Austin, TX
I'm a Jewish parent and biblical scholar in Houston — I'm enraged that Texas is adopting this biblically illiterate new curriculum
The Texas state flag flies in Austin, TX. Photo by Getty Images
I love the Bible. That’s why I’ve chosen to devote my career to reading and dissecting it, finding new ways to parse its texts and meanings, and teaching about it to classrooms full of undergraduates at a state university in Texas. I believe that learning about the content of the Bible is important for understanding not only religion, but also world history, politics, art and literature.
But not like this.
The Bluebonnet curriculum about to become part of classroom instruction in some Texas public schools is a travesty. Friday, the Texas State Board of Education voted 8-7 to accept a school curriculum that smuggles Christian religious instruction into public schools. The curriculum is voluntary, but school districts that adopt it will receive financial incentives.
The creators of the curriculum have defended its biblical content on the grounds that the Bible is a foundational document of our civilization, so students must understand it to be well-educated citizens. But if an understanding of the Bible — and not indoctrination with a Protestant Christian view of the Bible — is the main goal here, then why does the curriculum show so many signs of biblical illiteracy?
For example, in a kindergarten unit on kings and queens, students learn that King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem because “he wanted his people to have a place to gather, pray, and sing songs to God.” The Hebrew Bible does not describe most of these activities taking place at the Temple or its predecessor, the Tabernacle. What it does describe is lots and lots of animal sacrifice. The lesson ignores the actual biblical material in favor of grafting onto biblical Israel what Protestant Christians do in churches today — what a coincidence.
I also note that biblical scholars have yet to find evidence from outside the Bible of Solomon doing the things the Bible credits him with, or even evidence of his existence. He is an important figure for Jewish and Christian religious believers, but he cannot be treated as historical. In the sections of the kings and queens unit on King Midas and Cinderella, the curriculum prompts teachers to ask students which aspects of the stories could happen and which are “magic or fantasy.” There is no such prompt in the King Solomon lesson. He is treated as a historical figure and the story of his God-given wisdom is treated as fact. It is not.
In another example of biblical illiteracy, the curriculum introduces the biblical Queen Esther to second graders in a unit on “fighting for a cause.” Again, this story is presented as historical, though there is little in the story and nothing outside the Bible to indicate its historicity. More egregiously, the curriculum writes God and faith into a biblical book that famously mentions neither. Esther’s fast is given religious motives, while the text says nothing of the sort. Esther is characterized as fighting for the right of the Jews to practice their own religion, with the curriculum drawing a parallel between this story and historical tales of people seeking religious freedom in the United States.
Again, religious belief is not mentioned in Esther. What is at stake is the survival of the Jews as a people. This is nothing less than a Christian colonization of the story of Esther to make it look more like Protestant narratives of freedom of worship. (It is also more than a little ironic to stress freedom to worship for religious minorities when you are in the process of imposing your religion on those religious minorities.)
The fighting for a cause unit lists as an objective: “Describe the similarities among the methods of nonviolence used by Queen Esther” and the other figures studied. This characterization of Esther’s story as nonviolent would be hilarious if it weren’t part of a pernicious and unsubtle effort to sneak Christian religious instruction into Texas schools. Did the authors of this curriculum read a version of Esther that was somehow missing the final chapters, where the Jews slaughter those who would have killed them? Where Esther asks the king for permission for a second day of killing? Where the 10 sons of Haman are killed? I can only surmise that this is part of the evangelical tendency to sanitize the Bible so it falls more in line with contemporary sensibilities, what my biblical studies colleague Jill Hicks-Keeton calls “making the Bible benevolent.”
While I am a biblical scholar by training, I also teach Jewish Studies courses and direct my university’s program in Jewish Studies. I have observed a tendency among my students, many of whom were educated in Texas public schools, to seriously misunderstand Jews and Judaism. I blame this in part on the misguided concept of the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” a phrase that appears in the Texas education standards more than once. The idea that there is a real thing called “Judeo-Christian” obscures the major differences between these two religions, and between Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.
