Learn about the groundbreaking work of Jewish artist Barbara Kruger with 2014 Twersky Award Finalist Rabbi Mike Rothbaum of Oakland, CA. Examine student work and participate in some of the activities from his award-winning lesson entitled “Selling Soap, Smashing Sexism, Seeing Ourselves.” Learn how to create your own original lesson plan for submission to JWA’s 2015 Twersky Award.

1. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Selling Soap, Smashing Sexism,
Seeing Ourselves
with Twersky Finalist Rabbi Mike Rothbaum

2. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

3. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Who is this person?
What did this person do?
Why did they do it?
Who am I?
What do I do / What do I
want to do?
Why do I do it?
You Cannot Be What You Cannot See

4. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
What is the Twersky Award?
• Named for Natalia Twersky, the
mother of JWA’s founding
director, Gail Twersky Reimer.
• Celebrate, honor, and
recognize our educator
partners
• Share best practices
• Weaving in the stories and
voices of Jewish women
• Deep engagement with primary
sources

5. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Who am I? Rabbi Mike Rothbaum
• Rabbi and educator at Beth
Chaim Congregation in
Danville, CA.
• Faith-based social justice work
with Jews for Racial and
Economic Justice, Bend the
Arc, and T’ruah: The Rabbinic
Call for Human Rights
• Columnist for Zeek, and also
featured on WAMC Public
Radio, CNN, and WABC-TV

6. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Why teach about Barbara Kruger?
● Develop a critical eye in
looking at images of women
in advertising AND have the
opportunity to discuss their
reactions to those images
● Identify Kruger’s use of
advertising tropes to convey
social and political
messaging
● Become more familiar with
powerful “slogans” within our
written Torah

7. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Why teach about sexism and feminism?
Gertrude Berg as “Molly
Goldberg” in The Goldbergs
Jewish stars of the Bravo reality
show Princesses: Long Island

8. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Setting for the lesson
• Part of a semester-long elective on Jewish art and artists
• At a community high school
• Taught over the course of three sessions
• Designed for students in grades 8-12

9. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
General arc of the lesson
1. Start with a trigger activity
2. View images of women in advertising and discuss
3. Learn about Barbara Kruger and her work
4. Look at Torah Quotes
5. Make art
6. Share and discuss student art works

10. Have you ever been
affected by a picture or
message in an
advertisement?
Did it make you feel
something about
yourself?

15. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Discuss
• How do these images make you feel?
• Who is each of these images talking to? (Who is the
intended audience?)
• Is there a unifying message in this advertising? What is it?
• Who is speaking in each advertisement? Where to they
get their authority?

16. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
About Barbara Kruger
A kind of propaganda in reverse, Kruger’s works grab
one’s attention much as an effective advertisement
does, with one significant difference. Where
advertising conceals its methods of persuasion,
Kruger draws attention to them, asking us to
scrutinize these methods, so as to better educate
ourselves about the power of the media. The artist
uses advertising’s techniques—enticement, shock,
provocation, and a direct address to the viewer—in
order to teach us how the two languages of
persuasion—photographs and words—influence us.
Believing that no message is neutral, Kruger would
have us be critical interpreters, rather than passive
consumers, of the media.

21. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Discuss
• How are these works of art similar to the advertisements
we looked at previously? How are they different?
• How do these images make you feel? Do you like them?
• Is there a social message in each of these works? What is
it?
• Are they persuasive? Where do they get their authority?

22. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Artists’ statements
• “My work is about how people are with each other. It's about
social relations. I'm using aggressiveness and direct address to
foreground that. It's what we do to each other.”
• “It's about fear of difference and wanting to destroy it. From road
rage to war, the behavior is not that dissimilar. Whether it is a
battle around issues of race or aesthetics, it's all nuts.”
• “Humor is an important part of the work. I'm trying to create a
collision between the hilarious and the tragic.”
• New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl says of Kruger, “What can
sell soap can smash sexism.”

23. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Discuss
• Does Kruger’s work make you think about how people act
with each other? How?
• Can a work of art be both funny and tragic?
• Do you feel that the works of art smash sexism and other
social prejudices? Are they more or less effective than
persuasive arguments?

24. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Examples of Student Work

28. What questions do
you have?
How might you use
these ideas in your
work?

29. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
About the Twersky Award
• Any Jewish educator working with students in grades
6-12
• Apply for the award or nominate a friend/colleague
• Two prizes
• Winner receives $2,000 + $400 for their school/program
• Finalist receives $500 + $100 for their school/program
• Deadline: Monday, June 1, 2015

30. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Submission requirements
• Statement of purpose
• Lesson plan
• Classroom product (handout, assignment, etc.)
• Two examples of student work
• Two letters of support (from supervisor,
colleague, student, parent, etc.)

31. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Other Examples