Jew Oughta Know

West Germany offered to pay Israel reparations for the Holocaust, touching off a heated and violent debate over whether Israel should accept. Was it a critical windfall for a poor nation, or nothing more than blood money?

Who is a Jew, according to the State of Israel? And where do you put all the new immigrants when there isn't enough housing? And what is the impact on Mizrahi Jewish refugees and Palestinian land abandoned during the war?

The Palestinians weren't the only refugees. Nearly one million Jews were pushed out of the Middle East and North Africa in revenge for the creation of Israel. Ancient Jewish communities were uprooted as hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) poured into Israel.

For the Palestinians who left Israel -- whether by force or voluntarily -- Israel's War of Independence was a nakba (catastrophe). The war's end in 1949 left over 720,000 Palestinian refugees. Why they left, what happened to them, and how much responsibility Israel bears is the focus of today's episode.

The War of Independence left multiple narratives in its wake, from the Jews who lost 1% of their population to the war, to the Arab-Israelis who fell under martial law.

Don't know your Prime Minister from your President? Israeli politics has been big in the news in 2019 -- so here's how the government works, and why Israel voted left for the first thirty years of its existence.

When the IDF seized the town of Lydda from Arab forces during the War of Independence, Ben Gurion ordered the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Was it justified? Was it just?

The War of Independence continues as the Egyptian army uses the Gaza Strip to make a run for Tel Aviv. They were stopped by the new Israeli Air Force, which had to source parts, planes, and pilots from all over the world.

Barely a month after declaring independence, a fight on the beach in Tel Aviv almost splits Israel in two. As the army struggles to supply the Jewish side of Jerusalem, the Israel Defense Forces and the Irgun open fire on each other over a ship called the Altalena.

Within hours of declaring independence, Israel was invaded by five Arab armies. In the middle of an existential war, the government made its first decision: to proclaim Israel open for Jewish immigration.

On May 14, 1948, just a few minutes before Shabbat, David Ben Gurion declared the new State of Israel. Reading from the Declaration of Independence, which just barely made it to the secret ceremony, he committed the new Jewish State to idealistic and historic principles, while bracing for a war he knew was imminent.

Straight out of Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant just might be the single greatest missing relic of all time. A fitting finale to Season 3, it disappeared quite suddenly in the 6th century BCE and hasn't been seen since. We go looking for it all over the Middle East and Africa.

It's the end of the world as we know it. The Messiah might already be here, but who is he, what's going to happen, and when?

Sixty-four clues. A vast treasure two thousand years old. Billions of dollars in buried gold. All engraved on a copper scroll hidden away in a cave near the Dead Sea that was found in 1952.

The U.S. military found a treasure trove of Jewish artifacts in the basement of Iraq's intelligence headquarters. Who should get it: Iraq, the United States, or the Iraqi Jewish community in America?

Around 5,000 years ago someone built a massive, Stonehenge-like structure on the Golan Heights in Israel. But we have no clue who or why -- was it an ancient race of giants?

Three unsolved mysteries from the Holocaust: the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, who betrayed Anne Frank, and the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII.

We lost ten Israelite tribes 2,500 years ago, but we might have found a few still around today in some unlikely places.

Christopher Columbus might possibly have been Jewish. Either way, Jews played a central role in his 1492 Voyage of Discovery.

The original menorah that you use at Hanukah went missing around 1,600 years ago. We know the Romans had it last. Was it destroyed? Misplaced? Hidden in the Vatican? There are all kinds of rumors, feel free to pick your favorite.

Something both living and dead has been hidden up in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague for the last 500 years.

There is legal and diplomatic fighting (with celebrities!) between Chabad, Russia, and the United States over who is the rightful owner of tens of thousands of texts amassed by the leading rabbis of Chabad over the last several hundred years.

Kickoff to Season 3 on Unsolved Jewish Mysteries. Where is the tomb of King David, ancient Israel's greatest ruler?

Season finale on the History of Zionism. A look back at the full sweep of Zionism as the Jewish world waits for Ben Gurion to decide on declaring the Jewish State.

In the push to take back Jerusalem Jewish fighters commit a horrible atrocity at Deir Yassin. The Arabs follow in kind. Just a few days before independence, the future Jewish state is in doubt.