Educator Modules
EDUCATOR MODULES FOR HIGH SCHOOL + COLLEGE CLASSROOMS
The sample modules below are designed to help educators integrate Ask Jewish Lives into high school and college classrooms while sparking student curiosity, conversation, and critical inquiry.
The modules are free, with no purchase required.
By combining interactive AI with trusted scholarship from Yale’s Jewish Lives series, the modules will help students explore the Jewish experience through the lens of biography while learning to evaluate sources and think carefully about how history is constructed.
Interested in bringing Jewish Lives books to your students? Bulk order discounts are available for educators, schools, and non-profit organizations. Please email contact@jewishlives.org for details.
MODULE 1: Conversation Across Time
Best for: High school (grades 10–12) and introductory college courses
Duration: One class period, plus a short assignment
Overview
This module invites students to experiment with “conversation across time” by engaging a historical figure through the Jewish Lives AI. The goal is not to simulate the past, but to help students think critically about voice, perspective, and historical imagination. Students learn to recognize the difference between evidence-based interpretation and speculative reconstruction.
Learning Goals
Students will explore how historical figures can be represented through voice and perspective. They will practice distinguishing between what is historically documented and what is interpretive or extrapolated. The module also encourages careful reflection on the ethical and intellectual limits of speaking for the past.
Core Activity
Students conduct a short “conversation” with a Jewish Lives AI persona. They ask the figure to respond to a contemporary question related to identity, ethics, nationalism, science, art, or another relevant theme.
For example:
How would you respond to concerns about antisemitism today?
Students are encouraged to keep the exchange brief and focused, and to pay close attention to tone, language, and claims made in the response.
Guided Discussion
As a class, students discuss questions such as:
Where does the AI’s response clearly reflect the figure’s documented views or writings?
Where does the response move into interpretation or extrapolation?
What are the strengths and limits of this kind of historical “conversation”?
Assignment Options
Students complete one of the following:
Dialogue vs. Document Comparison: Compare the AI conversation with a primary text by the figure (such as a letter, essay, or speech). Students assess what interactive dialogue adds to historical understanding and what it risks oversimplifying or distorting.
Limits of Representation Reflection: Reflect on what questions cannot or should not be responsibly asked of a historical figure, even through AI.
MODULE 2: Pluralism and Disagreement
Best for: Jewish studies, ethics, and philosophy courses
Duration: One class period
Overview
This module introduces students to disagreement as a defining feature of Jewish intellectual life. Rather than seeking consensus, students examine how Jewish thinkers and actors have reached sharply different conclusions in response to shared questions and historical challenges. The Jewish Lives AI is used to surface contrasting perspectives, which students then analyze through historical and ethical lenses.
Learning Goals
Students will gain a deeper understanding of the diversity of Jewish thought and experience across time. The module encourages students to see disagreement as historically grounded, intellectually productive, and shaped by lived experience.
Core Activity
Students compare AI conversations with two different Jewish figures responding to the same core question. Possible topics include god, modernity, Zionism, feminism, law, exile, or Judaism.
Examples might include:
Elijah and Spinoza on the nature of God
Einstein and Herzl on Zionism
Ayn Rand and Emma Goldman on feminism or political activism
Students pay close attention to how each figure frames the issue, the values at stake, and the assumptions underlying their responses.
Assignment Options
Students choose one of the following follow-up assignments:
Disagreement in Context: Students investigate how historical context, including time period, geographic location, and political conditions, shaped each figure’s position. They assess whether the disagreement is primarily philosophical, situational, or a combination of both.
Comparative Reflection: Students reflect on what this disagreement reveals about the range of Jewish responses to a shared question, and why disagreement itself has been a durable feature of Jewish intellectual tradition.
MODULE 3: Student-Curated Mini Exhibit (Capstone Option)
Best for: Semester projects and honors courses
Duration: Multi-week
Overview
This capstone module asks students to bring together research, interpretation, and critical reflection by curating a small “Jewish Lives” exhibit. Students move from analysis to presentation, thinking carefully about how historical lives are selected, framed, and explained for an audience. The Jewish Lives AI may be used as a tool for exploration and interpretation, but not as a source.
Project Description
Students create a digital or physical mini-exhibit centered on 1-3 Jewish Lives figures. Each exhibit should present a clear theme or interpretive idea, such as innovation, leadership, belief, or disagreement, and show how individual lives illuminate larger historical questions.
Students may use AI conversations to test ideas, surface tensions, or refine questions. All historical claims, however, must be grounded in Jewish Lives biographies and primary texts.
Assessment Focus
Projects are evaluated on clarity of interpretation, quality of evidence, historical accuracy, and thoughtful reflection.