To many students, history is boring. “Why should we care about the past?” they ask. “It happened already.”

While it’s true that dwelling on the past can be depressing and even useless, the study of history is not. Rabbi Wein, premier voice in Jewish history today, makes a passionate case for why every school must include history in its curriculum. It’s not just that we’re “condemned to relive it.” If we don’t know the facts, we won’t be able to defend the truth when our enemies deliberately distort it.

• Josephus, the first Jewish historian
• the Meiri, great historian of the Middle Ages
• how the maskilim destroyed the study of Jewish history
• the problems of 19th century Europe and their effect on us today
• museums vs. living Judaism
• the dangers of revisionist history