Fascinating history in the form of 141 letters

books:

	• Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith Martin Gilbert Schocken, 2002 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A wonderful concise history

This book provides the missing link to the full 5000 years of history--- A kind of "Cliff notes" but wonderful in terms of the ground covered.
I recommend it highly to anyone wanting to get a good overview of 5000 years of Jewish history and traditions.

A CLIFF NOTES OF JEWISH HISTORY

This is a great book, a kind of Cliff Notes of Jewish history from bibical times through to the modern world. No tpoic takes over a few pages and as written by Gilbert it is a pleasure to read.

for more information click here

Details provide inspiration

Overall, Gilbert's comprehensive history is dense, yet readable, with the biggest rewards for me coming in the small details. He clearly proves that Jewish history takes place on a much larger stage and with a much grander scale than some might realize. His synopses of Biblical stories are masterfully interwoven with connections to Jewish traditions and practices, contemporary history and people, and even archeology, so that it is never a dry, ?facts only? history. Indeed, one of the most fascinating elements of this book is Gilbert?s references to lesser-known Jewish communities, including Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, and my own personal favorite?the Alaskan Jews of Congregation Beth Shalom in Anchorage, who call themselves the Frozen Chosen. Also fascinating are references to Jewish individuals such as many Olympic medallists, other historical figures such as Mahatma Gandi?s secretary in South Africa, and his personal reflections on Jewish holidays and worship. These sorts of details are inspirational, fascinating, and compelling.

While comprehensive, this book does have a weakness in that it is not always forthright about the differences between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and other branches of Judaism regarding faith and practice. Gilbert only occasionally points out those differences, and therein lies the biggest question that this book would raise for a reader who is unfamiliar with the various movements and their traditions. Sometimes, Gilbert simply says ?observant Jews,? but never quite explains what he really means by that, or what the different movements?Orthodox vs. Reform, for example?would mean by that. Other questions may arise because of Gilbert?s writing style?syntax is often awkward (perhaps due to this British historian writing in the Queen?s English rather than in the English we Americans are used to) to the point of some paragraphs seeming to contain what are surely unintended errors. Finally, one wishes Gilbert had included Auntie Fori's reaction to this history; that omission makes her quest to learn more of her people's history seem to be only half fulfilled.

for more information click here

Fascinating history in the form of 141 letters

Letters to Auntie Fori documents Jewish history, faith and tradition in the form of 141 fascinating letters to a woman in India BK Nehru who reveals she is a Jew born in Hungary who would like to know something about her people. Gilbert traces Jewish history and faith from the Creation until the year 2000.
It is packed with some very interesting information written in a very interesting way. The way that Gilbert chose to present this history works very well.
Gilbert tells Aunt Fori that after Cain slew Abel and G-D, who of course knew of Abel's murder asked Cain where Abel was, Cain answered "Am I my brother's keeper?"
According to Jewish tradition the rest of the Bible explains how the answer is yes to teach us that we are all responsible for each other.
We learn that the matriarch Rachel, known to the Jews as Rachel Imenu (Rachel our mother) weeps in prayer for the Jewish people. It was giving birth to Joseph's younger brother that Rachel died. Her tomb between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is a holy site fr the Jewish people and for Christians, and has been desecrated by Palestinian mobs several times (which makes it odd that Gilbert says that is also a Muslim holy site).
In the section of King David, where Gilbert writes of the psalms David composed, we learn that Natan Scharansky, a Soviet dissident, imprisoned for many years by the Communists, found solace in a small book of psalms which he was able to keep with him, despite the hostility of his Soviet captors.
Interesting lesser known facts include the popular legend among Iraqi Jews that King Hoshea of the northern kingdom of Israel was deported by the Assyrians further east all the way to Japan where he became the first Japanese Emperor Oshe, founder of the Japanese imperial house. Dates which coincide bear out that this actually could be the case.
While Part 1 deals with the events of the Biblical era, Part 2 deals with the era of the Greek conquest of the Land of Israel up to the Zionist revival of the late 19th century.

It deals with Christian and Islamic persecution as well as the different periods in the development of Judaism including the birth of the Chassidic movement and the Haskalah ("Enlightenment") of the 18th century.

