In May, organizations including the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Endowment for the Humanities join together to organize Jewish American Heritage Month. This month was established in 2006 to highlight American Jewish culture, traditions and contributions to American society, promote learning and fight against antisemitism.

The Jewish Student Union presented in the dining hall to middle schoolers about Jewish American Heritage Month during Culture and Community Block Tuesday, April 25, and to upper schoolers Wednesday, April 26.

The presentation introduced the main purpose of the month and how it was established. Presenters then localized the celebration to discuss Jewish life and culture in Los Angeles and the subcategories of impacts Jewish people have had in language, social justice, science and medicine, arts and entertainment and comedy.

Junior Rebecca Lazarus is on the JSU board and said it was difficult to narrow down the information to include in the presentation, as there were many influential people and organizations they considered highlighting.

“We had a JSU meeting with the whole club, and we brainstormed ideas of what we wanted to highlight for the whole school. We had a whole whiteboard of names, organizations, tons of different things,” Lazarus said. “We managed to decide on different categories, and we know there’s just so much that we could talk about, but we just had to choose some things.”

Senior Alyssa Ponrartana said she found the entertainment section of the presentation to be especially interesting, including a video about Steven Spielberg and “Schlinder’s List,” and information about Jewish people’s impacts on the creation of superheroes.

“Lilly’s comment about the superheroes being made by Jewish creators and the characters themselves being Jewish was great to learn about because the identity of characters isn’t always front and center for superheroes, but it’s such an important aspect,” Ponrartana said.

For JSU board member Lilly Dembo (’24), featuring Jewish comedians and contributions to comedy — as well as to the creation of superheroes — was the most exciting topic.

“A lot of times we’ve presented on the Holocaust or antisemitism, and while those are very important aspects, we want to make sure that people knew about the positives of the Jewish culture and not just the negatives,” Dembo said. “We found it really important to talk about the people the things — all things Jewish really.”

Lazarus said these presentations were a meaningful way to emphasize joy and pride in her Jewish culture. She agreed her favorite part of the presentation was the comedy piece because she feels Jewish comedy is its own category and a significant part of Jewish culture as a whole.

“I feel like we’ve done a lot of speaking with the Archer community and within our club this year about antisemitism and about struggles within the Jewish community, so we felt it was really important to highlight the positives and the joy and our pride within being Jewish,” Lazarus said. “That is just such an important part of our identity.”