by Simon Schama
Whether Zacuto himself died and was buried in the Land of Israel, as pious tradition has it, is not known for sure; but it is certain that he went there at some point towards the end of his life and communed still more closely with the multitudes of Jews he had resurrected in his pages. There was no tomb, however dubiously identified, that Zacuto did not want to see and bow his head before: Nun, the father of Joshua at Timnath; Yehudah Hanasi, the prince and master of the Mishnah, interred at Sepphoris with ten Gaons, five to his right and five to his left; the prophet Habakkuk at Kafr Yakuk; Hillel and Shammai at Meron in Galilee.
And then, by his own account Zacuto made his way to Damascus and from there walked for two days to Aleppo where he was shown what was said to be the tomb of Ezra the Scribe, the writer of books of the Bible, the recoverer of the word for the returned exiles camping amid the broken walls of Jerusalem. There, in some mouldy cell, Abraham Zacuto beheld what he thought to be a miracle of survival: an oil stain on the candleholder which had given the light for Ezra to write his Torah scroll.
Men were sailing to the very rim of creation with his almanac of the sun, moon and planets to guide them. Jews had been scattered again to the ends of the earth. But where were the ends of the earth? Beyond, was there a true void, as Hasdai Crescas may he rest in peace had insisted, the emptiness from which the universe had been made, or was there just space infinitely divided and extended as Abravanel the Aristotelian thought, the ships and caravans moving on and on from one passage to the next?36 Zacuto’s mind, like that of so many Jews, was caught between the ancestral and the visionary, the endless past and the opening future under the charted heavens and the vast ocean. Perhaps the ends of the earth were where the words reached farthest? For all the attempts to burn, expunge and blot them out, to excise and criminalise Hebrew reading, to beat the books out of the Jews, the words travelled on and on through space and time. Sometimes, like men put on auction at slave markets, they were released to life even by their malevolent captors, who childishly were interested by how much they might fetch. Zacuto remembered having seen just such a batch of books, taken by Christians from Portugal, on sale in Morocco. Similar markets were found on the other side of the world. Francisco de Pinheiro, one of the Portuguese nobles who had sailed on the India fleet of the admiral viceroy Francisco de Almeida, had brought with him a chest of Hebrew books which his father (a magistrate, naturally) had plundered from a Portuguese synagogue and which he supposed might fetch a ducat or two. On the Malabar coast at Cochin where a community of Jews had been anciently settled, Pinheiro sold his trophy library. The books were ransomed into a new life, redeemed from darkness.
Perhaps a psalm was on Zacuto’s mind. Every Shabbat and festival, in Sephardi synagogues the nineteenth psalm of King David was (and sometimes still is) sung as part of the zemirot hymns. The Sefer Yetzirah – which Zacuto, with his fascination for Kabbalah, knew well – maintained that the Almighty had created the elements of the world from Hebrew letters. So the ends of the earth must be where the words rested, where the heavenly voice was heard, through all the imprecations and lamentations of this world. Yes, that was surely it.
the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
Maps
BCE
1500 BCE c.1200 Merneptah Stele, an inscribed stone slab, created. It represents the first documented reference to Israel in the historical record
1000 BCE 928 Israel divides into Israel and Judah
c.870 Tel Dan Stele created. It contains the first reference to David found outside the Bible (‘House of David’, bytdwd)
721 northern kingdom of Israel destroyed by the Assyrians
715–687 reign of King Hezekiah of Judah
649–609 reign of King Josiah of Judah; Josiah institutes major reforms
597 Nebuchadnezzar’s first siege of Jerusalem and deportation of the elite of Judah
587 the final destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar
586 Zedekiah attempts to capture Jerusalem from Babylonians
588–587 the very last years of Judaean independence
538 Cyrus, King of Persia, allows Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem
525 Cambyses II’s capture of Egypt
520–515 the Second Temple is built
500 BCE 445 Nehemiah rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem
167–161 the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid empire, led by the Maccabees
165–137 the Hasmonean dynasty establishes dominance in Judea
134–132 Antiochus VII lays siege to Jerusalem
74 Herod born
63 the Roman general Pompey the Great enters Jerusalem
37 Herod overthrows Antigonus and establishes the Herodian dynasty
4 Herod dies and the kingdom is divided among his three sons
CE
0 66–73 Judaean Jews revolt against Roman occupation
70 the Second Temple is destroyed by Rome and Jerusalem is captured
73 the fall of the fortress Masada
115–117 the second Jewish-Roman war. Major revolts by Jews in
Cyrene, Cyprus, Mesopotamia and Egypt
132–135 the Second Jewish Revolt in Judea against Roman
occupation under Emperor Hadrian
138 death of Emperor Hadrian and easing of Jewish persecution
There remains controversy over some dates and associated events.
