You have a packed curriculum, thirty students, and limited time. This page hands you the plan: what to teach tomorrow, what a week looks like, and where single Chapters fit the courses you already teach.
Teach Jewish History is a free online textbook of Jewish history, and the history of antisemitism, built from primary sources and written at high-school level, grades 9–12, with no adaptation needed. The pages below all print, and none requires a login.
Two factsWhy would I teach this?
- It fits courses you already teach. The same history runs through Global History, U.S. History, government, and ELA. The chart below shows where each Chapter fits.
- Your state likely requires it. A 2026 federal review found that 42 of the 50 states and D.C. require Holocaust education through academic standards or state law. Many requirements arrive without a curriculum, and building one is left to the teacher.
Yes. Here is why.Am I qualified to teach this?
If you teach social studies, world history, U.S. history, government, or ELA in grades 9–12, in a public, private, or religious school, yes. You do not need to be a specialist. The pages are written for readers new to the subject: terms are defined, events are dated, people are introduced. If you can assign a reading and lead a discussion, you can teach this.
Not a new courseWhere does it fit what I already teach?
The site slots into the courses you already have. The five-day unit below fits any Holocaust or WWII unit. And most courses in a high-school program have Chapters that fit inside them as single lessons:
| If you are teaching | Add this Chapter |
|---|---|
| Global History: the ancient world | The Land of Israel, The First and Second Temples, The Diaspora · the Israelite kingdoms, Jerusalem under Greece and Rome, and the Greek-speaking Jewish world, with The Continuous Jewish Presence in the Land for the archaeological record |
| Global History: belief systems | Who Are the Jews?, The Sacred Texts, Ritual Objects and Material Culture, The Jewish Life Cycle · a people, its texts, and its practices, taught like any tradition, and Nostra Aetate for how a teaching was formally repudiated |
| Global History: the medieval world | Adversus Judaeos, The Blood Libel, The Ghetto System, The Expulsions, The Dhimma · the teaching, the libel, the walls, the removals, and the parallel record under Islam, with Rashi, Maimonides, and The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World for the life and scholarship inside those centuries |
| Global History: the Enlightenment and emancipation | Moses Mendelssohn · the Enlightenment argued through one philosopher’s life, and the Reform, Neo-Orthodox, and Conservative movements that followed |
| Global History: nationalism and empire | The Racial Turn of 1879, The Russian Pogroms, Theodor Herzl · hostility rebuilt on race, the violence that followed, and the national movement born in answer |
| Global History: WWII and the Holocaust | The five-day unit below, or any of Unit 4’s seven Chapters at full depth |
| U.S. History: immigration and industry | Emma Lazarus, American Jewry, Samuel Gompers, Levi Strauss · immigration history through one people’s story, the labor movement through one organizer’s arc, and the Gold Rush through one merchant’s |
| U.S. History: the twentieth century | The Founders of Hollywood, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk · the studios, the physicist the Nazis drove out, and the developer of the first successful polio vaccine |
| U.S. History: the Cold War | Soviet Jewry · the movement that made Jewish emigration an American cause |
| Global History: the modern Middle East | The Departure from MENA, The Modern State of Israel · the region’s twentieth century through one people’s documented record, with community histories from Iraq, Iran, and North Africa |
| Government and civics | The Postwar Trials, Postwar Restitution, The Legal Record · how law and public memory answered, from Nuremberg to the current register, with The Memory Architecture for how remembrance became law |
| Media literacy | The Protocols Forgery, The Eastward Turn, Holocaust Denial and the Response, The Afterlife of the Image, Hate Symbols, Misconceptions · how a lie is built, translated, denied, pictured, and checked |
| ELA | Every Chapter is document-based reading practice, aligned to the Common Core literacy-in-history standards (the RH strand). Hannah Arendt and Emma Lazarus pair with essays and poetry units |
| Current events | The Terror Record, Contemporary Antisemitism, The Hatred That Outlived the War · the present, dated and sourced |
| AP courses | The same fits, matched to period: AP World History: Modern (from 1200) and AP European History (from 1450) take the medieval and modern rows from those dates forward. AP U.S. History takes the three U.S. rows, and AP U.S. Government’s civil-liberties unit pairs with the Government and civics row. AP Art History can use the Museum for the unfamiliar-work analysis its exam requires. The collection includes coins and carved inscriptions from the ancient Mediterranean, illuminated manuscripts and cathedral sculpture from medieval Europe, an illuminated Italian ketubah of 1777, the printed page of the Bomberg Talmud, each credited to the institution that holds it. Every Chapter is document-based, the skill the AP history exams test in the DBQ, the document-based question |
| An existing elective | A Holocaust or genocide-studies course already on the books can take Unit 4 as its text, then add the before and the after: Unit 3 for the roots and Unit 6 for the aftermath |
| An elective of its own | A full semester plan, week by week, is on the Sample Syllabi page · an option beside the integrations above, not instead of them |
The chart lists the strongest fits, not all of them: every one of the more than 60 Chapters names its courses and standards codes in Classroom Connections, and the Table of Contents maps them all.
One class period, fully plannedWhat do I teach tomorrow?
