At a time of increased antisemitism in America and the Kentucky.

The Kentucky Antisemitism Task Force held its second meeting Wednesday.

The governor created the group last year.

The 18 members heard from a group from the University of Kentucky that trains teachers on how to approach and teach students about antisemitic and the Holocaust.

So Kentucky has a very small Jewish population, roughly 0.04%, so less than 1% of the population here in Kentucky identifies as Jewish.

The larger concentrations are in Lexington, Louisville and Paducah.

It comes in at number three, but it's it's a much farther behind Lexington and Louisville.

And what that means in terms of our teachers and in terms of our students all across the country, it's a very often have never met a Jewish person or culture, including thriving through their Jewish communities and all the wonderful richness and diversity that comes with that.

So for the last three years, since 2021, we've been working in a very collaborative way with teachers all across the state of Kentucky to develop professional and develop trainings.

And in a kind of train, the trainer model to help teachers feel confident and prepared to engage with the Kentucky State Holocaust education mandates that were passed in 2018.

We have priorities for our work to deepen teachers understanding of common misconceptions and stereotypes, to emphasize Jewish communities as living and thriving components of Kentucky's religious and cultural landscape, and to engage in this work through a trauma informed pledge that respects the often difficult histories of our students.

The Holocaust is very important to Jewish history, but it's also an example of a genocide and a genocide.

What happens is the sort of hatred and discrimination in a society boils over to the point of violence.

And what we need to understand is how that happens, how it can be prevented.

While at the same time using the Holocaust as a is a very specific moment where we have to understand the conditions and the context of that very specific event that happened in 1939 1945.

Holocaust education is tremendously important for a lot of different reasons, but probably one of the most important things is we can't escape the past if we don't know much about it, and we can't engage in actions that help our fellow citizens if we don't understand how to recognize what is antisemitism.

And part of part of Holocaust education is beginning to understand the long history of antisemitism, how and when it pops up and when it rears its ugly head what we need to do about it.

Q The program started after Kentucky lawmakers passed the Anne Klein and Fred GROSS Holocaust Education Act in 2018, requiring middle and high school students to learn about the Holocaust.