Teach Jewish History · Table of Contents
The curriculum
Six units. Sixty-one chapters.
The whole arc of Jewish history, from the ancient world to the present. Each unit reads in order, and each chapter stands on its own. Teachers, students, and families read the same pages, and no page here needs a login or a school.
Unit 1 The Jewish World
The foundation: who the Jews are, the land, the texts, and the practices that carried a civilization.
- 01Who Are the Jews? People, faith, and nation, and why no single label fits.
- 02The Land of Israel Why one small land stayed the center of Jewish life.
- 03The Continuous Jewish Presence in the Land The evidence that the presence in the land never ended.
- 04The First and Second Temples The two Temples, and what changed when the Second fell.
- 05The Synagogue The institution that carried Jewish life everywhere the diaspora reached.
- 06The Sacred Texts The Bible, the Talmud, and the chain of commentary that preserved, transmitted, and interpreted them across generations.
- 07The Calendar & the Cycle of the Year How lunar months, seasonal adjustment, and the festivals ordered Jewish time.
- 08Ritual Objects and Material Culture What lamps, scrolls, and marriage contracts show about everyday life.
- 09The Jewish Life Cycle Birth, bar and bat mitzvah, marriage, and mourning, across communities.
- 10The Diaspora How one people stayed one people across many lands.
Unit 2 Communities Across the World
Jewish communities across four continents, and how many of them ended within living memory.
- 01A Connected People The map of the Jewish world, from Baghdad to New York.
- 02The Jews of Iraq Twenty-five centuries, the Talmud's homeland, gone in a generation.
- 03The Jews of Iran More than 2,500 years in Persia, and a community still present today.
- 04The Jews of North Africa Two thousand years across the Maghreb, from Morocco to Djerba.
- 05The Departure from MENA How roughly 850,000 Jews left or were forced out of the Middle East and North Africa.
- 06The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Córdoba, Toledo, and the world the exiles built after 1492.
- 07The Jews of Poland and Lithuania Once the largest Jewish community on earth.
- 08Soviet Jewry More than two million largely barred from leaving, and the movement that won their freedom.
- 09American Jewry From twenty-three refugees in 1654 to the world's second-largest community.
- 10Ethiopian Jewry, Beta Israel Centuries of practice in the Ethiopian highlands, then two airlifts.
- 11The Modern State of Israel How the state was founded, and what it changed.
Unit 3 The Evolution of Antisemitism
How the hatred formed, mutated, and traveled, from the first written attacks to the present.
- 01Adversus Judaeos The first anti-Jewish polemics (written attacks on Judaism), in the ancient world and then in the Church, and their long afterlife.
- 02The Blood Libel A false accusation, first recorded in 1144, repeated for nearly nine centuries.
- 03The Ghetto System Legal segregation as an institution, named for Venice’s ghetto of 1516.
- 04The Expulsions Banishment as state policy, from France in 1182 to Naples in 1541.
- 05The Racial Turn of 1879 Hostility shifts from religion to race, and conversion stops being an exit.
- 06The Russian Pogroms The Pale of Settlement, the violence from 1881, and the emigration and early Zionism it drove.
- 07The Protocols Forgery A Russian forgery, exposed in 1921, circulating still.
- 08The Nazi Synthesis The older threads converging into the ideology of a modern state.
- 09The Dhimma Jewish life under Islamic rule: the contract, the record, and its end.
- 10The Eastward Turn How European antisemitism entered the Arabic-speaking world.
- 11The Terror Record Violence against Jews as Jews, 1920 to today, from the documented record.
- 12Contemporary Antisemitism Antisemitism in its current forms, measured and documented.
Unit 4 The Holocaust Era
The Holocaust as history: how it was prepared, carried out, and resisted.
- 01The Years Before the Killing 1933 to 1939: the laws, boycotts, and propaganda that made it possible.
- 02Aktion T-4 The first organized Nazi killing program: disabled Germans, 1939 to 1941.
- 03The Nazi Ghettos Whole communities sealed off in Nazi-occupied Europe.
- 04The Camp System Concentration, transit, labor, and killing: what each kind of camp was.
- 05The Einsatzgruppen The Holocaust by bullets in the occupied Soviet territories.
- 06The Holocaust in the Middle East and North Africa Anti-Jewish laws, labor camps, and violence beyond Europe.
- 07Jewish Resistance & Rescue Armed revolt, hidden archives, and the rescuers.
Unit 5 Jewish Contributions
A sampling of what one small people gave the world, from Rashi’s Bible commentary to Salk’s polio vaccine.
- 01Across the Fields The whole field in view: science, scholarship, the arts, music, law, and computing.
- 02Rashi The commentator Jewish children traditionally study first.
