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 & the continents
- from India to Andalusia & 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 & its voices ring loud & clear from the severities & 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 & gems founder at sea & a great story unfolds Not
- as often imagined
- of a culture apart but of a Jewish world immersed in & 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