Many of my students arrive at university believing Judaism and Christianity are essentially the same religion. Some do not understand that Jesus does not figure into Judaism in any way. Those who do know that Jews do not believe Jesus was the messiah or a prophet often assume that Judaism is just Christianity minus Jesus, or perhaps the Old Testament plus time. These students have an especially hard time understanding that Jews and Christians read the Tanakh and the Old Testament, respectively, in radically different ways.
I worry that, when lessons like the ones I point to above from the Bluebonnet curriculum make their way into Texas classrooms, the problems of biblical and religious illiteracy will worsen among my students. By learning readings of the Hebrew Bible that are indefensible from a scholarly perspective and only make sense if your goal is Christian indoctrination, how much more will they struggle to understand that people can read the Bible in more than one way, and that Judaism is not a flavor of Christianity?
I am indignant about Bluebonnet not only as a scholar and a teacher, but also as a Jewish parent. While my children currently attend a Jewish school, when they finish elementary school, they will likely move to public school. If Houston public schools adopt the Bluebonnet curriculum, my children will be attending the upper grades alongside kids who have learned incorrect, misleading, exclusively Christian-source information about the sacred texts of our religion.
If students are taught in kindergarten that King Solomon built a Temple that functioned much like a contemporary Protestant church, or in second grade that Queen Esther was a nonviolent activist for religious freedom, they do not have to do any hard work to understand the Hebrew Bible in its ancient context, not to mention its contemporary Jewish context. The Bluebonnet curriculum takes a rich collection of texts that are sacred for multiple religions and reads them in ways that are inaccurate, misleading and offensive — and that will produce biblically illiterate Texans.
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“We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with the team at NRP and our focus on the Affordable Housing market in
The transaction represents Safehold’s second transaction with NRP in
Safehold established a dedicated Affordable Housing team in 2025 and has continued to expand its investment into the sector. Additional information is available at www.safeholdaffordablehousing.com.
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SOURCE Safehold
AUSTIN (Nexstar) – During a Texas Senate Business and Commerce hearing Wednesday, lawmakers heard invited testimony examining soaring property and casualty insurance costs. Testimony focused on the need for more affordable options and the need to address the role of AI.
Increased costs
Amanda Crawford, the Commissioner of Insurance at the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI), acknowledged the reality of rising insurance costs for everyday Texans.
“The past few years have been very, very difficult. The average annual homeowner premium in Texas has increased from under $2,000 in 2020 to over $3,500 today. It’s a 79% increase in six years. That is a tremendous burden for Texans, especially for a necessary product like home insurance,” Crawford told lawmakers Wednesday.
Crawford went on to clarify that this increase can be attributed to increases in home values and claim costs related to severe weather.
“Annual homeowners’ losses averaged 5.5 billion from 2015 to 2020, rising to 9.1 billion from 2021 to 2025.” Crawford went on to say that “Last year alone, the National Weather Service recorded 902 hailstorms in Texas. The next closest state, Kansas, had 375.”
Holding insurance companies accountable
Crawford clarified that the TDI requires insurance companies to elaborate on their filings to ensure that Texans are not subject to unfair practices and prices.
“My expectations are that every rate filing submitted to TDI gets a careful review. We examine every statutory filing for statutory compliance. We verify the math, we scrutinize assumptions, we make them show their work”
According to the Texas Insurance Code, the rate review process conducted by the TDI does not explicitly focus on affordability.
“There is not a purpose in there around affordability. It is about driving market competition. It’s about making sure they’re not excessive, but then they’re also adequate. And it’s about having market forces drive the rates that are filed. So I think that’s an interesting perspective when you look at it, because that really frames the whole rate review process as it has been put into law.”
Insurance company officials say they are also focused on affordable costs.
“Our industry is not just saying, hey, legislators go fix all this. We are working all the time to bring down costs. It’s a good business decision because it helps us be more competitive,” said Scot Kibbe, the Vice President for State Government Relations at the American Property College for Insurance Association.
