The Charlotte Jewish News- March 2026- Page 12
The Stan Greenspon Center Plants Seeds of Allyship Across the State.
By Mary Eshet Last summer, The Stan Greenspon Holocaust Education Center( SGC) selected a team of North Carolina educators to participate in the inaugural Brandeis Middle and High School Educators’ Institute on Israel and Antisemitism in Boston. These educators are graduates of SGC’ s Certification in Holocaust Pedagogy Program. Out of that experience, a visionary idea was born.
“ We already knew there were large gaps across our state in offering professional development for educators in the areas of Jewish identity, the mutation of antisemitism, and conflicts in the Middle East,” said Katie Cunningham, Assistant Director of the Greenspon Center.“ As we participated in the Brandeis program, we became excited
By Elizabeth Johnson
March brings a shift that is more felt than announced. The light lingers. The air softens. We loosen winter habits and begin, often quietly, to imagine what comes next. In Jewish life, Purim arrives at precisely this moment.
It is a holiday built on concealment and reversal, on humor as survival, on joy that knows exactly what it is pushing back against. It is participatory by design. You do not observe Purim from a distance; you step into it.
Purim is one of the few Jewish holidays where meaning is not primarily transmitted through watching or listening, but through doing. You experience it by dressing up, even awkwardly; by making noise during the Megillah; by delivering mishloach manot to friends and neighbors; and by showing up to a seudah that is lively, imperfect, and communal. The joy of the holiday emerges through action. A Purim that is a little chaotic is not a failure; it is evidence that people are participating. about the opportunity to take those foundational resources and training to areas that have little access to this kind of education and information.”
In November 2025, the SGC piloted this new effort by partnering with Brandeis University to host a Day of Learning in Charlotte, equipping educators with practical tools and resources to address antisemitism and Israel in their classrooms. The partners hosted eighty educator participants, who left the center energized to expand its reach even further.
Cunningham then drew on her extensive experience in curriculum development and education to create a training program designed to travel across the state. Cunningham worked in partnership with Tom Daugherty of
The Final Cut: Spring, Masks, and the Comfort of Cult Classics the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction – and a graduate of the Greenspon Certification in Holocaust Pedagogy program – to design and deliver training sessions in all eight educational regions of North Carolina.
These full-day sessions, titled“ Jewish Identity & Antisemitism Today,” offer an opportunity for educators to engage in critical conversations that support the development of safe, inclusive, and respectful school communities. Trainers cover topics such as exploring Jewish identity, examining how antisemitism has evolved over time, considering how misinformation and global conflicts in the Middle East impact K-12 schools today, and learning strategies to foster understanding and empathy among students of diverse backgrounds.
The trainers offered six sessions in February, and two more are scheduled for March.“ We are thrilled to be able to take this program on tour,” said Cunningham.“ We are reaching rural communities and small towns beyond the usual metro areas where educators have very little awareness and understanding of the topics we covered.” Cunningham and Daugherty intentionally scheduled the training sessions in communities such as Mills River, Morganton, Pinehurst, Asheboro, and Salisbury – areas where less than 1 % of the population is Jewish – to ensure educators in regions with limited direct exposure to Jewish life would have access to these resources.
“ We believe that it is not the job of any minority to educate the majority, but that it is rather the majority’ s responsibility and obligation to expand their field of vision and to seek out opportunities to learn new perspectives and cultures,” said Cunningham, who is not Jewish.“ We are using our positions as allies to educate the non-Jewish audience.”
The Greenspon Center takes its role as an ally seriously, using that responsibility as a driving force behind its work. Research indicates that non-Jewish voices can shift attitudes on antisemitism and strengthen allyship at significantly higher rates than when the Jewish community advocates on its own behalf.
The importance and impact of taking this program to smaller communities were reflected in the feedback and questions from participants. Pre- and post-survey data from the trainings have shown a dramatic increase in understanding of Jewish practice, antisemitism, and Zionism, as well as an increase in comfortability and confidence in engaging with sources and materials related to modern-day conflicts in the Middle East. General feedback from participants shows a common thread: Educators want more.
