This is history you get to investigate for yourself, from the actual sources: the documents, the coins, the letters, and the posters people left behind. It is free, with no login and no ads. You can read it with a parent or a grandparent. Follow the whole story, from antiquity to today.
New here? Explore the interactive timeline, or start the story with Unit 1.
Read it wholeWhy the whole story matters
Every history has a shape: a beginning, a middle, an end, and the causes that connect them.
From a historian“Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.”Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft
Work from the sources and you become harder to fool. There is a real pleasure in it too: the moment a fact you half-knew suddenly makes sense.
Why the middle matters
Think of the questions every historian asks: who, what, when, where, and why. A history that skips the middle cannot answer them. It hands you an event with no cause, a people with no story, a hatred with no origin. A story you meet halfway through is easy to misread, in the past or the present.
Jewish history runs for more than 3,000 years, from the ancient Israelites to today. The Holocaust is one part of it, and the centuries before it explain how it came about. Learn how that hatred was built over centuries, in arguments and in laws, and the Holocaust becomes what it was: the outcome of a long process you can trace, which made it possible but never inevitable.
The same method holds for any history: read the whole arc, from the sources.
Be an upstanderDon’t walk past it.
Speak up for yourself and your classmates.
An upstander is a person who sees wrong being done and acts. If you see or hear antisemitism at school, you can tell the school. Antisemitism is hatred of Jews. Jewish or not, anyone can report it. It doesn’t have to be aimed at you: a classmate who saw it, a friend, a parent, or a teacher can speak up too.
Some antisemitism has become so common that it can start to seem normal: a swastika drawn as a joke, a “Heil Hitler” as a dare, a meme in a group chat. It still counts. Standing up to antisemitism is part of standing up to hate in all its forms.
During the Holocaust, the rescuers were the upstanders. Read their stories in Jewish Resistance & Rescue.
Your safety, and your classmates’, comes first.
If it was aimed at you, it is not your fault, and you don’t have to handle it alone. Talk to someone you trust: a parent, a teacher, or a counselor.
If it was aimed at a classmate, check on them. Sit with them, walk with them, ask how they’re doing.
Tap a question to open it. Each short answer links to the chapter with the full story and its sources.
What does antisemitism look like today?Old lies, Nazi symbols, and hostility toward Jews
Antisemitism is very old, and it keeps coming back in new forms.
- Old lies in new clothes. The claim that Jews secretly control governments, banks, or the media. More: The Protocols.
- Nazi symbols and Holocaust denial. A swastika on a desk, a “Heil Hitler” in the hallway, a joke about the Holocaust, or a claim that it was faked or exaggerated. More: Hate Symbols and Holocaust Denial.
- Hostility toward someone because they are Jewish. Insults, slurs, threats, or leaving someone out because they are Jewish.
- Blaming Jews for what Israel does. Treating a Jewish classmate as if they are responsible for Israel’s government, or telling them they have to speak out against Israel to fit in. That’s discrimination. More: Where the definitions agree.
See how the same lies return across the centuries: The Recurring Cycle.
Is criticizing Israel antisemitic?Where criticism ends and antisemitism begins
Zionism is the movement for Jewish national self-determination in the Land of Israel: the idea that the Jewish people, like other peoples, are entitled to a state of their own. Anti-Zionism is opposition to that idea.
Three definitions of antisemitism are widely used. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a group of governments, adopted the IHRA working definition in 2016. Scholars and educators wrote the other two, the Jerusalem Declaration and the Nexus Document, in 2021.
Think about your own country. You may disagree with its leaders, sometimes strongly. But disagreeing with a government is not the same as saying the country should not exist.
Imagine being blamed for what your country’s leader did, just because of where your family comes from. You wouldn’t blame a French classmate for what France’s president does, or an American classmate for what America’s president does. Blaming Jewish classmates for what Israel’s government does is prejudice. Treating them differently because of it is discrimination. All three main definitions of antisemitism name it.
The IHRA working definition adds a test: is one country being held to a standard no other country faces? The Jerusalem Declaration and the Nexus Document say a double standard alone does not prove antisemitism.
Experts disagree about when opposing Israel’s existence crosses the line. The Contemporary Antisemitism chapter sets the three main definitions side by side, so you can see where they agree and where they differ. Read “The anti-Zionism question” →
Who governs the land between the river and the sea?