- 03Maimonides Philosopher, codifier of Jewish law, and physician in Saladin’s court circle.
- 04Joseph Karo The refugee whose law code remains the standard reference for traditional practice.
- 05Moses Mendelssohn The Talmud student who became the German Socrates.
- 06Levi Strauss The peddler’s son whose riveted work pants became the blue jean.
- 07Emma Lazarus The poet who gave the Statue of Liberty its voice.
- 08Samuel Gompers The cigar maker who helped found the American Federation of Labor and led it for thirty-seven years.
- 09Theodor Herzl The journalist who founded political Zionism and died at 44.
- 10Albert Einstein The refugee who remade physics and declined a presidency.
- 11The Founders of Hollywood Six studios, founded or led by immigrants and their children shut out of older industries.
- 12Jonas Salk The vaccine that ended the polio summers, given away unpatented.
Unit 6 Memory, Responsibility, and Today
What the world did with the record: trials, restitution, memory, and the hatred that did not end.
- 01Liberation and the Displaced Persons The liberated camps, and the DP camps where survivors waited, the last until 1957.
- 02The Postwar Trials From Nuremberg to the 2020s: the record built in court, and the perpetrators who fled abroad.
- 03Hannah Arendt The refugee thinker behind “the banality of evil.”
- 04Postwar Restitution Returning what was stolen, a work still unfinished.
- 05The Memory Architecture How the world built its museums, memorials, and days of remembrance.
- 06Nostra Aetate 1965: the Catholic Church repudiates the deicide charge.
- 07Holocaust Denial and the Response Denial, built on purpose almost from the start, and the record that answers it.
- 08The Afterlife of the Image What societies do with monuments made to degrade.
- 09The Hatred That Outlived the War Antisemitism after 1945, into the present.
Reference
The reference shelf.
- Timeline Jewish history c. 1800 BCE to today, each entry dated, most linked to the chapter that tells the story.
- The Legal Record The judgments, treaties, and statutes of the post-Holocaust era, each linked to the primary document.
- The Incident Record Documented antisemitic incidents of the contemporary era, murders to vandalism to official findings, each entry ending with its record, with the monitoring institutions that keep the running count.
- Museum The history told through objects: manuscripts, coins, and the material evidence.
- The Recurring Cycle How antisemitism returned by lies, by law, and by force, and how Jewish communities rebuilt, from the ancient world to today.
- Hate Symbols The symbols, codes, and memes, identified and explained from sources.
- Common Misconceptions Widely held beliefs set beside what the documented record shows.
- Glossary The working vocabulary of Jewish history, defined plainly and sourced.
- Standards & Mandates Holocaust-education laws in the United States and worldwide, and what they ask.
- In the Margin A log of widely used educational resources where the Jewish record is thin or missing.
- Sources The archives, libraries, and scholarship the site draws on.
- Editorial Standards The sourcing and writing rules every page is held to.
Watch and visit
Beyond the page.
- Films & Video Curated documentaries, archives, and testimony for the classroom, by unit.
- Virtual Field Trips Archaeological sites, memorials, and museums you can visit from the classroom.
By audience
Built for the classroom.
- For Teachers Ready-to-teach lessons, the eight Teaching Guides, and the Standards Companions.
- For Middle School The grades 6–8 teacher guide: one lesson to start, a five-day unit, and where each Chapter fits your year.
- For High School The grades 9–12 teacher guide: one planned lesson, the five-day unit, and course-by-course fits.
- Sample Syllabi Two complete semester plans: a high-school elective and a college survey, built Chapter by Chapter.
- For Students The student front door: research topics, essay starters, and how to work from evidence.
- For Colleges How the chapters serve survey courses and the campus community.
- For K–5 Age-appropriate modules for the youngest learners, with teacher guides, activities, and vocabulary cards.
For the textbook
Two printable textbook chapters for grades 9–12 that tell the ancient Jewish story in depth.
- Ancient Israel and Judah: A Missing Chapter A small kingdom between the great empires, and the evidence it was really there.
- Judea in the Classical World: A Missing Chapter Return, revolt, and survival inside the Greek and Roman empires.
Lessons & handouts
The chapters practice these skills as they go, with sources and classroom connections built in. These are extra: standalone projects that put the skills themselves, reading a source for yourself and recognizing propaganda, at the center.
- Recognizing Propaganda: Then and Now A printable handout pairing each recurring antisemitic myth with its modern form.
- The Primary Source vs. the Headline A media-literacy lesson: read the source in its own words, then watch a headline reshape it.
The project
About the project.
- About Where the project comes from and how it works.
- The Curriculum Gap Why this site exists: what the curriculum teaches, and what it skips.
- Connect Questions, comments, and partnerships.
- Accessibility Our accessibility goal, and how to report a problem.
Last updated: November 2026.