The dates listed above are intended to orientate the reader but may be disputed elsewhere.
CE
0 220 the Mishnah, the first major written version of the Jewish oral
traditions, is redacted by Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi
362–363 Emperor Julian promises to allow the Jews to return to
Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple
363 Emperor Julian is killed and the plan abandoned [late 4th century] conversion of the Kingdom of Himyar to Judaism
500 CE 525 Jewish Himyar falls to the Christian Ethiopians, the Aksumites
570 birth of Muhammad
610–632 the rise of Islam on the Arab peninsula
711 Muslim armies invade Spain and occupy large areas
1000 CE 1013 the fall of Cordoba to Sulayman ibn al-Hakam
1066 massacre of the Jewish community in Granada
1070 Almoravid invaders from Morocco conquer Granada, followed
in the early 12th century by the Almohades
1095 Pope Urban II calls for a Crusade to liberate the Holy Land
1096 massacres of Jewish communities in the towns of the Rhineland
1099 the Crusaders capture the Jerusalem Temple (briefly) and
massacre the Jews of Jerusalem
1187 Saladin conquers Jerusalem
1190 massacre of Jews in York
1278–79 a campaign of crushing terror and violence in which the Jews
of England were accused of ‘coin-clipping’. 269 Jews were hanged
in London
1290 Edward I issues an edict expelling all Jews from England
1298 massacres led by ‘King’ Rintfleisch sweep through 146
communities in Franconia in south Germany
1306 the Great Expulsion. Philip the Fair expels Jews from France
1336–38 Armleder massacres
1338 another wave of violence overtakes the Rhineland
1391 anti-Jewish riots and massacres spread across Aragon and Castile
1394 after Louis X of France recalled the Jews in 1315, Charles VI
issues a decree expelling Jews once again from France
1467 an attempt is launched to attack the Toledo conversos ( Jewish
converts to Christianity)
1478 the Spanish Inquisition is established to ensure the orthodoxy of
> those who converted from Judaism to Christianity
1492 Ferdinand orders the expulsion of the Jews from Spain
1497 expulsion of the Jews from Portugal
1500 CE
Acknowledgements
An enterprise in two media incurs, correspondingly, twice as many debts and even more than is usual in such projects, I am deeply grateful to my colleagues at BBC Television for the kind, wise and unstinting support they have given to this story in all its aspects. Adam Kemp was the first to suggest it, then it was Martin Davidson and Janice Hadlow, Controller of BBC2, who commissioned the series and who have remained staunch, constructively critical mentors. Alan Yentob has been, from a tactful distance, a benevolent party to its achievemnent. Melissa Green, Suzanna McKenna and Mark Reynolds at BBC Worldwide have been believing supporters in every possible way. My television agent, Rosemary Scoular, with constant help from Wendy Millyard, to a degree that exceeds job description, has been as always my constant guardian angel.
