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The Story of the Jews #2
The Story of the Jews: When Words Fail, 1492-1900
The words that failed were words of hope. But they did not fail at all times and everywhere.
These gripping pages teem with words of defiance and optimism, sounds and images of tenacious life and adventurous modernism, music and drama, business and philosophy, poetry and politics. The second part of Simon Schama's epic Story of the Jews is neither overwhelmed by hopelessness nor shrouded in the smoke of the crematoria. As much as it gives full weight to the magnitude of the disaster that befell the Jews, it is a story of hope vindicated rather than wiped out.
The stories unfold across the world - in the provincial pavilions of Ming China and beneath the brass chandeliers of Rembrandt's Amsterdam; on ships and carts, stage-coaches and railway trains crossing oceans and continents; in the honky-tonk of San Francisco and the pampas of Argentina, the department stores of Berlin and the avenues of Trieste. The stories themselves are played on the stage of opera houses; in the travelling camera of an expedition in Ukraine, the prison cells of Stalin's Russia, the lagers of the Holocaust; the scenery of misery and redemption in Palestine and Israel.
At the heart of the story is the budding belief that peoples of different faiths, customs and cultures can be fellow-citizens of a common country.
And amidst all the brutality, somehow the light of Jewish endurance is never extinguished. The odyssey is unforgettable, the storyteller impassioned, the words unfailing.
These gripping pages teem with words of defiance and optimism, sounds and images of tenacious life and adventurous modernism, music and drama, business and philosophy, poetry and politics. The second part of Simon Schama's epic Story of the Jews is neither overwhelmed by hopelessness nor shrouded in the smoke of the crematoria. As much as it gives full weight to the magnitude of the disaster that befell the Jews, it is a story of hope vindicated rather than wiped out.
The stories unfold across the world - in the provincial pavilions of Ming China and beneath the brass chandeliers of Rembrandt's Amsterdam; on ships and carts, stage-coaches and railway trains crossing oceans and continents; in the honky-tonk of San Francisco and the pampas of Argentina, the department stores of Berlin and the avenues of Trieste. The stories themselves are played on the stage of opera houses; in the travelling camera of an expedition in Ukraine, the prison cells of Stalin's Russia, the lagers of the Holocaust; the scenery of misery and redemption in Palestine and Israel.
At the heart of the story is the budding belief that peoples of different faiths, customs and cultures can be fellow-citizens of a common country.
And amidst all the brutality, somehow the light of Jewish endurance is never extinguished. The odyssey is unforgettable, the storyteller impassioned, the words unfailing.
800 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
June 5, 2018
Is someone were to say, “I need to pass a test on Jewish history next week,” I would answer: Don’t read Belonging, Simon Schama’s second volume of his Story of the Jews trilogy. Why? Because he is too immersed in the stories — the rich procession of shrewd traders, pious scholars, victimized peasants, false messiahs, remarkable rebbes — to deal much with the dry business of abstract history and broad characterizations.
In fact, I have the awful suspicion that Schama had more difficulty cutting yet more individual stories than in juggling the hundreds that he did manage to weave into his 700-page tome. The range of cultures, peoples, and events is extraordinary: from the complicated fates of the Converso’s, or “New Christians” in the 1500s to the Zionist dreams of Theodore Herzl in the 1890s.
Schama can certainly provide an omniscient historian’s perspective when he cares to, but more often he revels in the surfeit of stories of Jewish survival, ingenuity, oppression, and resistance. His remarkable procession of peoples ranges from the Ashkenazi of Russian, Poland, and Lithuania to the Sephardim of the Mediterranean and North Africa, with excursions to Jewish communities in China, India, Yemen, America, and the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine, of course.
The expulsions from Spain in 1492 triggered a renewed Jewish diaspora, at least among Sephardic Jews, and the creation of the first recognized ghetto, in Venice. Such communities allowed Jews to survive and practice their faith, but at the sufferance of gentile rulers and the frequent requirement that they be locked up at night. In one era, Jews could monopolize the pepper and spice trade with a royal charter; in the next, a rumor of child murder could mean riots and expulsion from their homes.
Schama tracks several themes through his often larger-than-life tales. One is that Jews could never really agree on what it meant to be a Jew, especially when the conservative Talmudist grip began to weaken in the face of the pressures of modernity, at least in Western Europe. At the same time, Jews — whether bearded or clean shaven, Enlightenment thinkers or Hassidic mystics — largely refused to abandon their identities as Jews, however varied their daily practices. Not that Western society, even while proclaiming the universal human rights of the French Revolution, could relinquish its view of Jews as the other, and lapse into the outright anti-Semitism of blood libels, pogroms, and violence.
The Jewish response to these centuries of dislocation and discrimination was as varied as the Jewish people themselves, which Schama captures with his superlative (if sometimes exhausting) storytelling. The rise of false messiahs is hardly surprising, for example, but the tales of David Ha-Reveni, “emissary” of the Lost Tribes, and Shabbetai Zevi are almost too fantastic to be believed — and Schama relishes both their bizarre biographies and what they reveal about the early-modern world.
