Who We Are - Introduction

‘Who we are’ is the shortest of the three chapters in the Jewish Way of Life CD-Rom and contains the most accessible material, namely ‘Sarah and her family’ and ‘David and his family’. Sarah and David are teenagers, born and growing up in Britain. Here they introduce themselves to your pupils as their peer guides to Jews and Judaism. ‘Sarah and her family’ and ‘David and his family’ include selections from their own and their family’s Jewish experiences through their photo albums. The presentation of these experiences also maps, as it were, the terrain of the whole programme: through speech and visual imagery, Sarah and David explore the three ‘Bs’ of the Jewish Way of Life—believing, behaving and belonging.

Because ‘Sarah and her family’ and ‘David and his family’ introduce the presenters of the whole programme and touch the most important bases that the rest of it spirals over, they therefore make a particularly effective starting point in your use of the Jewish Way of Life CD-Rom.

‘The history of the Jewish community in Britain’ is unlikely to appear on your Agreed Syllabus for RE yet this section both satisfies and stimulates pupils’ curiosity about how Jews got here, as it were. The choice of the six events and periods to present deliberately downplays the medieval persecution of Jews (only the expulsion in 1290 is given) and rather accentuates the role Britain played in accepting Jewish immigrants—a role motivated by compassion or self-interest or a combination of both.

(The photos in and around the central Star of David were taken at a peace rally organised by the British Jewish community in Trafalgar Square.)

‘Jews across the world’ is also surplus to strictly legal requirements, so to speak, yet presents a significant image of the Jewish people’s diversity, adaptability and capacity for survival.