- Israel is a country. It declared independence on May 14, 1948, and the United Nations admitted it as a member on May 11, 1949.
- The West Bank. In the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel and the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, recognized each other. The Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian government created in 1994, administers parts of the West Bank. A 1995 agreement divided the West Bank into three areas: Area A under full Palestinian Authority control, Area B under Palestinian civil control with Israeli security control, and Area C under full Israeli control.
- Gaza. In 2005, Israel withdrew every soldier and settler from Gaza. Hamas, an Islamist movement that seeks rule by a strict reading of Islamic law, was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997. In 2007 it seized Gaza from the Palestinian Authority by force, and it still ruled Gaza on October 7, 2023.
More: The Modern State of Israel, and the Glossary on Oslo and Areas A, B, and C.
Was a Palestinian state ever offered?
In 1937, a British inquiry, the Peel Commission, first proposed partition, with the Arab part to be joined to Transjordan. In 1947, the UN proposed dividing the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish Agency accepted. The Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League states rejected it, and the Arab state was never established. Later proposals followed, from Camp David in 2000 to the Olmert proposal in 2008.
More: Common Misconceptions.
What about America’s support for Israel?
The United States recognized Israel within minutes of its founding in 1948. Today the two countries share a trade agreement, joint missile-defense programs, and a written aid agreement, funded by Congress each year.
Whether the U.S. should fund Israel’s military is a policy question, and Americans disagree about it. Arguing against the aid is not antisemitism, but claiming that Jews secretly control the decision is, and so is claiming that Jewish Americans are loyal to Israel instead of their own country. All three main definitions of antisemitism name those two claims.
More: Common Misconceptions, America and Israel, with the sources.
How does the old hatred hide behind a new word?When “Zionist” is used as a cover
Sometimes antisemitism hides behind the word “Zionist.” The record shows how.
After the Six-Day War, the Soviet Union ran a press campaign against Israel and Zionism, laced with old antisemitic themes. More: Soviet Jewry.
The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” It stood for sixteen years. In 1991, the same body revoked it, 111 to 25. More: The Legal Record.
In 1976, hijackers seized an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris and flew it to Entebbe, Uganda. They called their cause anti-Zionist. They released most of the passengers and held the Israelis, along with some Jews of other nationalities. More: The Terror Record.
In Rome, gunmen attacked the Great Synagogue as families left Sabbath services, and a two-year-old boy was killed. In Buenos Aires, a 1992 bomb destroyed the Israeli Embassy and killed 29 people. Two years later, a second bomb leveled the AMIA Jewish community center in the same city, killing 85 people. The victims did not live in Israel. More: The Terror Record.
In Boulder, Colorado, a man firebombed a weekly walk for the hostages held in Gaza, injuring thirteen people. One of them, Karen Diamond, 82, died of her injuries weeks later. In federal court, he admitted he targeted the walkers because of their actual or perceived Israeli national origin and Jewish religion. More: The Incident Record.
In Washington, a gunman murdered two young staff members of the Israeli Embassy, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, outside an American Jewish Committee reception at the Capital Jewish Museum. The case is still before the courts.
The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into New York City’s public schools over teacher-organized seminars that taught children, in the seminars’ own words, that Zionists are genocidal white supremacists. An investigation is not a finding.
The ADL documents posts accusing Israel of stealing the organs of Palestinians killed in Gaza. The medieval blood libel accused Jews of murdering innocents. These posts aim the same lie at Israel. More: The Blood Libel.
What do the slogans mean?“From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada”
The river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. Between them lie Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The slogan names that whole territory as “Palestine.”
That geography is why many hear the chant as a call for a world with no Israel in it. Some who chant it say they mean rights or liberation rather than elimination.
Intifada, Arabic for “shaking off,” is the name given to the Palestinian uprisings of 1987–1993 and 2000–2005. The second killed about 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians, many in suicide bombings.
To “globalize” it is to call for carrying that model beyond Israel. That is why Jewish communities hear the chant as licensing violence against Jews anywhere. Some who chant it say they mean general protest.
Context decides what is being said, and knowing the history is what lets you decide. More: Hate Symbols, which covers slogans, codes, and memes.