The series was made for the BBC by my colleagues at Oxford Films and Television, a peerless gang who give new meaning to the affectionate term mensch (of whatever gender), above all my dear friend and creative partner, Nick Kent, without whom this series would have been unthinkable and impossible and who perforce shared all its agonies and ecstasies, Jewishly magnified, as did Charlotte Sacher, whose wise and penetrating research, elegant editing and sustaining enthusiasm has been the life blood of the project. Tim Kirby brought to the task of Series Producer (and director of three of its programmes) a discriminating intelligence, an immense sympathy for the subject, and superhuman stamina, especially when faced with unexpected turns of events. I am grateful to so many others on our team, especially to Julia Mair for serious research, on-location cheer and wise counsel, and to Kate Edwards for triumphing over the challenge of seeing me through all five films and doing much beyond the call of duty, not least reading grippingly the stories of I. L. Peretz from the back of a car along the fog-shrouded, deeply rutted roads of the Ukraine. My thanks also to the crew of nonpareil Jeremy Pollard, Ariel Grandoli and Anthony Burke, and to the kind vigilance of Jenny Thompson, Annie Lee and Arianwen Flores Jackson. In post-production Hannah Cassavetti was her own particular marvel. Sam Baum and Josh Baum applied their own brand of genius to scribal writing and animation, and Avshalom Caspi, our composer, and Clara Sanabras, our vocalist, became friends as well as vital collaborators.
As usual, my literary agents Michael Sissons and Caroline Michel have been marvels of sustaining wisdom and enthusiasm, believing from the beginning that there would be a receptive public for this work. They have heroically Taken the Strain, especially as the book exploded beyond its original remit as a single volume, as did my publisher Stuart Williams of Bodley Head who could be forgiven for thinking of the book as OverJew. I am grateful to him and to Gail Rebuck of Penguin Random House for finding ways to adapt to an unanticipated plan of publication. At Bodley Head, the book could not have seen the light of day without heroic work from my editor David Milner, copy-editor Katherine Fry, Katherine Ailes (for many tasks), Caroline Wood for picture research, Anna Cowling for kindness and expeditious flexibility in production, proofreaders Sally Sargeant and Ilsa Yardley, and indexer Douglas Matthews. Rowena Skelton-Wallace, Natalie Wall and Kay Peddle have also heroically helped to make the impossible achievable.
For research help on the biblical period and Jewish antiquity, I should like to thank Ester Murdakayeva, and for being my indispensable assistant in pretty much everything inside the libraries and out, Jennifer Sonntag. Provost John Coatsworth was kind enough to grant me the leave from my duties at Columbia University to make filming and writing possible. And I owe it to my late, deeply missed colleague Yosef Yerushalmi, for keeping the flame of Jewish history alive in me in so many ways – his profound and beautiful meditation Zakhor remains at the core of my own historiographical preoccupations. Many other scholars, curators, writers and pals have been unstintingly generous with their counsel, before and during filming and writing, especially Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Felicity Cobbing at the Palestine Exploration Fund, Micha Bar-Am and Pnina Shor at the Israel Museum Dead Sea Scrolls Project, Michal Friedlander at the Jewish Historical Museum in Berlin, Professor Bezalel Porten for a critical reading of the Elephantine chapter, Katya Krausova who was kind enough to share her deep knowledge and photographs of precious sites in eastern Europe, Haim Admor who was my link to the Beta Israel community, and to the wonderful Aviva Rahimi for her unique exodus narrative from Ethiopia to Israel.
This would all have been unrealisable without the generous support of so many dear friends who became accustomed over the years to the low music of my kvetching, as well as my half-articulated notions about Jewish history. To Alice Sherwood I owe a special debt for her constant enthusiasm, critical wisdom and deep belief in the importance of the enterprise. Thanks also to Chloe Aridjis, Clemency Burton Hill, Jan Dalley, Lisa Dwan, Celina Fox, Helene Hayman, Julia Hobsbawm, Elena Narozanski, Caterina Pizzigoni, Danny Rubinstein, Robert and Jill Slotover, Stella Tillyard, Leon Wieseltier and Robert Wistrich.