At the other end of the spectrum is a figure like Baruch Spinoza, excommunicated by his own community, and more or less the inventor of secular Judaism (yet a term he would have neither recognized nor accepted).
The appearance of spacious new synagogues in European cities and general admiration of Enlightenment figures like Moses Mendelssohn marked an undisputable opening for tolerance and opportunities for Jews. But as Schama demonstrates, these same years witnessed a resurgence of anti-Semitism both old and new.
The old version included frequent pogroms in Russia and the East, triggering new waves of Ashkenazi refugees westward (and to the Americas). These were traditional, Yiddish-speaking people, although Schama resists the idea that they resembled the rural stereotypes depicted in Fiddler on the Roof.
More ominously, the 19th century unleashed a new version of “Jew hatred,” one that upheld blood, soil, and romantic nationalism against the alleged “rootless cosmopolitanism” of the separate race of Jews, along with the revival of anti-Semitic screeds and conspiracies. Exhibit A for Schama is the Dreyfus Affair, which enflamed anti-Jewish feeling throughout Europe.
The most significant reaction to these renewed attacks came from the sudden rise of the modern Zionist movement, founded by Theodore Herzl. Schama concludes his volume with Herzl’s travels to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, and his secular dream of a Jewish homeland. He pairs that with a portrait of Herzl’s most trenchant critic, Ahad Ha’am, who believed in a spiritual Zionism that must become deeply rooted before building a state. Schama writes:
Two visions of how a Jewish life could be lived in Palestine confronted each other; two visions of how Jews and Arabs could or would live in one land. Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; spiritual or secular. The two visions refused to marry up, to agree on what constitutes a truly Jewish life. They still do.
In fact, I have the awful suspicion that Schama had more difficulty cutting yet more individual stories than in juggling the hundreds that he did manage to weave into his 700-page tome. The range of cultures, peoples, and events is extraordinary: from the complicated fates of the Converso’s, or “New Christians” in the 1500s to the Zionist dreams of Theodore Herzl in the 1890s.
Schama can certainly provide an omniscient historian’s perspective when he cares to, but more often he revels in the surfeit of stories of Jewish survival, ingenuity, oppression, and resistance. His remarkable procession of peoples ranges from the Ashkenazi of Russian, Poland, and Lithuania to the Sephardim of the Mediterranean and North Africa, with excursions to Jewish communities in China, India, Yemen, America, and the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine, of course.
The expulsions from Spain in 1492 triggered a renewed Jewish diaspora, at least among Sephardic Jews, and the creation of the first recognized ghetto, in Venice. Such communities allowed Jews to survive and practice their faith, but at the sufferance of gentile rulers and the frequent requirement that they be locked up at night. In one era, Jews could monopolize the pepper and spice trade with a royal charter; in the next, a rumor of child murder could mean riots and expulsion from their homes.
Schama tracks several themes through his often larger-than-life tales. One is that Jews could never really agree on what it meant to be a Jew, especially when the conservative Talmudist grip began to weaken in the face of the pressures of modernity, at least in Western Europe. At the same time, Jews — whether bearded or clean shaven, Enlightenment thinkers or Hassidic mystics — largely refused to abandon their identities as Jews, however varied their daily practices. Not that Western society, even while proclaiming the universal human rights of the French Revolution, could relinquish its view of Jews as the other, and lapse into the outright anti-Semitism of blood libels, pogroms, and violence.
The Jewish response to these centuries of dislocation and discrimination was as varied as the Jewish people themselves, which Schama captures with his superlative (if sometimes exhausting) storytelling. The rise of false messiahs is hardly surprising, for example, but the tales of David Ha-Reveni, “emissary” of the Lost Tribes, and Shabbetai Zevi are almost too fantastic to be believed — and Schama relishes both their bizarre biographies and what they reveal about the early-modern world.
At the other end of the spectrum is a figure like Baruch Spinoza, excommunicated by his own community, and more or less the inventor of secular Judaism (yet a term he would have neither recognized nor accepted).
The appearance of spacious new synagogues in European cities and general admiration of Enlightenment figures like Moses Mendelssohn marked an undisputable opening for tolerance and opportunities for Jews. But as Schama demonstrates, these same years witnessed a resurgence of anti-Semitism both old and new.
The old version included frequent pogroms in Russia and the East, triggering new waves of Ashkenazi refugees westward (and to the Americas). These were traditional, Yiddish-speaking people, although Schama resists the idea that they resembled the rural stereotypes depicted in Fiddler on the Roof.
More ominously, the 19th century unleashed a new version of “Jew hatred,” one that upheld blood, soil, and romantic nationalism against the alleged “rootless cosmopolitanism” of the separate race of Jews, along with the revival of anti-Semitic screeds and conspiracies. Exhibit A for Schama is the Dreyfus Affair, which enflamed anti-Jewish feeling throughout Europe.
