What do judge Ruchie Freier, Gottlieb’s restaurant, and the rapper Notorious B.I.G. all have in common?

They are all pictured in a new presentation recently given to students at public middle schools in Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy as part of an effort to combat bigotry. 

The four-part workshop, which was given to seventh graders at three local schools this past spring as part of a pilot program, teaches students about the histories of Puerto Rican, African American, and Satmar Hasidic communities in the U.S., among other minority groups.

The curriculum was designed in collaboration between the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Councilmember Lincoln Restler, and three local organizations: Los Sures, Bridge Street Development Corporation, and the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn.

In an email newsletter last Tuesday, Restler said that Rabbi David Niederman, who leads the UJO, “helped inspire” the program. Niederman also participated in a panel discussion in which the students could ask him and other leaders questions.

Jewish highlights of the first session included learning about the Holocaust, the history of antisemitism in the U.S., and religious and ethnic diversity within the Jewish community. 

Students also learned specifically about Satmar, the largest Hasidic sect in Williamsburg. The presentation that educators used to teach the students  — obtained by Shtetl through the Freedom of Information Law — contains information about Satmar gender segregation, yeshivas, and kosher standards.

“In the Satmar community adult men and women have separate gathering places,” the presentation says. “Generally, men and women have limited social interaction across gender with those outside their own families.”

In later sessions, students review statistics about hate crimes in New York City, learn the social and legal consequences of committing a hate crime, and discuss quotes by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Conservative rabbi and a leader in the civil rights movement who was friends with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Knocking the hat off of a religious person or pulling down someone's head scarf could be considered a hate crime,” the presentation says. “Hanging a noose or painting a swastika could be deemed hate crimes.”

In the closing session, Restler and Niederman appeared on a panel alongside Gregory Anderson, leader of the Bridge Street Development Corporation, and Juan Ramos, director of Los Sures.

In May, Restler told Shtetl that the program is geared toward middle school students because, unlike students at public high schools, middle schoolers usually attend school near where they live, and many antisemitic attacks are perpetrated by local teens. 

He told the Brooklyn Paper that when Ramos talks to young people who’ve committed hate crimes, he often finds that the kids don’t understand why their actions are harmful.

Ramos “would talk to the people in the community who were responsible for having perpetrated forms of hate violence — knocking someone’s hat over … or spray-painting a swastika,” Restler said.  “They didn’t even know what the symbol meant, or why it was so hurtful.”

Visible Jews such as Hasidim are disproportionately affected by antisemitic attacks. Yet although Haredim have long borne the brunt of antisemitism, a recent analysis by Shtetl found that they are underrepresented in the New York City Department of Education’s curricular materials about Jewish communities.

Still, Williamsburg isn’t the only Brooklyn neighborhood where Hasidic leaders have educated public school students about their community. Local leaders have led informal efforts in Crown Heights, where Rabbi Eli Cohen, a leader in the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, told the Forward he has seen positive outcomes after partnering with Black activist Geoffrey Davis to visit public schools in the area. 

They read the students Davis’s book about preventing violence which includes some teachings from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. But, just being present in the schools was helpful. At a preschool in East Flatbush, for example, Cohen said a little girl told him she was scared of him. After he spent a few minutes with the children, that same little girl “stroked my jacket sleeve and told us she wasn’t scared any more,” Cohen said.

In his newsletter, Restler said he was already working to expand the program beyond the three middle schools that participated in the pilot program, and possibly to other neighborhoods.

“We are working now to sustain and expand this curriculum that is focused on combating hate and especially anti-Semitism to more schools in South Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy and potentially beyond,” Restler said.