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 Ask Jewish Lives. The goal is to help students think critically about voice, perspective, and historical imagination.

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.

Core Activity
Students conduct a short “conversation” with a historical figure through Ask Jewish Lives. 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.

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 leaders have reached sharply different conclusions in response to shared questions and historical challenges. Ask Jewish Lives is used to raise 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 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 Brandeis on Zionism

• Herzl and Emma Goldman on 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 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 an enduring feature of Jewish intellectual tradition.

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.

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 Ask Jewish Lives to test ideas, raise tensions, or refine questions. All historical claims, however, must be grounded in Jewish Lives biographies and/or primary texts.

Assessment Focus
Projects are evaluated on clarity of interpretation, quality of evidence, historical accuracy, and thoughtful reflection.