The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE - 1492 cover art

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE - 1492

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The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE - 1492

By: Simon Schama
Narrated by: Andrew Sachs, Saul Reichlin
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About this listen

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.

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 everyone's story, too.

©2013 Simon Scama (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Judaism Middle East
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Simon Schama, ever the virtuoso of narrative history, conjures a world through the life of a single individual, a genius Jew, a craftsman whose hands shaped beauty, a Rabbi whose words carried wisdom ect. From this one life, Schama unravels a broader story, a history that swells and contracts like breath itself, marked always by the shadow of persecution. He takes us from the intimate corners of a workshop or a synagogue to the vast, roiling tides of history, where the individual is both a thread and a witness to the larger fabric.

Schama’s prose moves with an elegance that mirrors the rhythm of the lives he depicts, by turns poetic and precise, rich yet unpretentious. He doesn’t merely recount events; he resurrects them, layering his storytelling with a painter’s eye for detail and a philosopher’s grasp of human frailty. It is a history where beauty flourishes even as destruction looms, where light and darkness are inseparably intertwined. In his hands, the story does not end, it lingers, haunting the reader long after the final page is turned. This is not just history; it is a meditation on endurance, resilience, and the cruel, unyielding cycles of human folly.
Just fantastic.

Pain and Resilience

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I learnt a lot about middle eastern and european Jewish experiences and culture. Would have liked to know more about Jews living in India for many centuries

Beautifully narrated overview

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I found this book quite hard to follow.we seemed to be told events all over the place and I was often confused with which century we were in. but I was shocked by the terrible history the jews have had

the story of the jews

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