The Makor Project is a free, source-based online textbook of Jewish history and of antisemitism, from antiquity through the Holocaust to the present. Every claim is anchored in a primary document, a work of scholarship, or an institutional archive, and each source is credited to the museum or archive that holds it. It is open to everyone, and on a campus it serves three ways: as reading for college courses, for incoming students, and for the community your institution serves.
For facultyIn college courses
Makor is organized as six Units and a set of Topic pages, each a readable history followed by the primary sources it is built on. For an instructor, that is a free, source-based textbook, and it maps onto far more courses than the obvious ones:
- World and Western civilization, where the Jewish story belongs beside Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
- Art history, from ancient synagogue mosaics and illuminated manuscripts to the work of modern Jewish artists.
- Archaeology, the coins, mosaics, inscriptions, and sites that document the Jewish past.
- Anthropology, a living civilization read through its communities, customs, and material culture.
- Psychology, the mechanics of prejudice, obedience, and dehumanization.
- Philosophy and ethics, from Maimonides to Arendt on the nature of evil.
- Medieval studies, the expulsions, the blood libel, and the Church teaching behind them.
- American history and immigration, the American Jewish story and the nativism it met.
- Race and civil rights in America, prejudice, scapegoating, and the fight for equal standing, with the Jewish experience alongside.
- The Arab and Islamic world, Jewish life under Islam and the reach of the Holocaust into North Africa and the Middle East.
- Middle East studies, the modern State of Israel and the region to the present day.
- Modern European history, emancipation, the pogroms, and the racial turn of 1879.
- Political science and government, nationalism, statelessness, minority rights, and the nation-state.
- Human rights and international law, Nuremberg and the invention of international justice.
- Law and legal studies, the Dreyfus Affair, the Nuremberg Laws, and the trials that followed.
- Introductions to Judaism, and Jewish history, the full arc from antiquity to the present.
- The history and mechanics of antisemitism.
- Holocaust and genocide studies, the centuries that led to it and the decades after.
- Contemporary affairs, antisemitism today read against its full history.
- Religion and world religions, Judaism given the same reach as the other traditions.
And it does not really end. The same sources reward almost any field that works from evidence, from journalism and economics to linguistics, sociology, and beyond.
Assign a Topic like a chapter and send students to the sources it cites, or draw on the Timeline and the Museum for a lecture. Nothing sits behind a paywall or a login. Begin with Unit 1, or browse the whole arc.
Research and a primerFor your students
Students can work from Makor directly, for research papers, essays, and source-based projects. The student entry point, For Students, lays out research topics across the arc, shows how to work from evidence, and connects the history to books and courses they are already taking.
It also serves as a primer. An incoming or first-year student can read the arc before a course begins, and arrive with the whole story rather than two disconnected moments, the ancient world and the Holocaust, with the centuries between them left out.
Share and partnerYour campus and the community it serves
A university does not only teach its students; it serves a wider community. The Makor Project is a free, nonpartisan resource you can share with both.
The ADL’s guidance for campus antisemitism task forces recommends promoting educational opportunities created by external partners and sharing vetted resources through the task force’s own channels. The Makor Project is that kind of resource: source-based, credited, and open to anyone.
We would be glad to work with you, to be listed among your recommended resources, to carry your endorsement, and to serve your students and the community you serve together. Get in touch.
How it is madeBuilt from the record
The method is strict and plain. Every claim is anchored in a primary document, a work of scholarship, or an institutional archive, and every source is credited so a reader can trace it. The aim is not to argue a conclusion but to lay out the record and let readers draw their own.
A few Topics that show the range and the rigor:
- 1879: how “race science” reinvented an ancient hatred. The Racial Turn
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery traced across the globe. The Protocols
- The theological roots of the hostility, in the Church’s early teaching. Adversus Judaeos
- The Holocaust’s reach into the Middle East and North Africa. The Holocaust in MENA
- How the pattern resurfaces now. Contemporary Antisemitism
The Sources page sets out the method, and the directory of archives and scholarship behind the work.
The Makor Project is free and open to everyone, and always will be. For classroom materials, see For Teachers; for the student entry point, see For Students. To discuss how it might serve your campus and community, get in touch. · Return home