I agree with Barbara Wind’s article a few weeks ago about establishing a Jewish History Month (“It’s Time for a ‘Jewish History Month,’” March 20, 2025), both on why such a month is valuable and why it and others like this are important in our culture.
However, such a holiday already exists. May has been Jewish American Heritage Month by federal law since 2006 and it has been proclaimed as such by the U.S. president every year since.
I don’t know how many Link readers, or Jews at large, know about JAHM, but certainly outside our community it isn’t the institution that Black History Month, Women’s History Month, or Pride Month have become. It doesn’t have the brand power or corporate pandering that these other months have. I personally am familiar with it only because of an event held at my workplace a few years ago (run, of course, by our DEI coordinators).
I’m not saying that we need to make JAHM as ubiquitous as these other celebrations, but if we want our contributions to American society and the world at large to be duly recognized, we have to be the driving force behind that movement—a movement that starts at home.
By the time you read this, Jewish American Heritage Month 2025 has already begun. I don’t know if the Link has anything special planned to celebrate it, but I hope to hear more stories like Henrietta Szold’s. I encourage anyone with special knowledge or interest in a particular American Jewish contribution to write in (stories about your family members would be especially welcome). I would love to see a collection of these stories honoring the impact our people has had on a country that has opened its doors not only to us, but to so many others fleeing from brutality over the centuries.