The most significant reaction to these renewed attacks came from the sudden rise of the modern Zionist movement, founded by Theodore Herzl. Schama concludes his volume with Herzl’s travels to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, and his secular dream of a Jewish homeland. He pairs that with a portrait of Herzl’s most trenchant critic, Ahad Ha’am, who believed in a spiritual Zionism that must become deeply rooted before building a state. Schama writes:
Two visions of how a Jewish life could be lived in Palestine confronted each other; two visions of how Jews and Arabs could or would live in one land. Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; spiritual or secular. The two visions refused to marry up, to agree on what constitutes a truly Jewish life. They still do.
March 16, 2020
an excellent overview of Jewish history ... of particular importance to me was the 1800s period of emancipation and the reaction against Jews after they had gained full rights ... here are some of my notes ...
*** Bruno Bauer had published The Jewish Question, lamenting the emancipation of the Jews.
*** The socialist Pierre Leroux did not just declare that their emancipation had been inadvisable, but actually dangerous, ‘the most reprehensible of all the vices committed by our society’. In common with many others of the left as well as the right, he wanted to lock them away again in their urban prisons. What a mistake Napoleon had made when he tore down the ghetto gates and walls!
*** Back in Charlottenburg, Adolf Stoecker, the court chaplain to the kaiser, preached regularly on the Christ-killing infamy of the Jews and the alien character which would make them forever strangers to Germans, incapable, short of mass conversion, of ever being truly integrated into the body of the nation. The emancipation of the Jews had been a terrible mistake. ... Now was the time to reverse it.
*** The financial crash of 1873, especially disastrous in central Europe, was blamed on the Jews
*** the new anti-Semitism which lent itself to catchphrases which stuck. The stickiest and deadliest was ‘Die Juden sind unser Unglück’ (‘The Jews are our misfortune’)
*** There was nothing that Adolf Hitler, born around this time in 1889, would end up saying which had not been anticipated in the writing and speeches of these first vehement German-nationalist anti-Semites.
*** Bruno Bauer had published The Jewish Question, lamenting the emancipation of the Jews.
*** The socialist Pierre Leroux did not just declare that their emancipation had been inadvisable, but actually dangerous, ‘the most reprehensible of all the vices committed by our society’. In common with many others of the left as well as the right, he wanted to lock them away again in their urban prisons. What a mistake Napoleon had made when he tore down the ghetto gates and walls!
*** Back in Charlottenburg, Adolf Stoecker, the court chaplain to the kaiser, preached regularly on the Christ-killing infamy of the Jews and the alien character which would make them forever strangers to Germans, incapable, short of mass conversion, of ever being truly integrated into the body of the nation. The emancipation of the Jews had been a terrible mistake. ... Now was the time to reverse it.
*** The financial crash of 1873, especially disastrous in central Europe, was blamed on the Jews
*** the new anti-Semitism which lent itself to catchphrases which stuck. The stickiest and deadliest was ‘Die Juden sind unser Unglück’ (‘The Jews are our misfortune’)
*** There was nothing that Adolf Hitler, born around this time in 1889, would end up saying which had not been anticipated in the writing and speeches of these first vehement German-nationalist anti-Semites.
December 25, 2017
In this painfully beautiful 700-page second instalment, Schama has given us a string of exquisitely vivid vignettes about the tenacity of an inextinguishable culture that perennially wandered and suffered. It begins with the story about a David Reubeni and ends with a cliffhanger about the very Theodor Herzl - one can see what it is aiming at. It talks about Jewishness, antisemitism, and Zionism. But it is also about the Enlightenment, modernity, secularism, and realpolitik. And of course, as Schama reminds us, it is about the vitality of a people. As expected, the account is Eurocentric (only one chapter is on the Jews in China and India), and mostly about the elites (the monied and the cultured), but it does have some sections on the other classes. The great bulk of the pages are on the Sephardim but of course it does talk about the Ashkenazim, particularly in the later chapters. It is amazing how all the tales are intertwined and how universally relevant the subject matter is to contemporary life. A first volume provides the background and I can't wait for the third to come.
December 9, 2017
This second volume of Simon Schama's history of the Jewish people begins in the ghettos of Venice where the Jews of the Iberian peninsula had ended up after being expelled. Those that had not escaped were forced to convert and even then were still persecuted. This search for safety and somewhere to live where they could carry on with their lives in peace had been a pressing concern; and as this book explains in some detail, the theme of moving, settling, suffering and moving again, would keep repeating for the next few hundred years.
The story that Schama tells is as epic in scope as it is global. We travel with him all around Europe, into the cold of Russia, across the Atlantic to the New World of America and venture into the privileged upper-class world of the English aristocracy. He tells of those that lost children as they were conscripted into the army, those that found peace before the winds of change in Europe blew through once again, those that suffered for their faith and those that fought back. Even though this is a sweeping history of a people, he concentrates on individuals and specific events to explain the wider history the Jews.
This is a huge book, at around 800 odd pages long and Schama goes into huge amounts of detail as he tells his stories of the Jewish people. Some of it is fascinating, but there were times when I felt like I was wading through it as he expanded on the minutia as the events unfolded. It is one that I feel some sort of accomplishment having read it now.