Has a court found Israel guilty of genocide?What has been decided, and what hasn’t
No. No international court has decided whether Israel has committed genocide.
In December 2023, South Africa brought a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, the United Nations court that settles disputes between states. In January 2024, the Court issued emergency orders before hearing the case. It did not decide whether genocide was happening. The case is still in its written stage.
The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide by intent: acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Intent is what separates genocide from other grave crimes.
Some human rights organizations and a UN commission have concluded that Israel is committing genocide. Their findings are not court rulings. Israel rejects the charge.
More: Common Misconceptions, with the Court’s own words, the definitions, and every source.
Is Israel an apartheid state?What courts have found, and what they haven’t
Apartheid was the system of racial separation that South Africa’s government enforced by law from 1948 until the early 1990s. In international law, apartheid is now a crime.
No court has ruled that Israel is an apartheid state. Some human rights organizations have made the charge. Their findings are not court rulings.
In 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s laws and measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem keep settlers and Palestinians almost completely separate. It called this a breach of a treaty that condemns “racial segregation and apartheid,” but it did not say which of the two it found.
Inside Israel, Arab citizens vote and elect Arab parties to parliament. In 2021, for the first time, an independent Arab party, Ra’am, joined a governing coalition.
Israel and the United States reject the apartheid charge.
More: Common Misconceptions, with every source.
Ask yourselfIs this about a government’s policies, or is it an old lie about Jews in a new costume?
When powerful people repeat itHenry Ford in the 1920s, the Soviet government in 1967, and Iran’s president in 2005
A lie doesn’t become true because a leader, a government, or a famous person says it. History shows how often the powerful have spread the old lies about Jews, and given them a false look of truth.
- 1920s. The automaker Henry Ford printed the Protocols, a forged “plan” for Jewish world control, in his newspaper. At its 1925 peak, the paper reached close to 900,000 copies, even after the Times of London exposed the Protocols as a forgery in 1921. More: The Protocols Forgery.
- 1967. The Soviet government ran a press campaign against Israel and Zionism, laced with old antisemitic themes. More: Soviet Jewry.
- 2005. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called the Holocaust “a myth” in a televised speech, and the state followed his lead. More: Holocaust Denial.
This is a pattern on the Recurring Cycle chart, called Spread: “The lies travel by whatever is new: books, sermons, print, radio, feeds.”
The same holds today. Take note of what politicians and public figures say. Who says it doesn’t make it true. Check it against the record.
Practice telling them apart: Recognizing Propaganda and The Primary Source vs. the Headline.
Tell your school
Before you write
- Write down what happened while you still remember it: the date, the place, and exactly what was said, written, drawn, or posted.
- If you can do it safely, take a photo or a screenshot. Photograph graffiti before anyone removes it.
- Note who else saw it.
- If anyone is in danger, tell an adult right away. If someone is threatening violence, call the police.
Who to send it to
The principal or head of school, a counselor, or the staff member your school names for these reports. A parent or teacher can send it for you. If writing is hard, tell a staff member in person and ask them to write it down.
You can report even if you’re not sure the person meant it as hate. Describe what happened, and let the school look into it.
After you send it
- Keep a copy.
- If you haven’t heard back within a few school days, write again or ask to meet.
Get involved
Start a club, take a virtual field trip, walk the Museum, watch the Films, read the newsletter, or follow @teachjewishhistory on Instagram.
Learn more on the site
The full story is told in the chapters, each built from primary sources and each ending in its source list.
Find your way inHow to use it
The site is organized as six Units and more than 60 Chapters that run in order, from antiquity to the present, one continuous arc. Each Chapter is a readable history followed by the sources it is built on.
- Read through the six Units in order, and the Chapter pages within each. Begin with Unit 1.
- Use the Timeline to see the whole arc at once, era by era.
- Walk the Museum to meet the history in objects.
- Search, the magnifier at the top of the page, for a person, place, or idea.
Beyond the screenMuseums, the news, and the people who carry the story.
History is not only on a screen. The surest way to understand a source is to go stand in front of it, and to meet the people who carry the story forward.
- Visit a museum, in person or through its online collection, and look closely at the real object.
- Read one event across several news outlets and piece the story together yourself. Ask the hard questions, who would actually know, and what each account leaves out, then look for answers in the sources closest to it: a local outlet, an original document, a firsthand account.
