This is history you get to investigate for yourself, not a textbook summary, but the actual sources: the documents, the coins, the letters, and the posters people left behind. It is free, with no login and no teacher required. Follow one of the most fully documented stories there is, from antiquity to today, and you come out a sharper thinker, harder to fool, with the quiet satisfaction of watching the pieces connect.
New here? Explore the interactive timeline, or dive into the story, beginning 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. Learn only a fragment and you don’t just know less, you can be wrong about what you do know.
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. And a story told from the middle is easy to misread, and easy to be misled about, whether it is the past or the present.
Makor is built around one long example. Most students meet Jewish history at only two moments: the ancient Israelites in the unit on early civilizations, and the Holocaust two thousand years later. Everything in between is erased. Meet the Holocaust that way and it looks like a sudden eruption of unexplained hatred. Learn the arc, how that hatred was built over centuries, argument by argument and law by law, and it becomes what it actually was: the culmination of a long, traceable process. Same event, opposite understanding.
That is the real lesson here, and it holds for any history: read the whole arc, from the sources, and draw your own conclusions. Makor uses Jewish history and the history of antisemitism as its case study, because it is one of the most fully documented arcs there is. Learn to read one history whole, and you learn to read history itself.
The payoff is yours. Learn to work from the sources and you become harder to fool, a steadier thinker, someone propaganda cannot easily move, the kind of person others look to when a story gets complicated. And there is a real pleasure in it: the moment the pieces connect, when a fragment clicks into a story and something you half-knew suddenly makes sense.
Find your way inHow to use it
Makor is organized as six Units that run in order, from antiquity to the present, one continuous arc. Each Unit holds Topics, and each Topic is a chapter: a readable history followed by the primary sources it is built on, every one credited to the archive or museum that holds it.
- Read through the six Units in order, and the Topic 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, each credited to the institution that holds it.
- Search, the magnifier at the top of the page, for a person, place, or idea.
And 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 inTopics for essays and research
Makor is a deep well for essays, research papers, and independent projects. A few directions across the arc, each a Topic built on primary sources you can cite:
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 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
- The birth of antisemitism in the Church, where a theological argument hardened into lasting hostility. 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
- The Holocaust in the Middle East and North Africa. The Holocaust in MENA
- Nuremberg and the invention of international justice. The Postwar Trials
Antisemitism today
- How old accusations resurface in new language, and how denial works. Contemporary Antisemitism · Holocaust Denial
- Why the pattern did not end in 1945. It Didn’t End
- It is not over, and the numbers show it rising. See the pattern in Makor, and the current incident data on the ADL H.E.A.T. Map. Contemporary Antisemitism
Meet your syllabusConnect it to what you are reading
If your school or teacher hasn’t adopted these lessons, that is no reason to wait. You can bring this history into almost any class you are already taking. That is the whole idea: bring it in where it is missing.
A book you were assigned
- Reading Night, The Diary of a Young Girl, Maus, or The Book Thief? Meet the Holocaust as the culmination of a long history, with the survivor testimony that records it. The Holocaust Era
- 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, the same machinery of accusation as the blood libel, 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 or The Kite Runner? A minority living under an ideological regime has a long history of its own. The Jews of Iran
The unit you’re studying
- Early civilizations or world religions: Makor places Jewish civilization beside Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with the same reach. 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 expulsions, the blood libel, and the Church teaching that shaped both. The Expulsions · The Blood Libel
- 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 they produced. The Russian Pogroms · The Protocols
- World War II: the Holocaust as the culmination of that long arc, not a sudden eruption. The Holocaust Era
- Today’s news from Israel, Gaza, or Iran: go underneath the headlines to the history it grows from. The Modern State of Israel · The Jews of Iran
- Government, law, or human rights: Nuremberg and the invention of international justice. The Postwar Trials
Found a connection we haven’t listed? Tell us, we would love to hear how you are using it. And if a class of yours should be teaching this, pass it along.
✉ Share Makor with your teachers
“Teach your tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and you will progress.”Maimonides
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, and Makor is built to teach it. The Museum gathers this history in objects, each credited to the institution that holds it.
A few exercises to build a project or a discussion around:
- 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.
Makor is free and open to everyone. Every source is credited, so you can trace it yourself. Teachers, see For Teachers. · Return home