{"id":352340,"date":"2026-06-27T04:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T04:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/352340\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T04:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T04:30:14","slug":"anne-frank-bible-among-titles-in-new-texas-required-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/352340\/","title":{"rendered":"Anne Frank, Bible among titles in new Texas required reading list"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas instituted the nation\u2019s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools on Friday. Students in public schools will soon be required to read Anne Frank\u2019s diary and a host of Bible passages, along with other Jewish and Holocaust<\/a>-related texts.<\/p>\n

The decision has drawn vigorous objections from some of the state\u2019s Jews. Several local rabbis and other Jewish leaders pushed back on the proposal during the public comment period in the lead-up to this week’s vote because of concerns, including the injection of Christian<\/a> content into schools.<\/p>\n

In a vote of 9 to 5, the Republican-controlled state education board approved the list, mandating reading selections that are usually left to individual schools and teachers. The curriculum will go into effect in 2030 and apply to the roughly 5.5 million schoolchildren in Texas<\/a> public schools.<\/p>\n

The move comes as the board has increasingly sought to incorporate Christianity into the state\u2019s public schools, including in 2024, when it approved an optional Bible curriculum for elementary schools, which drew pushback from Jewish parents and advocates. Last year, Republican<\/a> lawmakers in the state also required that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom.<\/p>\n

The passage of the reading list follows an effort by the state\u2019s conservative education leaders to reverse a nationwide decline in the number of books read or assigned in class and exercise control over the texts students are exposed to.<\/p>\n

\"CertifiedCertified elementary school librarian Sarah Pepin speaks at a State Board of Education meeting in Austin on June 22, 2026. (credit: Aiden Gonzalez\/The Texas Tribune)<\/p>\n

In recent years, Texas has been at the forefront of the national wave of book removals, with several districts pulling books about the Holocaust and Jewish history, including versions of Anne Frank\u2019s diary. Decisions by the state education board have historically affected schools nationwide, in part because of the state’s large school-age population.<\/p>\n

The new reading list, which spans over 150 titles, includes Elie Wiesel\u2019s Holocaust memoir Night; Lois Lowry\u2019s young-reader Holocaust novel Number the Stars; George Washington\u2019s letter to a Rhode Island synagogue in 1790, and the \u201coriginal edition\u201d of Frank\u2019s diary. Conservatives, including in Texas, have objected to a graphic novel version that illustrates passages in which the diarist describes her sexual longings.<\/p>\n

Additional titles on list<\/p>\n

Other books on the list include Charlotte\u2019s Web by E. B. White and Animal Farm by George Orwell.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the fourth grade, students will also be required to read numerous passages from both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, a requirement that has drawn fierce opposition from some Texas Jewish leaders.<\/p>\n

Board members continued to propose last-minute additions to the list right up until the vote on Friday afternoon, adding the Biblical parable of Jonah and the Whale to the first-grade curriculum.<\/p>\n

The final reading list was pared down from roughly 300 texts after the board initially discussed the proposal in February. At the time, state education board leaders told JTA that they had consulted with experts, including the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a state government body.<\/p>\n

On Monday, a host of rabbis and Jewish leaders attended a Board of Education meeting to voice their opposition to the reading list, including Rabbi Joshua Fixler of Houston\u2019s Reform Congregation Emanu El.<\/p>\n

Teaching about religion vs teaching religion<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a difference between teaching about religion and teaching religion, and these texts are going to put Texas teachers in the position of teaching religion to our kids,\u201d Fixler told JTA following Friday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

Fixler said he believed the required reading list would cause children of all faiths to feel \u201calienated and isolated\u201d because they would \u201csee the state endorsement of one particular religious tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fixler particularly objected to Night being part of the same eighth-grade unit as chapter three of the Book of Lamentations, which discusses the destruction of Solomon\u2019s Temple in Jerusalem as God\u2019s punishment for the sins of the Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo associate that with a Holocaust text like Elie Wiesel\u2019s classic work of Night is to imply that the Jews might in some way be responsible for the Holocaust,\u201d Fixler, who has three children in Texas public schools, explained.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Neil F. Blumofe, the senior rabbi of Conservative Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin, said that he was concerned that the list\u2019s focus on Holocaust-based text would reduce students\u2019 understanding of Jewish history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one only teaches the Jewish civilization or religion as catastrophe-based, I think that that gives a narrow focus, and also can cause issues of what Judaism is and what its relevancy is currently versus what it used to be in the past,\u201d Blumofe said.<\/p>\n

Blumofe added that he had \u201cyet to see an effective curriculum or teacher\u2019s guide or ways to sensitively recognize that these are works of civilization versus works of a particular theology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laney Hawes, the co-founder of Texas Freedom to Read Project, told JTA that she was \u201cseething\u201d over the result of Friday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lists are promoting a singular narrow ideology,\u201d Hawes said, adding that while proponents of the required reading stressed that it promoted \u201cJudeo-Christian values,\u201d she believed it excluded Jewish perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want my children to have a worldview that is vast and diverse,\u201d Hawes, who is not Jewish, \u00a0said. \u201cIf they\u2019re going to be forced to read certain books, I want those books to represent a plethora of perspectives, not just one worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fixler and Hawes said they planned to meet with other local advocates to consider ways to challenge the new curriculum. For Fixler, the outcome was hoped to emphasize to others the importance of voting in school board elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that this should be a wake-up call to people who have been sleeping about the ways in which Christian nationalism is shaping policy on local, state, and federal levels,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas instituted the nation\u2019s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools on Friday. Students in public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64985,30771,125514,132,134,133,3068,98240,27],"class_list":["post-352340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-anne-frank","tag-antisemitism","tag-antizionism","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-bible","tag-diaspora","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}