The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC - 1492 AD

I've been reading recently about Middle Eastern history, and usually in these books the Jewish people are talked about in a paragraph or two. The history is usually Greek, Rome, or Egypt focused, so there isn't much mention of ancient Israel or the Jewish people. I did grow up reading the Bible, but there was always so many Jewish history references in movies or television that I had no clue about. I bought this book to help me understand the parts of Jewish history I didn't get hear about being raised in a Christian family. The Story of the Jews is very thorough. The author regularly uses original sources to make his claims and takes an objective view of Jewish history. I never thought I was being preached to, even though it is clear the author his proud of Jewish heritage. His writing is fair and intellectual. Later on in the book, it does seem like the author is trying to fit as many details as he can into each paragraph, which lowered my reading speed a little. But even then, it seemed more like a conscious writing decision and not something based on inexperience. My take away from the book is that somehow, someway, the Jewish culture has survived thousands of years, even when so many other religions went extinct with the appearance of Christianity and Islam. Their minority status has made the Jewish people a scapegoat by many government and religious leaders, but they still found a way to maintain their dignity through it all.

I think I was expecting more from Schama. Not to say it is not a good book, it is just that he backs into a story instead of hitting it straight on. For me, it was hard to get a lot from this book that was concrete. Yes, he was factual and yes, he was very interesting. And he is well-researched. I think my problem is that he writes much like he speaks, like a professor. Interesting, but I would hate to be tested on what he said. I am not sure I want to read other books by him. He is somewhat exhausting with all his trivia.

All the books that enrich the history of the Jews deserve to be well received. In this sense, Simon Schama's book is very good for offering a chronology of landmark events in Jewish History. Schama dresses himself as an archaeologist and analyzes traces since 1000 BC. to 1492 AD. I am conscious that there are points in common with my book "Dutch Connection - The Jewish Saga From Spain To America", also avalable at www.amazon.com. It is good for the Jewish History as a whole. First of all, this first volume of Schama's work ends where I begin mine. But let us return to our historian. In precise narrative, he traverses meadows and deserts in this walk of about five thousand years. Schama works the history properly, but with detachment from the human truth accumulated by the Jews throughout the centuries. In certain passages he puts in check the divine value of sacred words. One of his favorite phrases is "If the Bible was right, as the Orthodox rabbis say (...)." However, the writer admits the importance of Deuteronomy in the formation of Jewish culture. In presenting the book, Simon makes it clear that he considers himself as "the" Jewish historian, not "a" Jewish historian. He says he was the only to be chosen to continue Cecil Roth's work, but decided to build his own castle. "The Story of the Jews - Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD" is his first monument in this way.

This book is an expansion of part of Prof Schama's superb TV documentary `The Story of the Jews' which covered Jewish history from early to modern times. The volume takes us from settling the hill fort that became Jerusalem up until the massive persecution and eventual expulsion of the Jews in late mediaval Spain. I do hope a second volume is in preparation. Be prepared to have some cherished biblical tales questioned. For example despite much searching by Israeli and other archaeologists no traces have been found of any mass migration of the Israelites from Egypt. It is hinted that the so called Exodus was actually a marauding mob of Semitic tribesmen who were defeated and forced out of the country. Much later, under Greek domination Judaen soldiers and their families were imported to the Egyptian city of Elephantine on the Nile near Abu Simbal to guard the border against invasion. Detailed records of that settlement have been discovered, many on potsherds and the settlers even built another Temple although this was frowned upon by the Jerusalem Establishment. The ebook also contains a comprehensive supplement of photographs illustrating key parts of the text. All in all a long, detailed, and fascinating read.

The story of the Jews is a complex, unconventional telling of a very old story. Based of archeology rather than the chronological story from the bible, the text can be very wordy. It seems to bounce around in its approach and needs significant concentration abilities to stick with it. The print was much to small and I than purchased the e book version which, as the pages went by became, much easier to follow. Of course as the centuries move on, the entire story becomes more familiar and more interesting. It is packed with facts and information and is a remarkable research project. It only takes us to the Jewish expulsion from Spain, so there is much more to come in the second volume..

