Where to Begin: The Events You Have to Know
Twelve points that carry the whole of Jewish history: Creation, Abraham, the Exodus, Sinai, the two Temples, exile, the Talmud, Spain, the Shoah, and the State of Israel. Walk it once and you have the skeleton of the timeline; after that every other event has somewhere to hang. No prior knowledge is assumed — each step explains itself.
13 steps · about 10 minutes
The zero point. Year 1 on this timeline is not a textbook date but the moment from which the tradition counts time. Notice that the seventh day adds nothing to the world, yet it alone is called holy.
Step 2 · 1656The Beginning of the FloodHumanity's first reset. From here comes the idea that the world rests on a few righteous people, and on seven commandments binding on all nations, not only Israel.
Step 3 · 2023"Lech Lecha": Arrival in Canaan and the Descent to EgyptThe moment world history narrows to a single family. "Lech lecha" is a command to leave the familiar; everything that follows is the consequence of that one step.
Step 4 · 2448The First Passover and the Exodus from EgyptThe birth of a people. Note that Passover is kept not as a victory but as a departure — and the story is retold every year so that each person tells it as his own.
Step 5 · 2448The Giving of the Torah at Mount SinaiSeven weeks after the Exodus comes Sinai. This is the axis of the whole timeline: nearly everything later is, one way or another, a conversation about what was received here.
Step 6 · 2935The Dedication of the First Temple480 years after the Exodus the nation finally has a permanent house of worship. Compare it with the portable Mishkan: settling down changes religion too.
Step 7 · 3338The Destruction of the First Temple, 9 Av 3338The 9th of Av, 3338. The first catastrophe, after which the people learn to live without Temple and without land — and discover that they can.
Step 8 · 3412The Dedication of the Second TempleSeventy years later: the return and the Second Temple. A telling detail — it is poorer than the first, and the elders weep remembering the old one. Restoration is rarely an exact copy.
Step 9 · 3828The Destruction of the Second TempleAgain the 9th of Av, in 3828. Here begins the exile that still continues, and the question of the age: how to remain a people without a state and without a Temple.
Step 10 · 4260The Completion of the Babylonian TalmudThe answer to that question. The Talmud became a portable homeland: a text you can carry anywhere, which has held communities together for fifteen centuries.
Step 11 · 5252The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain1492: the end of the most brilliant of diasporas. Note the date of the expulsion — the 9th of Av. And note where the exiles went: it redrew the map of the whole Jewish world.
Step 12 · 5699–5705The Shoah: the Destruction of European JewryThe destruction of European Jewry. Here the timeline nearly breaks: entire countries vanish from the Jewish map — Poland, Lithuania, Hungary.
Step 13 · 5708The Declaration of the State of IsraelThree years after the Shoah, the first Jewish state in 1,878 years. Think back to the first step of this route: 5,708 years of one single line lie between them.