Training educators on these topics is nothing new to the Greenspon Center. Its flagship program, the Certification in Holocaust Pedagogy, provides intensive training to largely non-Jewish educators on how to teach the Holocaust in secondary schools. The nine-month program culminates in a transformational travel experience in Poland, where learning goes beyond the classroom. The Center is already dreaming bigger, planning for an advanced certification program that would focus on antisemitism and Israel for secondary educators. The curriculum for this program, which the team has designed, dives deeper into the topics covered in the sessions held in February and would include a trip to Israel for participants.
“ The Greenspon Center is proud to be a leading force, not only in our state but across the region, in helping educators understand what it means to be Jewish today. We see our work as equipping educators with what they need to fulfill their responsibility to ensure that Jewish students, and all students, feel safe, included, and represented in their schools,” said Cunningham.
That participatory spirit is what gives the holiday its staying power. Purim resists polish and distance. It invites exaggeration, humor, and shared recognition. You don’ t admire Purim from afar; you step into it.
Cult classics operate in the same way.
These are films that reward familiarity. You do not watch them once and move on. You return to them, quote them, and recognize yourself inside their rhythms. Meaning accumulates through repetition and shared language. Like Purim, they reward participation rather than admiration.
“ The Big Lebowski” understands this instinctively. Nearly every character is performing a version of themselves. Authority is theatrical and often hollow. Rituals are taken seriously even when the stakes are absurd. Identity is fluid, sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate. The film’ s joy comes from watching masks slip and power quietly inverted. It is silly on the surface and unexpectedly precise underneath, which is exactly how Purim does its work. So does“ Best in Show.” Its world is exaggerated but affectionate, filled with people whose devotion borders on excess. The humor never asks us to look down on them; it invites us in. Everyone belongs somewhere, even if that belonging looks strange from the outside. Purim grants the same permission: to exaggerate, to laugh, to be fully visible for a moment and fully accepted all the same. Anchored by performances that have only grown richer with time, including the late Catherine O’ Hara’ s, the film’ s humor still feels generous and human.
If Purim provides the sensibility, spring provides the emotional turn. Renewal does not always arrive as transformation. Sometimes it comes as emergence.“ Good Will Hunting” is a story about hidden capacity and selective revelation. Its central character survives by deflection and wit until he no longer needs to. What follows is not spectacle but release. A thaw. A step forward taken at exactly the right moment. That is spring, emotionally and narratively. Spring is also about recalibration, about discovering that timing matters as much as feeling.
“ When Harry Met Sally” unfolds around that truth. It is a film about misread signals, defensive humor, and the slow realization that intimacy requires risk. It understands adulthood not as certainty, but as patience. Purim, too, reminds us that recognition often arrives late and that revelation is most powerful when it cannot be forced. Few filmmakers have shaped modern romantic storytelling as enduringly as the late Rob Reiner, whose work continues to reward revisiting.
Then there is“ The Breakfast Club,” a film that has endured not because of its setting, but because of what it reveals. On the surface, its characters arrive labeled and contained. By the end, those categories loosen. What holds them together is not similarity, but recognition. Masks fall. Posturing gives way to honesty. Community forms in an unlikely, temporary space. Like Purim, the film insists that meaning emerges through participation. You only understand these characters once they begin to speak, argue, confess, and listen. The transformation is collective, not heroic. It happens because everyone stays in the room.
These films endure because they understand something essential: joy can be serious, humor can be protective, and community forms around shared stories that are revisited, not retired. For readers navigating full lives, careers, partnerships, families, identities still unfolding, cult classics offer something quietly sustaining.
As spring opens and Purim reminds us that visibility is a choice and timing matters, there is comfort in returning to stories that know how renewal actually happens. Not loudly. Not all at once. But collectively, and with a clear-eyed sense of humor.
Sometimes the reset we need is not a new story, but a familiar one, seen again, just as the light changes.