It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds.
It spans the millennia and the continents from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear, from the severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in Muslim Spain.
Within these pages, the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris, massed gibbets hang over the streets of medieval London, a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world; candles are lit, chants are sung, mules are packed, ships loaded with spice and gems founder at sea.
And a great story unfolds. Not as often imagined of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians.
Which makes the story of the Jews everyones story, too.
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, includeCitizens,Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes,A History of Britain,The Power of Art,Rough Crossings,The American Future, The Face of BritainandThe Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).
His art columns for theNew Yorkerwon the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in theGuardianand theFinancial Timeswhere he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented forty films for BBC2 on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics and John Donne.