It is interesting to note how the cry of anti-Semites was once "Jews, go to Palestine" and is now "Jews, out of Palestine".

The book takes us through modern anti-Semitism, the Holocaust (of which Gilbert is one of the most prolific historians) and the rebirth of the State of Israel, and it's struggle for survival over 60 years.

We read o the many pogroms against Jews in Arab lands during and after world War II (encouraged by the Nazis) which is knowledge for those who thought the Holocaust was merely by Europeans against Ashkenazic Jews in Europe.
While reading about the War of Independence of 1948, it struck me how Israel-haters harp on about the so-called Deir Yassin massacre while airbrushing out of history events such as the Hebron massacre of Jews in 1929 and the massacre by Arabs of a convoy of Jewish nurses and doctors, known as the Hadassah convoy.
After the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 Jews could once again determine their own future, for the first time in 2000 years, without having to passively depend on the hope gentile tolerance or suffer and die from persecution helplessly.
After what the Jews have been through do those who call for the end of Israel (the euphemistically called 'One State solution' ala Rwanda really think the proudest Jews in the world- the Israeli Jews- will lay themselves open to the whims of the Arabs who have showed them so much hate and tried to destroy them, and live or die on Arab whims.
The whole point of Israel is so we didn't have to lie at the feet of those who hate us, begging and praying for mercy, after so many years of persecution because we had no land of our own.

The book traces the history until 2000 when Ehud Barak was the Israeli Prime Minister and the world was hopeful for peace.
A few months after the book concludes, Arafat reacted to a generous offer by Barak of almost all of the disputed territories AND land inside pre-1967 Israel with a war of terror against the Israeli people, supplemented by a massive propaganda war to destroy Israel waged around the world.
The last part of the book is an explanation- in brief- of Jewish faith and worship.

for more information click here

A masterful introduction to Jewish history

Martin Gilbert's series of letters to Auntie Fori the Indian friend who at the age of ninety revealed to him her Jewishness is a masterful introduction to Jewish history and to the Jewish religion.

Sir Martin Gilbert, renowned author of many authoritative works of history and biography, speaks in a charming, personal voice in this fascinating volume, the saga of five thousand years of Jewish life laid out in a series of intimate, storytelling letters to a lifelong friend.

Sir Martin first met ?Auntie Fori? in 1958,when he arrived in New Delhi with a letter of introduction from her son, a fellow Oxford student. Their friendship flourished for forty years through correspondence and visits to the capitals where her husband, the diplomat B. K. Nehru, was posted. Then, at her ninetieth birthday celebration in 1998, Auntie Fori told her ?adopted nephew? that she was not of Indian birth but was actually Hungarian?and Jewish. She did not know what this Jewish identity involved?historically or spiritually?and she asked him to enlighten her.

In response, Sir Martin embarked on the series of letters that have been gathered to form this book, shaping each one as a concise, individually formed story. He presents Jewish history as the narrative expression?the timeline?of the Jewish faith, and the faith as it is informed by the history. Starting with Adam and Eve, he then brings us to Abraham and his descendants, who worshiped a God who repeatedly, and often dramatically, intervened in their lives. The stories of Genesis and Exodus lead seamlessly on to those of the eras when the land was ruled by the Israelite kings and then by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome?the Biblical and post-Biblical periods. In Sir Martin?s hands, these stories are rich in incident and achievement. He then traces the long history of the Jews in the Diaspora, ending with an unexpected visit to an outpost of Jewry in Anchorage, Alaska. Ranging through almost every country in the world?including China and India?he maintains a chronological structure, weaving in the history of other peoples and faiths, to give Auntie Fori?and us?a sense of the larger stage on which Jewish history has played out.

The last fifty letters are devoted to an explanation of Jewish faith and worship, intertwined with the history and observance of holy days and festivals.

These letters are fascinating in their objectivity and at the same time infused with a deep personal warmth.

Written for one beloved friend, Letters to Auntie Fori brings to life the events and sequence of Jewish history with a special charm that will endear this volume to readers old and young.

for more information click here

hot