The story that Schama tells is as epic in scope as it is global. We travel with him all around Europe, into the cold of Russia, across the Atlantic to the New World of America and venture into the privileged upper-class world of the English aristocracy. He tells of those that lost children as they were conscripted into the army, those that found peace before the winds of change in Europe blew through once again, those that suffered for their faith and those that fought back. Even though this is a sweeping history of a people, he concentrates on individuals and specific events to explain the wider history the Jews.
This is a huge book, at around 800 odd pages long and Schama goes into huge amounts of detail as he tells his stories of the Jewish people. Some of it is fascinating, but there were times when I felt like I was wading through it as he expanded on the minutia as the events unfolded. It is one that I feel some sort of accomplishment having read it now.
February 8, 2018
Belonging Nowhere
Sparkling prose, insightful analysis and personal stories that make a larger point are what distinguish Simon Schama's histories. This one hits the bullseye in every respect, making it a superior sequel to the first volume of the promised three. Tracing the history of the Jews from the time of the inquisition to Zionism is no mean feat, but Schama is up to the task. His knack for focusing on the individual gives his histories a granular feel that many others can't come close to matching. This is no primer; there is no obvious timeline but nonetheless the themes are there. The Jews, persecuted by the Christians and Muslims, strive for belonging, to the worlds of commerce, science, nation and ultimately the redemption of the Jewish people, only to have whatever success offset by terrible reversals, tragedies, slights and the promise of worse to come.
There are few books where one can say I learned something new - in this case, not just one thing - from every chapter I read. Even things I thought I knew took on a different complexion and emerged more fascinating than I thought. Schama has a genius for history and this is a fine example of him at his best. He has a tight command on his diverse subject matter, and his compelling writing carries you through the nearly 700 pages of narrative. It is a physically heavy book in hardback, but is not a taxing read. It should be a very uncomfortable book for Christians, especially those who feel the Nazis were an aberration in history.
I am looking forward to the concluding volume. This is one for Jews and Gentiles.
Sparkling prose, insightful analysis and personal stories that make a larger point are what distinguish Simon Schama's histories. This one hits the bullseye in every respect, making it a superior sequel to the first volume of the promised three. Tracing the history of the Jews from the time of the inquisition to Zionism is no mean feat, but Schama is up to the task. His knack for focusing on the individual gives his histories a granular feel that many others can't come close to matching. This is no primer; there is no obvious timeline but nonetheless the themes are there. The Jews, persecuted by the Christians and Muslims, strive for belonging, to the worlds of commerce, science, nation and ultimately the redemption of the Jewish people, only to have whatever success offset by terrible reversals, tragedies, slights and the promise of worse to come.
There are few books where one can say I learned something new - in this case, not just one thing - from every chapter I read. Even things I thought I knew took on a different complexion and emerged more fascinating than I thought. Schama has a genius for history and this is a fine example of him at his best. He has a tight command on his diverse subject matter, and his compelling writing carries you through the nearly 700 pages of narrative. It is a physically heavy book in hardback, but is not a taxing read. It should be a very uncomfortable book for Christians, especially those who feel the Nazis were an aberration in history.
I am looking forward to the concluding volume. This is one for Jews and Gentiles.
December 6, 2017
This is a mammoth book - 700 pages of Simon Schama's inimitable and dazzling way of telling history through the stories of individuals. And what characters they are - rich and poor, learned and unlearned, fixers and dealers, actor-managers, poetesses, opera composers, a US diplomat, builders of railways, a remarkable bare-knuckle boxing champion in London at the end of the 18th century..... The book bursts with life, but at the same time there is always the suffering, the libels, the accusations of (forced) rootlessness, the struggle for acceptance, the pogroms, the explosion of anti-semitism in France which accompanied the Dreyfus affair, and the ongoing battle for "belonging" and the prescience of what was to come which ultimately led Theodor Herzl to Jerusalem in 1898. The third volume will take up the story from 1900. Whether or not Simon Schama can retain his exuberance when writing about the most difficult century yet, remains to be seen.
April 29, 2019
I was taught on my tour guide course that it's better to tell stories, rather than lecture. Simon Schama takes this to heart in this, the 2nd of eventually 3 volume history of the Jewish people. Not only is it written with Schama's usual creamy prose, but he takes the time to tell the life stories of people (both significant and not so much) who embroider the vast tapestry that is Jewish history. I would give it a 6th star.
October 10, 2022
(3.5 stars rounded up to 4)
This was quite a good book and I'm glad I read it, but I would be lying if I said there weren't some flaws and some pretty key parts of the story of the Jews for the period covered missing.
Like the previous book in this series, the writing is of a high quality. Schama has a way of painting history based on the personal stories of those living in the era he is writing about, which paints a realistic and lifelike picture of the times he covers. He writes in a florid and enthusiastic tone, so you can really see the passion he has for the story of the Jews, which he himself is of course a small part of.
