I’ve known Natalia Mehlman Petrzela for nearly twenty years, long before she became a History Professor at The New School and served as Lead Scholar on Hidden Voices: Jewish Americans in United States History.
Hidden Voices is a nearly 300-page curriculum supplement now available to New York City public schools. It takes Jewish Americans out of the margins and places them in the center of the American story — where we always were, but rarely appear in the textbooks.
The curriculum introduces students to Jewish Americans who shaped labor, law, culture, business, and public life — people like Emma Lazarus, whose words helped define the moral identity of the United States; Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice; Clara Lemlich, the labor organizer who sparked the Uprising of the 20,000; and Leopold Karpeles, the Jewish Civil War hero President Abraham Lincoln honored for extraordinary bravery on the battlefield. These are the kinds of Americans who deserve to be part of our national memory.
That’s what makes the timing of this work so meaningful. At a moment when antisemitism has surged and ignorance is being weaponized, a curriculum like this doesn’t just teach Jewish history — it teaches American history accurately. It also does something else that’s been missing: it presents Jewish identity in its full diversity. Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, religious, secular, Zionist, Southern, Midwestern — far from the caricatures dominating public conversation.
What I appreciate most is that Hidden Voices isn’t political nor tries to score points. Natalia and her team built something careful, rigorous, and usable.
Call to Action
Hidden Voices is completely free — for schools, educators, after-school programs, youth groups, Jewish community organizations, and anyone who simply wants to share powerful, inspiring stories of Jewish Americans who helped shape this country.
Here’s the link:
👉 https://bit.ly/48AJyj9
Click the Blue “VIEW” Button
If you’re a parent, teacher, librarian, administrator, or community leader, I can’t recommend this enough. Download it, use it, and share it with people in your life who deserve more than the narrow version of American history most of us were taught. These stories don’t just fill in the gaps. They bring light, context, and belonging at a time when our classrooms — and our communities — desperately need it.
