JTA — Texas instituted on Friday the nation’s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools. Students in public schools will soon be required to read Anne Frank’s diary and a host of Bible passages, along with other Jewish- and Holocaust-related texts.

The decision has drawn vigorous objections from some of the state’s 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, with concerns over injecting Christian content into schools.

On Friday, the Republican-controlled state education board approved the list, with nine members voting for and five against mandating reading selections 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 public schools.

The move comes as the board has increasingly sought to incorporate Christianity into the state’s public schools, including in 2024 when it approved an optional Bible curriculum for elementary schools that drew pushback from Jewish parents and advocates. Last year, Republican lawmakers in the state also required the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom.

The passage of the reading list follows an effort by the state’s 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.

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’s diary. Decisions by the state education board have historically had an effect on schools nationwide, in part because of the vast population of school-age students in the state.

The new reading list, which spans over 150 titles, includes Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night”; Lois Lowry’s young-reader Holocaust novel “Number the Stars”; George Washington’s letter to a Rhode Island synagogue in 1790,........

© The Times of Israel