- Talk with people whose background is different from yours, and ask about their history in their own words.
- Visit a synagogue, or accept an invitation to a holiday, and enjoy a living culture instead of only reading about it.
Where to dig inChapters for essays and research
For essays, research papers, and independent projects, start with a Chapter. Each one is built on primary sources you can cite.
To cite a Chapter, give its title, Teach Jewish History, its web address, and the date you read it. Better still, cite the primary sources it lists.
Chapters to start withAntiquity, the medieval world, how antisemitism was built, the Holocaust and after, and antisemitism today
Antiquity and the classical world
- The origins of the synagogue, a new way to organize communal life. The Synagogue
- The Temples and the continuous Jewish presence in the land. The Temples
The medieval world
- Maimonides, bridging faith and philosophy. Maimonides
- The conversos of Spain and Portugal, why they were baptized and what they did next. The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World
- The blood libel and the expulsions, the medieval machinery of exclusion. The Blood Libel · The Expulsions
- The ghetto, from its origin in Venice in 1516. The Ghetto System
How antisemitism was built
- Hostility older than the Church, and the Christian writings against Judaism that gave it lasting form. Adversus Judaeos
- 1879: how “race science” reinvented an ancient hatred. The Racial Turn
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery that circled the globe. The Protocols
The Holocaust, its reach, and after
- The machinery of the camp system. The Camp System
- Vichy’s laws and labor camps in North Africa, and the 1941 Farhud in Baghdad. The Holocaust in the Middle East and North Africa
- Nuremberg and the beginnings of modern international criminal law. The Postwar Trials
Antisemitism today
- How old accusations resurface in new language, and how denial works. Contemporary Antisemitism · Holocaust Denial
- Why antisemitism did not end in 1945, with current data to analyze in the FBI’s hate crime statistics (the Crime Data Explorer), on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) H.E.A.T. Map, and on the site’s Incident Record. The Hatred That Outlived the War
Meet your syllabusConnect it to what you are reading
These connections link the Chapters to books and courses you may already be studying.
Tap to open.
A book you were assignedNight, Maus, The Merchant of Venice, The Crucible, 1984, and more.
- Reading Night, The Diary of a Young Girl, Maus, or The Book Thief? Read it beside the survivor testimony that records the history. The Holocaust Era
- Reading Refugee, Number the Stars, or The Devil’s Arithmetic? The St. Louis, the Danish rescue, and the camps are all in the record. The Years Before the Killing · Jewish Resistance & Rescue · The Camp System
- Reading The Merchant of Venice? Shakespeare wrote Shylock for an England that had expelled its Jews three centuries earlier. See the stereotype he inherited and where it came from. The Expulsions
- Reading The Crucible? A whole town convicts its neighbors on a rumor, a pattern of accusation the blood libel had followed centuries earlier. The Blood Libel
- Reading 1984, Animal Farm, or Fahrenheit 451? A lie becomes official truth and books burn. Then read the real forgery, and the real book burnings. The Protocols · The Years Before the Killing
- Reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Lord of the Flies? Both turn on a group deciding who counts as an outsider. Trace how that same logic was written into law. The Racial Turn
- Reading Persepolis? Iran’s Jewish community has a history of more than 2,500 years. The Jews of Iran
The unit you’re studyingAncient Rome, medieval Europe, U.S. history, World War II, the modern Middle East, and more.
- Early civilizations or world religions: the site places Jewish civilization beside Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Jewish World
- Ancient Rome: the Jewish revolts, the destruction of the Temple, and the beginning of the Diaspora. The Temples · The Diaspora
- Medieval Europe: the Church’s teaching about Jews, the blood libel, which spread despite papal condemnation, and the expulsions. The Expulsions · The Blood Libel
- Medieval Spain or the Ottoman Empire: Jewish courtiers and poets in Córdoba and Granada, and the exiles of 1492 in Salonika and Istanbul. The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World
- US history, immigration, or civil rights: the American Jewish story and the nativism it met. American Jewry
- Russian or modern European history: the pogroms, and the forgery first printed in Russia in 1903, the year of the Kishinev pogrom. The Russian Pogroms · The Protocols
- World War II: the Holocaust, from the prewar laws to liberation. The Holocaust Era
- Modern Middle East history: the State of Israel since 1948, and the Jewish communities of Iran, Iraq, and North Africa. The Modern State of Israel · The Jews of Iran · The Departure from MENA
- Government, law, or human rights: Nuremberg and the beginnings of modern international criminal law. The Postwar Trials
Found a connection we haven’t listed? Tell us.