Two chapters in this book I really enjoyed were on the stories of the Jews of India and Jews of China. I knew nothing about them and in particular when it came to the story of the Jews of China, it was nice to read of a place, where the Jews were free of persecution, the opposite of the norm for the last 2,000 years of Jewish history.
Schama also writes well about the enlightenment era and how despite its promise, progress and modernity it was a time of antisemitism and Zionism in part was a response to this, as well as the age old yearning for Zion.
I thought the chapter on Shabbitai Zevi was excellent, as was the chapter on the Jews of Poland.
The rest of chapters were OK or quite good, without being outstanding. There were parts of these chapters which felt quite dense and not that easy to penetrate.
To me although the stories of the Jews of Yemen, Turkey and Jerusalem were touched on briefly, the book missed out the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in the main as if they didn't exist or weren't part of a beautiful Jewish civilisation themselves. Given that the babylonian Jewish community was one of the oldest Jewish communities worldwide with a rich history in religion, science, commerce, politics, music and much more, this seems a huge thing to miss out on and it once again felt as if a British-Iraqi Jew, the story of Mizrahi Jews was being written out of the story, as if we were lesser Jews. Nor too was there a place for the Jews of Persia, Libya and Egypt despite their rich and varied history.
The book lacked a concluding chapter, to tie the book all together, which I believe it would have benefited from. Its almost as if the book stopped on a question mark or was a train fast approaching its destination but not completing it.
This gives you a quite a good history of the Jews and the research and passion for the subject the author has are clear to see. There is also a great selection of pictures. However, as I've alluded to, there are some significant flaws. Schama''s two books on the history of the Jews give you quite a good overview of the history of the Jews, so I would recommend reading them, but to get the full story, particularly of Mizrahi Jews, you will need to read other books as well.
This was quite a good book and I'm glad I read it, but I would be lying if I said there weren't some flaws and some pretty key parts of the story of the Jews for the period covered missing.
Like the previous book in this series, the writing is of a high quality. Schama has a way of painting history based on the personal stories of those living in the era he is writing about, which paints a realistic and lifelike picture of the times he covers. He writes in a florid and enthusiastic tone, so you can really see the passion he has for the story of the Jews, which he himself is of course a small part of.
Two chapters in this book I really enjoyed were on the stories of the Jews of India and Jews of China. I knew nothing about them and in particular when it came to the story of the Jews of China, it was nice to read of a place, where the Jews were free of persecution, the opposite of the norm for the last 2,000 years of Jewish history.
Schama also writes well about the enlightenment era and how despite its promise, progress and modernity it was a time of antisemitism and Zionism in part was a response to this, as well as the age old yearning for Zion.
I thought the chapter on Shabbitai Zevi was excellent, as was the chapter on the Jews of Poland.
The rest of chapters were OK or quite good, without being outstanding. There were parts of these chapters which felt quite dense and not that easy to penetrate.
To me although the stories of the Jews of Yemen, Turkey and Jerusalem were touched on briefly, the book missed out the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in the main as if they didn't exist or weren't part of a beautiful Jewish civilisation themselves. Given that the babylonian Jewish community was one of the oldest Jewish communities worldwide with a rich history in religion, science, commerce, politics, music and much more, this seems a huge thing to miss out on and it once again felt as if a British-Iraqi Jew, the story of Mizrahi Jews was being written out of the story, as if we were lesser Jews. Nor too was there a place for the Jews of Persia, Libya and Egypt despite their rich and varied history.
The book lacked a concluding chapter, to tie the book all together, which I believe it would have benefited from. Its almost as if the book stopped on a question mark or was a train fast approaching its destination but not completing it.
This gives you a quite a good history of the Jews and the research and passion for the subject the author has are clear to see. There is also a great selection of pictures. However, as I've alluded to, there are some significant flaws. Schama''s two books on the history of the Jews give you quite a good overview of the history of the Jews, so I would recommend reading them, but to get the full story, particularly of Mizrahi Jews, you will need to read other books as well.
September 2, 2021
The recent surge of anti-semitism in Europe and America has been heart breaking, especially when that anti-semitism led to violence at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist terrorist in 2018. Sadly, Jewish history is fraught with such tragedies, even before you get to the Holocaust under the Nazis. But Jewish history is far more than these senseless tragedies. In this second volume to his planned trilogy, historian Simon Schama traces the history of the Jewish people from the Renaissance to the dawn of the 20th century, laying out in dense detail their many triumphs and tragedies and their persistence in the face of unbelievable hardships.
For my full review, check out my book blog here.
For my full review, check out my book blog here.
April 19, 2020
It has taken me a long time to finish reading this but the lockdown has given me the impetus and the time. Schama writes so engagingly that it is a deceptively easy read: you can grasp the sweep of history in a way that few other historians manage so effectively. He also manages, with wise use of vignettes about chosen characters, to provide vivid descriptions of daily life against the backdrop of big events: sometimes it feels as if you are reading a novel. And all this is grounded in rigorous scholarship. The breadth of his reading and understanding is truly impressive. Eagerly anticipating volume 3 of this masterwork.