I enjoyed every single chapter of this work, learnt a lot on my people. Only one correction: Jews from Morocco still move the Seder plate over the head of every member of the family, chanting in judeo-Arab “bibi luya salu mimitzraim”, before “ha lahma Ania…”.

What I most like about Schama’s book was the emphasis on the tangible. He concentrates on archeological discoveries, surviving papyrus letters and fragments, the ruins of ancient synagogue, their styles, locations and decorations, in other words, things that can be seen, felt, read. He does not start the history with Abraham, Moses and similar mythic characters for whom there is no real evidence. Since he deals mainly with the tangible, the history does not start as early as one might have thought, but starts early enough, at around 1000 B.C.E., and follows the Jews through Hellenistic, Roman, and Medieval Ages up until nearly the 16th century. One question that always comes to mind when reading Jewish history is how did this particular group survive when just about all other cotemporaneous religions and ethnicities disappear ages ago. Schama stresses the great advantage literacy gave the Jews for enduring cohesively through two Temple destruction, numerous exiles, attempted annihilations, forced conversions, and other scourges. Literacy seems always to have been encouraged. After all, even Yahweh himself was depicted as literate, inscribing the Ten Commandants himself and tagging Belshazzar’s wall. What other early gods sent missives to their people? I don’t recall off the top of my head Astarte, Baal, Zoroaster, Zeus depicted as reading and writing; usually their intentions were interpreted by oracles, omens and the like. But the laws of the Jews (unlike, say, the Moabites) were transcribed early on and apparently could be read a wide range of the populace. As early as the eighth century B.C.E., even heavy laborers carving a water conduit left inscriptions strongly suggesting they were literate. And from twenty-five centuries ago survive the letters of a Jewish mercenary at a faraway post to his family back home. The book has many more such examples. Simon Schama is a noted British lecturer and TV documentarian. He has a pleasant, conversational manner of speech, and he attempts to infuse this manner into his writing. So his sentences often have asides, phrases and comments through the use of commas, parentheses, dashes, quotation marks and italics. The result is that, for a history, his style seems chatty. This chattiness might be off-putting to some, but I found it pleasant, like a friend telling a story.

Simon Schama excels at explaining the intellectual, philosophical, cultural and religious foundation of the Jewish faith from it's earliest non biblical written and archaeological record. At the same time he weaves in a chronological narrative that is both informative and entertaining. Despite his impressive scholarly credentials, the author tells a story that is accessible to the lay person. And it is a story that will enlighten anyone interested in the development of the Jewish faith and the people and events that were integral to that process. The book is beautifully written with a wry sense of humor, that keeps the reader turning the next page in anticipation of a well told and documented story.

Unreal work. A mamoth piece of writing.

Excellent book on jewish history

One of the best books about Jewish history. Schama give s a detailed account about the lives of Jews in the ancient times. Usually history books speak about Kings and very prominent persons but Schama gives a good view about the common people living in ancient times. The book takes you to different places of the world from Egypt to Palestine, from Spain to Britain, everywhere where Jews were settled. The book gives deatailed description of the miserable lives of Jews and how they faced hatred of Christians and even Muslims. They were widely persecuted, subdued and forcefully converted. The religious intolerance of Christians is well shown. Overall the book is good to know about lives of Jews from their Exodus to their deportation from western Europe.

I thought the television version of the Story of the Jews was remarkable but I now realise it simply scratched the surface of the subject. Simon Schama makes his fun and easy to read. His powerful narrative drive, the frequent comical asides and the extraordinary scholarship of his work make the book unputdownable. As a Jew I thought I knew the story of my people but this book makes me realise how many pieces of the complex jigsaw were missing in my knowledge. Schama provides all the missing pieces so that I can now see the whole picture in it's grandeur, complexity and bloody mindedness. And this is only part 1!

Great history, well written