3-25-2014, 4-1-21014, online access - The History of the Jews with Simon Schama PBS

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/story-jews/

 

In this PBS series, Jewish British historian Simon Schama covers thousands of years of Jewish history around the world.  Some of the highlights:

 

--The Jewish dream of integration and acceptance during the Enlightenment shattered by the Dreyfus Affair in France and the resurgence of anti-Semitism leading to the Holocaust. 

 

--The British Empire and World War I produce both the Balfour Declaration and aid for the Arab Revolt against Turkey.  In a striking moment, Shama analyzes and reads from Prince Faisal’s 1919 letter welcoming Jews, who are the Arabs’ “cousins,” to Palestine—Lawrence of Arabia and early Zionism come together.

 

--Israeli Independence Day is simultaneously the Nakba (The Catastrophe), and the time of the departure of Jews from Arab countries.  Schama looks unflinchingly at the ruins of a Palestinian village, visits a checkpoint, argues with a settler, and notes the contradiction between the land of milk and honey and miles of barbed wire, and the tragedy of the heirs of the Warsaw ghetto building a new wall. 

 

--The Hand-in-Hand School in Jerusalem teaches both Jewish and Palestinian adolescents.

 

Schama provides historical context for figures and events, as well as his personal experience.  It’s a rich mix, in many places quite moving.

 

Summarized and Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member