Concerns of price surveillance
Senator Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, questioned whether insurance companies may be using technological advances, such as AI, to participate in price surveillance, a tactic to maximize profits.
“It sounds like, to some extent, every industry, with the advent of technological advantages we didn’t use to have, is able to create a special price just for you to find out your breaking point,” Johnson said.
David Bolduc with the Office of Public Insurance Counsel noted that there are protections in statute against companies charging different prices for the same coverage. But he added that the practice can be difficult to detect.
“I don’t know that TDI has the ability to monitor that. I mean, we hear about it,” Bolduc said in response to Johnson. “I think, if you could do something in statute that would allow us to report it, or would allow TDI to take action about it, that might be useful in terms of monitoring it,” Bolduc added.
Earlier this month, the TDI released a “use of artificial intelligence” bulletin to set expectations on how “regulated entities will govern the development, acquisition, and the use of AI technologies in their operations.”
Crawford says this bulletin will help address price surveillance concerns by reminding companies of Texas Insurance codes related to unfair discrimination and deceptive practices.
“That’s one of the reasons for putting out the AI bulletin, the expectations and the consumer protection around the use of that data, and what they are using that for,” Crawford said.
Potential solutions
Bolduc called on lawmakers to reexamine AI’s role in the industry. He also asked lawmakers to look into making coverage changes more transparent.
“It might be useful to continue looking for ways to be transparent about coverage changes. Notices of material change don’t seem to be working particularly well in the sense that we get a lot of phone calls from people saying they don’t understand what happened to them,” Bolduc said Wednesday.
Billy Crocker, Senior Vice President of Alliant Insurance Services, says the best way to fix pricing is to drive up competition between insurance companies.
“I think creating a lot of competition is the best way to drive this down, both for personal and business lines,” Crocker told lawmakers. “And then that brings the opportunity for access.”
Austin, TX
Forman Capital Provides $28.2 Million Lot Development Loan for a 253-Acre Mixed-Use Project Near Austin, Texas
Forman Capital, a leading private direct commercial real estate lender, has closed a $28,204,026 lot development loan for The Highlands, a planned 253-acre mixed-use community located along Manzano Mile at FM 1431 in Marble Falls, Texas, located on the edge of the broader Austin MSA. The borrower and developer is Rockspring, a Texas-based real estate firm with more than three decades of experience across the state’s most dynamic growth markets.
The Highlands stretches along Manzano Mile, encompassing single-family homes, rental apartments, and retail commercial uses on undeveloped land. The Forman Capital loan will fund horizontal development in advance of vertical construction, which will be performed by other developers and builders, and is expected to start in the fall.
The Forman Capital team that worked on the transaction includes Scott Mehlman, Ty Regnier, Brett Forman and Ben Jacobson.
“Forman Capital has always been drawn to developers who are doing something meaningful — not just building but genuinely adding real value to a community. The Highlands does exactly that, bringing much-needed housing and amenities to a city that has grown faster than its supply could keep pace with. We are proud to support Rockspring’s vision here,” said Brett Forman, Forman Capital Managing Partner.
“Marble Falls and the 71 Highway corridor are benefiting from the same powerful tailwinds driving growth across Texas, with the added advantage of a quality-of-life profile that is attracting both residents and businesses,” said Scott Mehlman, Forman Capital Partner and Chief Investment Officer. “The Highlands is exceptionally well-positioned to meet that demand, and we look forward to seeing this community take shape.”
About Forman Capital
Delray Beach, Florida-based Forman Capital provides private commercial real estate debt and equity financing for transactions ranging from $10 million to $100 million. The firm focuses on short-term construction financing, mezzanine debt, and preferred equity across various real estate asset classes and geographies. Company principals Brett Forman and Ben Jacobson have closed more than $3 billion in commercial real estate transactions since 2004. For more information, visit www.formancap.com.
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