The Makor Project · Table of Contents
The curriculum
Six units. Fifty-six 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; nothing 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? A People, a Faith, a Nation 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 The evidence that the presence in the land never ended.
- 04The First & 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 kept them exact.
- 07The Calendar & the Cycle of the Year How the lunar year and its festivals ordered Jewish time.
- 08Ritual Objects & 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 as a Phenomenon How one people stayed one people across many lands.
Unit 2 Communities Across the World
Jewish communities across three continents, and how most 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 North Africa Two thousand years across the Maghreb, from Morocco to Djerba.
- 04The Jews of Iran An ancient community that, unlike its neighbors, did not end.
- 05The Departure from MENA How roughly 850,000 Jews left the Middle East and North Africa.
- 06Soviet Jewry Millions forbidden to practice or leave, and the movement that freed them.
- 07American Jewry From twenty-three refugees in 1654 to the world's second-largest community.
- 08Ethiopian Jewry, Beta Israel Centuries of practice in the Ethiopian highlands, then two airlifts.
- 09The 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, that refused to die.
- 03The Ghetto System Legal segregation as an institution, invented in Venice in 1516.
- 04The Expulsions Banishment as state policy, England 1290 to Spain 1492.
- 05The Racial Turn 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 migration it drove.
- 07The Protocols of the Elders of Zion A police forgery, exposed in 1921, circulating still.
- 08The Nazi Synthesis Every older thread 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 The oldest hatred 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 mass-murder program: disabled Germans, 1939 to 1941.
- 03The Nazi Ghettos Whole communities sealed behind walls in occupied Poland.
- 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 North Africa & the Middle East The war's reach beyond Europe, kept to scale.
- 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 every Jewish child still reads first.
- 03Maimonides Philosopher, codifier of Jewish law, and physician at Saladin's court.
- 04Joseph Karo The refugee who wrote the law code the Jewish world still uses.
- 05Moses Mendelssohn The Talmud student who became the German Socrates.
- 06Emma Lazarus The poet who gave the Statue of Liberty its voice.
- 07Theodor Herzl The journalist who founded political Zionism and died at 44.
- 08Albert Einstein The refugee who remade physics and declined a presidency.
- 09The Founders of Hollywood Six studios, built by immigrants shut out of older industries.
- 10Jonas Salk The vaccine that ended polio, 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 & the Displaced Persons The killing ended in 1945; the survivors' ordeal did not.
- 02The Postwar Trials From Nuremberg to the 2020s: the record built in court.
- 03Hannah Arendt The refugee thinker who gave the century its vocabulary for 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 & the Response Denial was deliberate from the start; so was the answer.
- 08The Afterlife of the Image What societies do with monuments made to degrade.
- 09It Didn’t End Antisemitism after 1945, into the present.
Reference
The reference shelf.
- Timeline Jewish history c. 1800 BCE to today, each entry dated and sourced, with links to the chapters that tell their stories.
- The Legal Record The judgments, treaties, and statutes of the post-Holocaust era, each linked to the primary document.
- Museum The history told through objects: manuscripts, coins, and the material evidence.
- The Recurring Cycle The pattern antisemitism follows, named step by step across centuries.
- 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 Every archive, library, and scholarly work the site is built 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, a standards chart, and the Teacher Guide.
- Makor for Middle School The grades 6–8 teacher guide: one lesson to start, a five-day unit, and where each Chapter fits your year.
- Makor 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
Every chapter on this site is a supplement, built to slot into courses schools already teach. These two are something extra: complete, printable textbook chapters for grades 9–12, covering the ancient Jewish story standard textbooks skip.
- 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
Every chapter already teaches these skills as it goes, 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 Makor 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.
- The Petitions Where it began: two civic petitions, on the record since April 2026.
- Connect Questions, corrections, and partnerships.
- Accessibility How the site supports every reader.
Last updated: September 2026.