Teach this one first: The Protocols Forgery, on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the invented “minutes” of a Jewish plot to rule the world, exposed in 1921 and circulating online still. It teaches method: how historians take a lie apart.
Before class. Open the Chapter. Read it once. Press “Open PDF” if you want handouts. That is the whole prep.
First 5 minutes. Project the Chapter’s side-by-side table: two passages, forty years apart, nearly word for word. One is an 1864 French satire that never mentions Jews. Ask what students conclude.
Next 15 minutes. Read two sections together, “A fabricated text presented as authentic” and “Philip Graves and the establishment of the fraud.” Students mark every checkable fact.
Next 15 minutes. Discussion question 1, straight from the page: “Why is a match between two texts stronger evidence of forgery than an expert simply declaring the document false?” Then the harder one: why did it keep spreading anyway?
Last 5 minutes. Exit ticket: “Name one documented fact you would show someone who shared the Protocols online.” Every answer is checkable on the page.
That is one complete lesson, and it doubles as media literacy. If it works for your room, the week below extends it.
Five days, one storyWhat if I have a week? The five-day unit.
Five Chapters, in an order that tells one story: the lie, the laws, the machinery, the response, the aftermath. Written at full depth for this band. Keep one question running through the week: why did it keep coming back? The Nazi Synthesis holds the evidence on one page, and the arc at a glance holds the whole line.
- Day 1 · The lie. The Protocols Forgery: the lesson above.
- Day 2 · The laws. The Years Before the Killing, 1933–1939: six years of laws, dated one by one.
- Day 3 · The machinery. The Camp System: the regime’s own records and survivors’ testimony.
- Day 4 · The response. Jewish Resistance & Rescue: armed revolt, archives buried in milk cans, and the rescuers.
- Day 5 · The aftermath. Liberation and the Displaced Persons: the liberated camps, and the DP camps, where survivors married, had children, and published newspapers, the last closing in 1957.
Short on days? Teach Days 2, 3, and 4. Have two weeks? Add The Nazi Synthesis before Day 2, and The Postwar Trials after Day 5.
The site’s classroom toolsWhat else can I use in class?
- Timeline. Project it as a warm-up, or have students place the day’s lesson on it.
- The Museum. Manuscripts, coins, and objects. Papers can center on a single object.
- Virtual Field Trips. Archaeological sites, memorials, and historic Jewish quarters, from the projector. They pair naturally with an in-person visit where a collection is nearby.
- Films. Curated film and video by Unit, with grade bands marked.
- The Legal Record. Judgments, treaties, and statutes, each linked to its primary document. Built for civics.
- The Recurring Cycle. Eight patterns, by lies, by law, and by force, then rebuilt, traced from the ancient world to today.
- Misconceptions. Beliefs students bring to class, set beside the documented record.
- Glossary. Key terms defined plainly.
- Sample Syllabi. The full elective plan, plus a college survey.
The section to read before you need itWhat if a parent or my principal pushes back?
If someone says you are teaching a side, here is what to point to, and what to say.
- Each Chapter cites its sources on the page. Documents, laws, and figures are credited, most with a link to the archive or museum that holds the record.
- For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, start with the dates. The Modern State of Israel sets out the main events since 1967 in order, with its sources listed at the end of the Chapter.
- Hate texts are cited, never linked.
- The standards are public. The site’s editorial standards are published at Editorial Standards, and the Chapters in this guide name the state standards they support.
- You can answer “who runs this site?” Teach Jewish History is a free, independent educational resource, published by The Makor Project. Its About page explains how it is built, and its published standards govern every page.
If a parent or administrator asks, you can say: “This lesson is built from documents you can open yourself. One is the Times of London’s 1921 exposure of the forgery, through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The other is the 1864 French book the forgers copied, at the National Library of France. Here is the page. You can check the sources yourself.”
And if a student repeats an antisemitic claim mid-lesson: put the document back on the screen and ask what it says. The site’s Misconceptions and Hate Symbols pages each take one claim, or one symbol, and set the record beside it.
The anatomy of a ChapterQuick answers
What is on a Chapter page?
- A readable history, written to be taught or assigned.
- Primary sources and images, with their credits.
- Discussion questions that ask students to reason from the documents.
- Classroom Connections: the courses it fits and the standards it supports.
- Key takeaways, for review and exit tickets.
- A printable PDF, one button, the whole Chapter.
Is the reading level right? Yes. The site is written at high-school level, and grades 9–12 are its native band. Teaching grades 6–8 instead? For Middle School is the adaptation path.
Do I need approval to use this? That depends on your district’s materials policy. In many districts, supplemental materials for a course you already teach sit within a teacher’s discretion. In others, a principal or department signs off. Adopting it as a core text, or building a course on it, goes through your school’s normal process, and the Sample Syllabi page carries an approval packet built for it. If your district’s web filter blocks the site, your IT office can unblock it. It is a free educational reference with published standards.
What does it cost, and how do I print? It is free, with no login. Every Chapter prints from its own “Open PDF” button. This guide itself is a printable PDF, ready to hand a colleague. The For Teachers hub has the eight Teaching Guides and a free professional-development course. Questions, or a story about how a lesson went: education@teachjewishhistory.org.
Start with the one lesson. The rest is here when you want it.
Last updated: November 2026.