A history of the Jews

A comprehensive survey of Jewish history from the biblical period to the present. States that writing a history of the Jews is almost like writing a history of the world seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim. Stresses the Jewish contribution to civilization in the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect and their formulation, as well as the Jews' role as epitomizers of the human condition - the emblem of homeless and vulnerable humanity. Jews have attracted, over the millennia, unparalleled and inexplicable hatred, yet they have survived because their belief in providence is a force, a historic dynamic, which moves events. Includes discussion of antisemitism in pagan antiquity and in early Christianity, in Islam, in the Middle Ages (e.g. the Crusades, the Inquisition), and in the modern period (e.g. 19th century Europe, the Holocaust, Arab and Soviet anti-Zionism). (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)