This Fall, NYC public schools released Hidden Voices: Jewish Americans in United States History Volume 1, a rich and compelling educational resource that is part of a series highlighting the contributions of often ignored figures and groups. We encourage readers of all ages to take a look. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Professor of History at The New School, led the research for this volume, which is comprised of many essays from key US Jewish Studies scholars. We interviewed Petrzela to hear about her experience developing this resource, and how this work connects to her other research interests and projects.
Berman Archive: Tell us a bit about your work and your involvement with the new Hidden Voices curriculum?
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I am a historian of U.S. political culture, writ large. I decided I wanted to be a historian the moment I realized that the question I was asking about the world every day—how did we get here?—animates a whole professional enterprise. A deep curiosity to better understand the world as it is still gets me up every morning, excited to do historical research. I also consider myself very much a “history communicator”—eager to talk and do history beyond the traditional confines of academia.
It is this broad expertise in U.S. history and experience engaging audiences outside the academy, as well as my experience as a teacher and writing a book about the history of curriculum, that led the NY City Department of Education team to reach out to me for this role, and me to enthusiastically accept. My major reservation, however, was that I am not an expert in Jewish Studies! It became clear, however, that since the Jewish American Hidden Voices resource guide is intended for U.S. history and social studies classrooms, it was entirely appropriate for me to develop much of the broad historical framing of the resource and narrative, and to work closely with the many specialized experts we hired to write specific profiles and to serve as expert reviewers. I’m very happy with the result.
Why is this work important and why now?
Most acutely, I’d say that this resource is one important tool to fight the antisemitism that has unquestionably been on the rise, especially since 10/7, and especially disturbingly in educational environments. I believe that educating students and teachers about who Jews are, and our multiple roles in U.S. history, is one way to redress the ignorance that fuels antisemitism.
More broadly, I think that we are at a crucial moment in how we think about teaching about identity in U.S. society. On the one hand, we have an administration pushing back on any initiative that acknowledges, much less celebrates, the “diversity” of the United States. From the opposite side of the political spectrum, we have seen an emphasis on identitarianism that elevates (primarily) racial and ethnic affiliation above all else. I think that exploring and understanding the role of Jews in U.S. history shows how facile both of these approaches are in an evocative way that of course imparts knowledge about Jewish American history, but also raises fundamental questions about identity, experience, and belonging applicable far more expansively.
I believe that educating students and teachers about who Jews are, and our multiple roles in U.S. history, is one way to redress the ignorance that fuels antisemitism.
Have you heard any classroom reactions this Fall?
It is early days for implementation, but it has been wonderful to hear from teachers that they will be using the curriculum, and specifically that there are individuals whom they have taught about in the past, but never as Jews, and that this angle offers new depth and complexity to their understanding of these individuals, and the historical moments they inhabited and shaped. This is very much what I hoped for.
What do you hope NYC students get most from this effort?
I hope they come to understand that Jews are a diverse, fascinating, and historically important people whose experiences are integral to understanding the sweep of American history — not only when learning about the Holocaust or in the wake of an antisemitic incident. Too often, these are the only moments students in secular schools learn about Jewish experiences; I don’t think that’s sufficient.
We know that you also wrote a book on fitness culture and produced a podcast about the history of Chippendales. Please tell us that there’s a Jewish angle to both of these stories (or to American body culture in general)!
There is absolutely an important Jewish angle to the history of fitness culture that I chronicle in Fit Nation. Despite stereotypes about Jewish physical weakness, there are Jews all over this story. There are individuals like Zishe Breitbart, a turn-of-the-century strongman who explicitly linked his impressive physicality to a muscular Judaism in service of fighting against antisemitism and for Zionism. But more generally, the fitness industry as we know it today was shaped by the creativity of many Jews: Joe Gold of bodybuilding mecca Gold’s Gym, for example, or Lucille Roberts, who introduced the low-cost, women’s-only chain, Gilda Marx, in whose studio Jane Fonda learned aerobics, and who essentially invented the exercise-specific leotard (Google Flexatard), or, of course, Richard Simmons. I think this is in part due to the fact that the fitness industry was so nascent and unprofessionalized that it had a low bar to entry, and was thus hospitable to groups that in many ways were outsiders, not just Jews but especially women, and gay men and lesbians.
We’re an archive so we have to ask, what is your favorite archival item you’ve found in any archive.
It was from my dissertation research, and I still remember my joy at opening this dusty box in the local history room of a Southern California suburban library… and inside were student evaluations of a very controversial sex education curriculum taught there in the 1960s, which attracted sustained national attention. So much ink had been spilled about the curriculum, but we as educators know that prescriptive materials hardly give the full picture of how students experienced it, and those impressions are often lost to history. Well, this box gave me one window into those student experiences, and it turned out that this “radical” curriculum was not so radical after all. It was not only a fun archival find, but an important reminder at how hard, perhaps impossible, it is to reconstruct the “full story” of any historical moment, and so we must be relentlessly dogged — and humble.
