’s already happened, and static in some way … but in fact, history has it’s own life, and it’s own, organic process. Stories reemerge, and they reemerge in different ways, and their importance is different in different periods and different contexts. And that happens globally … but I think in everyone’s own life, that’s true too, there are different pieces of our own past that we return to and that mean different things to us at different times, and that continue to influence who we are moving forward. And I think it’s that kind of dynamic, the dynamic of history, that really excites me-- feeling like it has this ongoing life that we are responsible for and that we cultivate but also that cultivates us.” 

Thank you to Andy Reiner and FiddleBarn Productions for “Charles at 5,” the intro and exit tune that accompanied this podcast.

You can follow the Institute for Educators on Twitter: #jwaI4E