January 2, 2018
Let's put it that way...
...I highly respect Schama and recognize in him a great intellectual. I was looking for something that entertains me without the scholarship flavourful the book provides. My bad. The book is lesser about history more into social pages. Some high points such as the portion, short though, about Jefferson, the Brazilian sefaradis and a bit about the Hungarian assimilated petit bourgeois. Will try, though, volume I.
...I highly respect Schama and recognize in him a great intellectual. I was looking for something that entertains me without the scholarship flavourful the book provides. My bad. The book is lesser about history more into social pages. Some high points such as the portion, short though, about Jefferson, the Brazilian sefaradis and a bit about the Hungarian assimilated petit bourgeois. Will try, though, volume I.
July 20, 2019
Brilliant book and beautifully written. The only issue is that Sir Simon almost completely negates the great Jewish communities of the Sephardi world: Persia, Bagdad, Morocco and Tunisia. The book focuses primarily on the history of European Jewry, so if you’re looking to learn more about Sephardi history, you won’t find much here.
February 19, 2019
Holy crap that was obscenely long! So many stories that you can't see the whole narrative, and really requires you to have a fairly good working knowledge of Jewish practice (also French and Latin) to make sense of it all.
August 23, 2019
Stronger on social history than history history but well written and approachable
Read
November 12, 2022i started to read these books because of a bewilderment bordering on ignorant anti-semitism. i just didn't understand. and whilst it would be a stretch to say that they have cured me of ignorance, they have certainly opened my eyes to a vital perspective. with all the time it took i have had long stretches to reflect on history, culture, and the nature of writing and learning. these books have a sickening ryhthm, a repetitiveness that drums the plight of the jews into your mind. it was not a fault of the author, but of history. and because of the sheer size, and the failure of writing to fully impart itself into my mind, more or less only the rhythm of the books remains, the details fuzzy or gone. i hope now i can have more sympathy and patience with that which i don't understand, and if necessary, take the time to learn just a little bit. i hope in future i can pay greater attention to the beauty, rather than only the misfortunes. shalom.
June 28, 2019
This is a huge, dense book. And it tells a very interesting story, spread across many countries. I have to confess that I was not able to read all of it due to time pressures from other quarters (and the scale of the book too). But the parts I did get time to look at were very engaging, interesting and informative, and I would like to go back to it again when I get more time to do it the justice it deserves...
May 26, 2020
Part two of Simon Schama's epic history of the dispersion of the Jews, their persecution, attempted integration and the vision of a new Zion. There are so many contradictions as different people find different ways to deal with the age old hatred and discrimination but they are wonderfully chronicled in this very ambitious project. I wonder if there are any plans of bringing it up to date albeit that what has happened to the Jews in the 20th Century has already been covered in detail and probably does not require another painful reminder.
March 6, 2018
This isn't really a history, instead it is a collection of stories about individual Jews up until 1800. Schama tells of Spinoza, Mendelsom and others in a way that people would tell stories in a break room. Complete with witty asides, jargon and stereotypes. Jews have survived for over two thousand years in spite of, or maybe because of persecutions and rabid antisemitism.
July 3, 2022
For historophiles , the two works - “The story of Jews : finding words 1000 BC -1492 AD and Belonging: the story of jews 1492 -1900 of Mr Simon Schama on Jews history is like travelling through the fibre of time and experiencing those events as it is happening in front of reader ... Great work
May 5, 2019
A fantastic collection of stories structured into a coherent history.
January 30, 2019
Dear old Simon has got far too carried away with his own rhetoric, and consequently seems to lose himself as well as this particular reader's interest far too frequently. He is a good writer but not good enough to pull off the various literary techniques that he employs. Page after page of grinding purple prose taking him absolutely nowhere; every chapter starting with a fairly nondescript anecdote, and then expanding into the bigger picture. It's as if he can't decide whether it's a novel or a history and consequently founders between the two. No spoiler, but you only need to read the final couple of paragraphs to see what I mean.
This is a pity because the general and valid point is that the Jewish people were subject to shameful abuses long before the 20th century outrages. They had to endure the Auto-da-Fe's of the Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, the whims of rulers all over the world, and much more besides. His insights into how they still managed to flourish and the beginnings of the yearning for an independent Zionist state are invaluable. The final 200 or so pages are much better. As for the remainder, I do wish that he had said in one word what he does say in 50.
I also have a concern that -against this mass of detail- his perfunctory assessment of Arab occupants of Palestine shows his true colours; and that as the tale progresses, he loses his historian's sense of impartiality and is trying to impose a Zionist agenda upon the reader. I do hope that I am wrong.
As a book, I have to say that it is incredibly hard-going, there is little of lasting interest, and it is instantly forgettable. I'm glad that I managed to finish it, but am mightily relieved to have done so!
This is a pity because the general and valid point is that the Jewish people were subject to shameful abuses long before the 20th century outrages. They had to endure the Auto-da-Fe's of the Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, the whims of rulers all over the world, and much more besides. His insights into how they still managed to flourish and the beginnings of the yearning for an independent Zionist state are invaluable. The final 200 or so pages are much better. As for the remainder, I do wish that he had said in one word what he does say in 50.