Chloe, Mike and Gabriel have borne with all the highs and lows they are accustomed to from the author, but it is my wife Ginny who has my deepest gratitude for coping with mood swings of even more dramatic extremes than usual and with the prolonged absences that came with the filming and post-production of the series, and who has done so with her usual, boundless reserves of patience, generosity and love. The two real authors of my Jewish history, my mother and father, are no longer in this world, but something tells me I shall hear from them on the subject in the next.
Bibliography
General surveys: At the monumental end of scholarly Jewish histories, nothing can compare with the eighteen volumes of Salo Baron’s A Social and Religious History of the Jews (2nd edn, New York, 1952–83). Weighing in at seventeen volumes less, but still no lightweight, Howard Sachar’s The Course of Jewish History (New York, 1958) remains readable though inevitably archaeologically dated. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (London and New York, 1987), is still an excellent one-volume introduction. Melvin Konner, Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews (New York, 1987), is a distinctive and in the best way provocative survey, and the great scholar of medieval Hebrew poetry, Raymond Scheindlin, has achieved an enviable feat of compression in A Short History of the Jewish People From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood (New York, 2000). Moshe Rosman’s How Jewish is Jewish History (Portland, OR, 2007) is a brilliant account of the development of Jewish historiography. For the new, more culturally inclusive approach to Jewish history, the crucial work (to which this book is much indebted) is David Biale (ed.), Cultures of the Jews: A New History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), an exceptional anthology of scholarly and interpretative essays, almost all of them provocative in the best sense. A still invaluable collection of primary sources for this period is Frans Kobler (ed.), Letters of Jews Through the Ages: From Biblical Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 1 (New York, 1952).
On the world of the ‘Jewish Troop’ in Elephantine: Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Berkeley, 1968), and The Elephantine Papyri: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change (Leiden, 1996); Joseph Meleze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt from Rameses 2 to the Emperor Hadrian (Philadelphia, 1995); James M. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters (Atlanta, GA, 2003). See also (though at odds with Porten’s scholarly edition) Boulos Ayad Ayad, The Jewish-Aramean Communities of Ancient Egypt (Cairo, 1976).
On the origins of the Bible and the evolution of Israelite religion:
There is now a wealth of exceptional recent scholarly literature, especially in the field of epigraphy, the study of inscriptions. But for the general reader, Karen Armstrong’s The Bible: A Biography (New York, 2007) is still an excellent, clear introduction to the ‘documentary hypothesis’, the historicising philology of the Bible that began in the nineteenth cen
tury. For close readings of the ‘historical books’ see the penetrating work of Sara Japhet, From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah (Winona Lake, Ind., 2000), and The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles (Winona Lake, Ind., 2009). The classic work on the genesis of Israelite religion in Canaanite paganism is Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA, 1973); see also his From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore, 1998). Michael Coogan, The Old Testament: An Historical and Literary Introduction to the Holy Scriptures (New York and London, 2011 ); for the most archaic forms, see Steven Weitzman, Song and Story: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel (Bloomington, Ind., 1997). For the slow, variable and erratic emergence of monotheism from polytheism and henotheism (hierarchically ordered gods): John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Sheffield, 2000); Baruch Halpern, The First Historians (San Francisco, 1998); Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London, 2001); Richard S. Hess, Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical survey (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007); Robert S. Kawashima, Death of the Rhapsode (Bloomington, Ind., 2004); Christopher Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta, GA, 2010); Ron E. Tappy and P. Kyle McCarter (eds), Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan: The Tel Zayit Abecedary in Context (Winona Lake, Ind., 2008); Seth Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew (Urbana, Ill., 2009); W. M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge, 2004); Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford, 2001); The Early History of God (Grand Rapids, MI, 2002); Francesca Stavrokopoulou and John Barton (eds), Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah (London, 2010); Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA, 2007), and The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion (Leuven, 2006); Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville, KY, 1996).