Aaron Bregman and Sara Winkelman
In classrooms across the country, conversations feel more charged and the air is tense. Global conflicts and domestic affairs are impacting even benign topics.
As those conversations have become more politically charged, some teachers have begun to question whether it is even possible to teach seminal works like Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir
“Night” without the discussion veering into present-day politics.
Aware of this shifting reality, the organizations we represent — American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington — recently spent an afternoon with the English department chairs of Montgomery County Public Schools discussing how to teach “Night” at this moment.
We sought to help educators teach this historically significant autobiography with clarity and confidence. “Night” is not a political narrative. It is an explicitly stark literary account of the Holocaust, and it should be taught as such.
Montgomery County is home to more than 120,000 Jews, more than 10% of the total population. But this conversation extends far beyond one Jewish community. Across the country, Holocaust education is increasingly pulled into political battles. The more casually and recklessly it is invoked as an analogy, the more its historical specificity risks being diluted.
When students read “Night,” they naturally make connections. They encounter dehumanization, state violence and moral collapse, and draw parallels to their own surroundings. It demonstrates that the material is resonating and that they are seeking a deeper level of understanding.
That can sound like: “This reminds me of ICE detention centers. Families separated. People in cages. It’s basically the same thing.”
The room shifts instantly. A Jewish student may feel his family history reduced to a metaphor. A student from an immigrant family may feel their lived experience is being dismissed if the comparison is rejected. The teacher stands at the center of that tension.
Connecting the past to the present is often how history becomes real. But responsible comparison is hard work. Left unchecked, the class can turn into a heated debate about current policy rather than a careful study of the text.
So, how can teachers present “Night” in its proper historical context, while encouraging student engagement? By setting clear boundaries at the outset of the lesson’s goals and discussion of
the material.
In our session, we emphasized an essential point. A literature class studying “Night” should not be a forum for debating current conflicts or ranking suffering, nor a venue for litigating immigration policy, Middle East politics, or the actions of any present-day government.
For English teachers, that’s not avoidance; it’s good teaching that allows students to explore how lived experience is translated into art and testimony.
Setting boundaries is not censorship. It is instructional clarity. When teaching “Night,” the focus should be on engaging with Wiesel’s testimony, how memory shapes narrative and how language conveys trauma. Students examine tone. They wrestle with scenes that force them to confront human behavior under unimaginable pressure. They also learn something transferable beyond this unit: how to make careful and responsible historical comparisons.
In a time when information flows fast and outrage spreads even faster, “Night” forces students to read closely, think historically and wrestle with complexity. These are critical skills for young minds.
Neither AJC nor JCRC came to advocate for a political position, only good teaching. In turn, the MCPS English chairs should be commended for proactively seeking guidance on how to best support student curiosity and historical accuracy.
We should do more to help teachers create classrooms where powerful texts are treated with care, where historical specificity matters and where current events enrich students’ understanding without overwhelming the text.
In a charged moment, that kind of steadiness is not small. It is essential.
Aaron Bregman is the director of high school affairs at American Jewish Committee. Sara Winkelman is the director of education programs and services at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.
