Jewish History
Jewish history covers three millennia and vast geographic expanses; and it encompasses centuries of religious, intellectual, and cultural creativity, punctuated by tragic episodes of persecution. Given the richness of the Jewish experience, anthologies that gather a wealth of historical expertise are essential choices for a Judaica library. I include here three such collections as well as a contemporary study of American Jewish history by a single author.
A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present, edited by Eli Barnavi (Schocken Books, 1992), a joint Israeli-French venture, combines full-color photographs, illustrations, maps, and chronological tables with excellent double-paged articles by distinguished international scholars on historical, archaeological, religious, and cultural themes from the origins of the ancient Israelites to contemporary times. Unlike many such works, this book documents the destinies of Jewish communities in North Africa and the Mediterranean Levant, Africa, India, and Latin America, as well as those of Europe, Israel, and North America.
Jewish histories have tended to portray the experiences and practices of men as representative of all Jews, despite the very different roles women have traditionally played in Jewish societies. Considering gender and its implications as a category of investigation is a relatively new development in historical studies that is beginning to transform how all Jewish historians investigate the past. The 16 well-documented essays in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, second edition, edited by Judith R. Baskin (Wayne State University Press, 1998), offer fascinating and accessible analyses of Jewish women’s lives, opportunities, and accomplishments in many cultures and locations from biblical times to the present.
Historical writing is based on primary sources, both written and wrought. The 23 essays in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, edited by David Biale (Schocken Books, 2002), consider human artifacts as much as books in discussing the distinctive cultures Jews have constructed from ancient times to the present in North Africa, Ethiopia, and Western Asia, as well as in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Central to these studies, as well, is the ways Jews have interacted with and against their larger cultural settings.
The first community of Jews to arrive in North America landed in New Amsterdam in 1604. Four hundred years later, American Judaism: A New History by Jonathan Sarna (Yale University Press, 2004) retraces the history of Jews and Judaism in the New World. This long-awaited study provides the best available analysis of the ongoing Jewish adventure in America’s golden land and belongs on every American Jewish bookshelf.
