Giving Compass' Take:

• The Atlantic reports that, in the wake of the horrific shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Jewish schools are emphasizing empowerment when teaching lessons about anti-Semitism. 

• What can we do to make sure there's more tolerance in this world and that students of every faith can feel safe?

• Here's more on how teachers are working to curb anti-Semitism.

In so many other towns, schools have been the targets of choice for people who want to commit acts of violence. The Tree of Life synagogue, where a shooter killed 11 congregants and injured two others on Saturday, is a little more than a mile from Community Day School, a pluralistic Jewish school for kids ages 3 through eighth grade. The two communities are intimately connected: A number of the students’ families are members at Tree of Life; the middle schoolers have attended a morning prayer service, or minyan, there once a week for several years. This week, as students went back to school, the older kids were thinking, “This could have been me. I go there all the time,” says Avi Baran Munro, the head of the school.

For many of these kids, anti-Semitism is a concept from history class, Baran Munro told me. They learn about the conditions that led to the Holocaust and longtime patterns of discrimination against Jews.(Their curriculum isn’t exclusively focused on Jews, and also includes units on other forms of bigotry, such as racism, segregation, and anti-immigrant sentiment, Baran Munro noted.) “But they feel safe in America as Jews, and they feel safe in Pittsburgh as Jews,” she said. “They know it hasn’t gone away. But they don’t have examples.” She paused. “Which, now they do.”

Read the full article about teaching on anti-Semitism after the Pittsburgh shooting by Emma Green at The Atlantic.