About the Jewish Lens: Picturing Israel Curriculum

Picturing Israel: History, Heritage and Homeland was created in response to the tragedy of October 7, 2023, and the rise of global antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Picturing Israel provides learners with content knowledge, critical thinking skills, confidence in their Jewish identity, personal connection to the land, state and people of Israel and to the Jewish People throughout the world.

The program incorporates the art and skill of photography to develop knowledge of critical moments of Jewish history. The curriculum is designed for use with upper elementary, middle and high-school students in formal educational settings such as day schools, congregational schools and home-based learning and in informal educational settings such as camps, youth groups or communal gatherings.

Program Goals:

Learners will:

• Explore and connect their own experience with pivotal historical events that shaped the Jewish experience in the land of Israel and in Jewish communities throughout the world.
• Analyze and examine traditional and contemporary Jewish texts and make personal connections to their own Jewish experience.
• Cultivate visual literacy skills and develop skills in the art of photography.

The curriculum features the work of renowned photographer, Zion Ozeri, as a stimulus to investigate Jewish history, values, community and experience. Ozeri’s photographs capture the unity and diversity of world Jewish communities, reflecting values and traditions that have defined Jewish experience across the globe for centuries. His work provides a natural springboard for engaging explorations into these important themes.

Picturing Israel presents these photographs as rich documents of Jewish life and guides learners to make connections among these images, written texts, Jewish experience and their own lives. Students develop skills in analyzing and interpreting photographic texts and in the art of photography to create their own visual documents of Jewish life and community.

Visual Literacy

We are bombarded with visual stimulation - on screens, through social media... How do our learners make sense of these images? How do they become savvy, sophisticated and critical consumers of visual culture?
Picturing Israel provides learners with tools to slow down and think critically about the images they see; to identify the inferences, assumptions and interpretations; to analyze the context and medium of the messages and the explicit and implicit points of view.

In Picturing Israel, photographs (and other visual media) are approached as texts. Based on traditional methods of Torah study, in Picturing Israel learners develop tools to first identify the surface meaning of an image and strategically progress to deeper understandings and interpretations. The skill of discerning fact from interpretation and drawing inferences from observation are transferable beyond the realm of visual arts.

This project is supported by a grant from the Covenant Foundation.

About Zion Ozeri

Born in Israel to Immigrants from Yemen and currently living in the USA and Israel, Zion Ozeri is one of the worlds leading photographers exploring the Jewish experience. Raised in Israel during a period of mass immigration, he interacted with many diverse cultures. This unique background gives him a cross-culture perspective that suffuses his work. He graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, as well as Pratt Institute, both in New York City.

His photographs appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Jerusalem Report, Moment, the Middle East Insight, The Forward, LA Jewish Journal, The Economist, Haaretz, and many other publications. His work has been exhibited in the Israel Museum IN JERUSALEM, ANU, the Museum of The Jewish People in Tel Aviv, (formerly Beit Hatfutsot), The Spertus Museum in Chicago, The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, The 92nd Street Y in New York, the Skriball Museum in Los Angeles, Berlin Jewish Museum, Columbia University in NYC, and many other museums & galleries.

Ozeri published a few books in, including The Jewish World Family Haggadah, (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a coffee table book, The Jews of Yemen, The Last Generation, (Keter, Jerusalem, 2005, and a new edition by Gefen, 2024), and Pictures Tell: A Passover Haggadah, (Gefen Publishing, 2022). Ozeri won a Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism in 2004 and is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation award for 2013. He founded The Jewish Lens curriculum and project in 2004. In addition, Ozeri is the founder/creative director of the DiverCity Lens, a curriculum and program, implemented since 2012, in NYC public schools.

His exhibition, "Jewish Identity, Jewish Diversity", was exhibited at Columbia University, and at CUNY Hostos, both in NYC. Another exhibition, The Jews of Yemen, The Last Generation is currently at ANU, the museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.

A new curricular lesson plans, Picturing Israel: History, Heritage and Homeland: Challenging Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism Through Photography, is to be launched in the summer of 2025, to students in North America.

Click here to see more of Zion's work | DiverCityLens.org | Click here to see Zion's website