I also have a concern that -against this mass of detail- his perfunctory assessment of Arab occupants of Palestine shows his true colours; and that as the tale progresses, he loses his historian's sense of impartiality and is trying to impose a Zionist agenda upon the reader. I do hope that I am wrong.
As a book, I have to say that it is incredibly hard-going, there is little of lasting interest, and it is instantly forgettable. I'm glad that I managed to finish it, but am mightily relieved to have done so!
December 24, 2019
I really learned quite a bit especially about the long standing animosity in Europe against the Jews. It makes more sense how the Holocaust was happened.
February 1, 2018
As expected, fascinating, especially where figures I recognize from art history appear as significant players in their worlds. A large, densely printed tome unsuited to being toted about, so rather slow going.
February 3, 2024
I listened to the first volume maybe three years ago and learned a lot. The many experiences of envy, persecution and expulsion in that book make it all too predictable that the Jews would continue to have a hard time. Many have great successes in trade, banking and the gradually wider areas of work which they become permitted to do. There were times and places where things became easier for a while but it never seems to last. The old lies and hatred’s return.
Simon Schama sees history as a series of stories and that is how he proceeds, telling the reader about the experiences of key individuals and groups. The records of the Inquisition are particularly useful in understanding the experiences of the Conversos, first Spanish and later Portuguese. But the experiences of these Sephardic families is matched by lots of Ashkenazi stories. They become distillers of vodka, innkeepers and financiers of the dissolute Galician noble families, booted out when Russia annexed those lands. America becomes the best option largely as a result of the constitutional freedom of religion and the opportunities from the opening up of the centre and West and the growth of the cities. France and Germany are good for some time but the Dreyfus affair divided the nation rather in the way Brexit did recently in Britain and the vicious anti-semitism was important in persuading Theodor Herzl of the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Unfortunately far too little thought was given to be what the Arabs might think about it. Herzl accurately predicted the hatred and destruction that would come but had hoped that the new Zion would prevent it. As we know, it didn’t work out that way.
April 7, 2021
This is an amazing work of scholarship, and sections of it were really engaging. Other chapters I had to push myself through. I think my problem is that my passion is social history, and I would have been more interested in the variant traditions of the different groups of Jews; I wanted more information about what life was like for the poor, the women, and the children. I would have also appreciated maps showing the movement of groups and concentration of Jewish communities. Schama loves intellectual history. His specialty seems to be analysis of different Jewish writings, which predominantly are the product of the elite. I just got tired of digging into the nitty-gritty of what the Jewish intelligentsia had to say.
Still, I learned an incredible amount. I was very interested to learn about the migration patterns of the Sephardic community after the expulsion from Spain, then Portugal. I also enjoyed reading about the 19th century attempts by the Ashkenazi community to assimilate, and I would have liked more about these groups during earlier years (not enough writings coming out of 16th century Galicia to interest Schama, for example?).
But if I stop bemoaning what The Story of the Jews wasn't, and appreciate it for what it was, I have to applaud Schama for incredible research, excellent writing, and timeless analysis of a people I have always admired. 4 stars. (This is the second hefty volume of this work, and I actually preferred the first volume).
Still, I learned an incredible amount. I was very interested to learn about the migration patterns of the Sephardic community after the expulsion from Spain, then Portugal. I also enjoyed reading about the 19th century attempts by the Ashkenazi community to assimilate, and I would have liked more about these groups during earlier years (not enough writings coming out of 16th century Galicia to interest Schama, for example?).
But if I stop bemoaning what The Story of the Jews wasn't, and appreciate it for what it was, I have to applaud Schama for incredible research, excellent writing, and timeless analysis of a people I have always admired. 4 stars. (This is the second hefty volume of this work, and I actually preferred the first volume).
August 29, 2021
I bought this book, as well as part I, with a purpose. I wanted to learn more about the diaspora in general and, more about the places and culture my family came from. I learned about those things and more from this book. Schama uses a series of stories, from different eras and places to tell the collective tale of the Jewish people. He weaves a compelling narrative and leaves the reader with not only a sense of the facts behind our history but the emotions and the gestalt that add context and richness to the timeline. It left me with a deeper appreciation for the experiences not only of my grandparents but for the Jewish people.
I have one quibble with the way Simon Schama writes though. My feeling is that he presumes a level of knowledge about Jewish and European history from his readers that sets the bar a little too high. I love reading history and do so often but am, by no means, a trained historian. Despite the length (and heft!) of this book, there were times I had to grope my way through chapters because I didn't have a sufficient understanding of events and eras that permeated some of his stories. I felt that more acutely in Book 1 but there were instances in this volume as well.
On the other hand, that dynamic might give me enough motivation to start reading more about those eras.
Overall, this was a deeply satisfying book and I'm very glad I read it.
