Table Of ContentDedication
For Chaya and Avraham Osea in loving memory
Epigraph
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence
the rivers come, thither they return again.
Ecclesiastes 1:7
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Foreword
Part One: papyrus, potsherd, parchment
1. In Egypt
2. The Words
3. Delving, Divining . . .
4. Classical Jews?
Part Two: mosaic, parchment, paper
5. The Menorah and the Cross
6. Among the Believers
7. The Women of Ashkenaz
8. Trials
9. Exile from Exile
Maps
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Photographic Insert
About the Author
Also by Simon Schama
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
List of Illustrations
The streets of Elephantine, courtesy of Oxford Film and Television Ltd Khirbet
Qeiyafa © Tim Kirby
Silver benediction amulet, courtesy of Israel Museum, Jerusalem/The Bridgeman
Art Library Stone shrine from Khirbet Qeiyafa © Jim Hollander/epa/Corbis
Siloam inscription © Tim Kirby
Asherah statuettes © akgimages/Erich Lessing
Members of the Sinai survey, courtesy of Palestine Exploration Fund, London,
UK/The Bridgeman Art Library Plain of Er Rahah from the cleft on Ras
Sufsafeh, courtesy of Palestine Exploration Fund, London, UK/The
Bridgeman Art Library Limestone ossuary with architectural decoration,
courtesy of Israel Museum, Jerusalem/The Bridgeman Art Library Ossuary
belonging to high priest Caiaphas © Tim Kirby
Iraq al-Amir © akgimages/Gerard Degeorge
Ceramic candelabrum courtesy of Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Gift of Morris and
Helen Nozatte through the Morris Nozatte Family Foundation/The
Bridgeman Art Library Hasmonean pruta, courtesy of Israel Museum,
Jerusalem/The Bridgeman Art Library Iraq al-Amir lion and cub © Tim
Kirby
‘Tomb of Zechariah’ © akgimages/Gerard Degeorge
Arch of Titus © Tim Kirby
Fallen masonry from the Jerusalem Temple © Tim Kirby
Wall paintings from Dura-Europos synagogue, courtesy of National Museum of
Damascus, Syria/Photos © Zev Radovan/The Bridgeman Art Library
Sepphoris mosaics depicting the months of Tevet and Nisan, courtesy of
Private Collection/Photos © Zev Radovan/The Bridgeman Art Library
Sepphoris mosaic depicting a menorah © akgimages/Bible Land Pictures
Painting of palm grove from Vigna Randanini © Araldo De Luca
Mosaic of a dolphin, courtesy of Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York,
USA/Museum Collection Fund/The Bridgeman Art Library Child’s exercise
book, T-S K5.13, reproduced permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library Abu Zikri Kohen cheque, T-S Arabic 30.184, reproduced
permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Jew of Bourges
stained glass window © Sonia Halliday Photographs Cartoon of Aaron © The
National Archives Chronica Roffense, courtesy of British Library, London,
UK/The Bridgeman Art Library Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, courtesy of
Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest/The Bridgeman
Art Library Birds’ Head Haggadah, courtesy of The Israel Museum,
Jerusalem/The Bridgeman Art Library Title page from Moreh Neruchim by
Maimonides, courtesy of The Art Archive/Bodleian Library Oxford
Dedicational inscription in El Transito Synagogue © akgimages/Bible Land
Pictures Mudejar stucco decoration in the El Transito Synagogue ©
akgimages/Bible Land Pictures Santa Maria la Blanca Synagogue ©
akgimages/Album/Oronoz
Carpet page from the Kennicott Bible, courtesy of The Art Archive/Bodleian
Library Oxford Barcelona Haggadah, courtesy of The Art Archive/British
Library
The Cervera Bible, courtesy of Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon,
Portugal/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library ‘We were slaves in Egypt’
illustration © The British Library Board (Add. 26957 f.39v) ‘This is the
Bread of Affliction’ illustration © The British Library Board (Add. 26957
f.39) Jonah and the ‘Great Fish’ illustration, Kennicott Bible, courtesy of The
Art Archive/Bodleian Library Oxford Menorah illustration, Kennicott Bible,
courtesy of The Art Archive/Bodleian Library Oxford The colophon page of
the Kennicott Bible, courtesy of The Art Archive/Bodleian Library Oxford
Hebrew micrography © The British Library Board (Add. 15282 f.45v)
Catalan Atlas, courtesy of The Art Archive/Bibliothèque Nationale Paris
Maps
The Bible Lands 10th century BCE to 70 CE
Synagogues in late antiquity
Jewish towns in Arabia
The Jewish world revealed by the Cairo Geniza
Jews in Christian Iberia, c.1390
Massacres and expulsions in medieval Christendom
Foreword
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. ‘My sonne’, the wintry-wise preacher of Ecclesiastes
admonishes, ‘of making many bookes there is no end and much studie is a
wearinesse of the flesh’. Anyone venturing into Jewish history has to be
dauntingly aware of the immense mountain ranges of multi-volume scholarship
towering behind him. Nonetheless, forty years ago, I agreed to complete a
history of the Jews left unfinished at the death of one of those scholars, Cecil
Roth, whose entire life had been devoted to that subject. At the time, I was at
work on a book on the Rothschilds and Palestine. Together with a friend and
colleague at Cambridge University, Nicholas de Lange, a scholar of Jewish
philosophy in late antiquity and Amos Oz’s translator, I had been educating
myself at the students’ expense in post-biblical history through an informal
seminar held in my rooms at Christ’s College. For a couple of hours after supper,
the sages, false messiahs, poets and rabble-rousers came into our little company
as we cracked walnuts and jokes, and drank wine and the brimming cup of
Jewish words.
But Nicholas and I had brought the gatherings together for a serious reason.
Outside of rabbinics there seemed to us no other place for history or literature
students to meet and discuss Jewish culture, and that itself was a sign of how
separate the subject had become from the academic mainstream. By the time the
invitation to complete the Roth volume came along, there were other pressing
reasons to want to make a connection between the history of the Jews and
everyone else. It was 1973. The Yom Kippur Arab–Israeli War had just taken
place. Despite another Israeli military success, the mood was as sober as it had
been euphoric seven years earlier, after the Six Day War. This last conflict had
been a close-run thing, especially during the bold Egyptian advance over the
Suez Canal and into Sinai. The sands were shifting; something which had
seemed secure no longer was. The years which followed saw Jewish history at
both ends of its multi-millennia chronology become fiercely self-critical of
triumphalism. Biblical archaeology took a radically sceptical turn. Painful truths