Member-led, open to every studentStart a club
Name it yourself. It’s your club. A few ideas: Culture Crawl, Jewish World Tour, Jewish Culture Explorers, Culture Quest, or a name of your own.
A club students run, about Jewish culture and history. It is open to every student, every background. You do not have to be Jewish to join, any more than you have to be Roman to study Rome.
Ask your club’s faculty advisor, or another adult who sponsors the club, to request the Club Kit with the form below. A parent can request the kit and help the club get started.
About the club and the kitWhat it is, what a meeting looks like, what it can grow into, and what the kit holds
No curriculum, no homework, no dues: a room, a screen, and the documented record of more than 3,000 years. Members vote the calendar, lead the meetings, and decide what the club becomes. A faculty advisor may be required by your school, as with any club, and the kit covers that too.
One night it is a film from the curated list, and the argument afterward. One night it is a virtual field trip, the Anne Frank House or Yad Vashem from a projector. One night everyone brings an object from the Museum and gets two minutes to present it, or brings a claim they saw online and sets the record beside it. Meetings run under an hour, and the whole menu costs your club exactly zero.
An assembly your school remembers on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A real field trip, argued for and won. Read-alouds for the elementary school, and a public film night your whole community shows up to. The kit maps each one, including the plan to put in front of your administration.
We send the Club Kit to the advisor’s email, personally: the first meeting planned beat by beat, a semester of meetings on one page, the assembly and field-trip plans, the service list, and ready-to-print posters. Then, whenever your club needs it, we answer at education@teachjewishhistory.org. In most schools the advisor is a teacher or staff member.
More meeting ideasFood, music, holidays, visits, and a speaker.
- A food night. Dishes from Jewish communities around the world, from Morocco to Iraq to Poland, and the story behind each one.
- A music night. Songs from Jewish communities across the centuries and around the world.
- A holiday, when it comes around. Learn what it marks and how it is celebrated. The Jewish Life Cycle
- A visit. A local synagogue or Jewish museum, in person or through a virtual field trip.
- A speaker. Living Links trains descendants of Holocaust survivors to tell their families’ stories in classrooms, in person or virtually.
- A Culture Crawl. Three communities in one meeting, through the Museum and the field trips.
“Accustom your tongue to say: I do not know, lest you become entangled in a web of deceit.”Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 4a (William Davidson translation, Sefaria)
Think like a historianWork from the evidence
History is more than what is written down. A coin, a mosaic, a manuscript, a photograph, a propaganda poster, each is a primary source, and often it reveals what texts leave out. Reading objects and images is its own skill. The Museum gathers this history in objects.
A few exercises to build a project or a discussion aroundCompare two sources, analyze propaganda, and read an object as evidence
- Compare and contrast. Set two sources side by side and ask what each reveals and where they disagree. A medieval church’s paired figures of Ecclesia and Synagoga, the triumphant Church and the blindfolded Synagogue, against a Jewish community’s own record of the same period. Adversus Judaeos
- Analyze propaganda. Take a piece of propaganda, a Nazi poster or a page of the Protocols, and ask three questions: what is it claiming, how does it persuade through image and word and emotion, and what does the historical record actually show? Recognizing Propaganda
- Read an object as evidence. Ask what a single artifact tells you that a summary cannot: a coin about a rebellion, a page of the Cairo Geniza about everyday medieval life, a ritual object about a living culture. The Museum
Two short lessons walk you through the method: The Primary Source vs. the Headline and Recognizing Propaganda. The Glossary defines the terms.
Watch and go deeperFilms
For a documentary to anchor a project, or simply to go further, the Films collection gathers viewing on this history for the classroom and for you.
✉ Share this site with your teachers
Teach Jewish History is free and open to everyone. Each Chapter cites its sources, so you can trace them yourself. Teachers, see For Teachers. Parents, see For Parents. · Return home
Last updated: November 2026.