I have one quibble with the way Simon Schama writes though. My feeling is that he presumes a level of knowledge about Jewish and European history from his readers that sets the bar a little too high. I love reading history and do so often but am, by no means, a trained historian. Despite the length (and heft!) of this book, there were times I had to grope my way through chapters because I didn't have a sufficient understanding of events and eras that permeated some of his stories. I felt that more acutely in Book 1 but there were instances in this volume as well.
On the other hand, that dynamic might give me enough motivation to start reading more about those eras.
Overall, this was a deeply satisfying book and I'm very glad I read it.
October 22, 2018
This is a quite fascinating book. As Schama makes clear at the beginning of the book, this is not a history of the Jewish nation as such. Rather it is conceptually built on telling the stories of more or less famous Jews. Through this method, Schama eventually forms a picture of different periods, places and people living in them. As the title makes clear, Schama is concentrated on the fact that Jews were dispersed throughout the world, nowhere having a home per se, yet being capable to retain a sense of some nationality. Hence, without being overly dramatic or concentrated on mere details, he manages to paint a picture which eventually does not pose only the question what is a Jewish homeland, but what it means to be a Jew in general.
However, the book built only around stories concentrating on different people leaves you only wanting more. More comprehensive and factual history. Possibly this is also a good thing, but since its quite extensive length, I expected a bit more and sometimes found myself drowned in the never-ending characteristics and details. But I guess this is also a matter of one's taste.
However, the book built only around stories concentrating on different people leaves you only wanting more. More comprehensive and factual history. Possibly this is also a good thing, but since its quite extensive length, I expected a bit more and sometimes found myself drowned in the never-ending characteristics and details. But I guess this is also a matter of one's taste.
September 2, 2022
It's quite dense for a first or second foray into Jewish history, but it's written with warmth, and wit, and one gets the sense that there's a lot Schama wishes he'd been present for. This is not a grand, sweeping story; it's the story of little people moving this great phenomenon of Jewishness forward.
I like that. I like the stories of individuals - like Sarra Copia, who was a bright, fiery Jewess at a time when being any of those three was frowned upon for women. Or Menasseh ben Israel, who wrote Salvation of the Jews in order to persuade Oliver Cromwell of his people's right to live free in England. Or Adah Mencken, the actress who was unapologetically Jewish. Or even the acerbic Herzl, the father of Zionism that failed to take into account that there were people already living in Zion.
I wish it would have gone on longer - it stops at 1900, and while I understand that Schama didn't want to touch too much on Israel or the Holocaust, he could have gone up to the 1920s at least. But in general, it was brilliant. This book isn't for the casual reader, but if you're genuinely interested, you will love it from beginning to end.
I like that. I like the stories of individuals - like Sarra Copia, who was a bright, fiery Jewess at a time when being any of those three was frowned upon for women. Or Menasseh ben Israel, who wrote Salvation of the Jews in order to persuade Oliver Cromwell of his people's right to live free in England. Or Adah Mencken, the actress who was unapologetically Jewish. Or even the acerbic Herzl, the father of Zionism that failed to take into account that there were people already living in Zion.
I wish it would have gone on longer - it stops at 1900, and while I understand that Schama didn't want to touch too much on Israel or the Holocaust, he could have gone up to the 1920s at least. But in general, it was brilliant. This book isn't for the casual reader, but if you're genuinely interested, you will love it from beginning to end.
February 16, 2024
What a tour de force. I'm not the same person as when I started this book that's for sure. The first half was difficult but that's because of my ignorance; I had to keep stopping to look up references and meanings. The second was relatively straightforward. More than anything after reading the history of persecution do I understand the need for a Jewish homeland for what for over 2000 years was not just a wandering people (which sounds innocuous as a term) but a people pursued with unbelievable venom by Christians and non Christians alike. The phrase 'the Jewish problem' is now crystal clear in all it's sinister meaning as is Hitler's 'final solution '. Heartbreakingly, I now see the Holocaust as not just searingly inevitable but as 'more of the same ' . Schama is a tremendously learned man and his writing is sparkling. I loved being in his presence as I made my way through this book that everyone should read.
November 29, 2020
Net als deel 1 een monumentaal historisch overzicht gecomponeerd als een ogenschijnlijk bonte mix aan levensverhalen. Vergeleken met dat eerste deel kostte het lezen mij wel veel meer uithoudingsvermogen. Ook bracht het mij wat minder nieuwe inzichten (ondanks verrassende details over Jefferson's Monticello en boeiende inzichten op Dreyfus) - en eigenlijk geen ontspanning. Want, hoe kon het ook anders, dit tweede deel is toch vooral een opsomming van onrecht, knechting, misere en lijden (en veel vaker stil dan hardop uitgeschreeuwd lijden). Hoeveel moeilijker nog zal het lezen van het slotdeel worden? Een kwestie van schrap zetten want dit verhaal moet telkens opnieuw verteld worden. Al met al een razend knap boek wederom van Schama; mijn kritische noot geldt vooral de uitgever die dit aan durfde te prijzen als 'een geschiedenis waarin schoonheid en gruwelen een even grote rol spelen'.
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