Sadly, an Evergreen Topic

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Please join me at Palm Beach Synagogue on Nov 12 for a discussion of Gaza in Jewish History (general lecture and a special session for teens) and a look at 16th century Safed

Click here to register.

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Biblical History Course Updated

Many of you followed the Jewish History Lab series of videos, which was the testing ground for research for my next book, The Jewish People: A History (Volume I: Biblical Jewish History), forthcoming from Koren Publishers. The text has recently completed peer review, and as I edit and update the draft, I’m uploading chapters to the Biblical History Course. I plan to remove these chapters from the course once the book is published, probably late 2024. Please consider this a last opportunity to have an advance look at the text and offer your comments! Table of Contents and Front Matter pasted below. Please click here or on the image below to register.

The Jewish People

A History

Volume One: Biblical Israel

Fourth Draft November, 2023

Forthcoming from Koren Publishers, Jerusalem

Henry Abramson

DRAFT: Please do not reproduce or circulate.

Copyright Henry Abramson 2023

Volume One: Biblical Israel

1760 BCE to 200 CE

Table of Contents

Approbation from Rabbi Ya’akov Trump

Introduction

1. The Biblical Narrative
2. The Archaeological Record
3. Daily Life in Biblical Israel
4. Exile and Return
5. From the Maccabees to the Romans
6. The World of the Sages
7. Judea under Roman Rule
8. The Birth of Christianity
9. The Roman-Jewish War
10. Women in Ancient Israel
11. The Jewish People Survive Antiquity

Bibliographic Essay: On Covenantal History

Photo Credits

Acknowledgments

Imagine that, while browsing in the library, you come across one book unlike the rest, which catches your eye because on its spine is written the name of your family. Intrigued, you open it and see many pages written by different hands in many languages. You start reading it, and gradually you begin to understand what it is. It is the story each generation of your ancestors has told for the sake of the next, so that everyone born into this family can learn where they came from, what happened to them, what they lived for, and why. As you turn the pages, you reach the last, which carries no entry but a heading. It bears your name.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Introduction

Hannah Szenes

Leaping into the open sky with a British radio and a heavy canvas parachute strapped to her back, young Hannah Szenes (pronounced SEH-nesh) hurtled downward into Nazi-occupied Europe, determined to dislodge the German invaders from her native Hungary. Although she had already secured her own personal safety by immigrating to the Land of Israel in 1939, she could not resist the call to help her endangered people. Hannah joined thirty-one brave volunteers to undertake the dangerous clandestine mission operating behind enemy lines. She was twenty-three years old.

She was captured shortly after infiltrating Hungarian territory. Tortured and brutalized, teeth knocked from her jaw, she stubbornly refused to reveal the radio transmitter codes, heroically protecting her comrades. After months of brutal interrogation, her frustrated and cowardly captors finally executed her by firing squad on November 7, 1944. She refused to wear a blindfold.

Hannah Szenes is remembered not only for her courage, but also for her poetry. Her moving “Blessed Is the Match,” penned while on she was on her mission, is a youth anthem in modern Israel. Among her poems is the characteristically brief “There Are Stars.” 

יֵשׁ כּוֹכָבִים שֶׁאוֹרָם מַגִיעַ אַרְצָה,
רַק כַּאֲשֶׁר הֶם עַצְמָם אָבְדוּ וְאֵינָם.
יש אֲנָשִׁים שֶׁזִיו זִכְרָם מֵאִיר
כַּאֲשֶׁר הֵם עַצְמָם אֵינָם עוֹד בְּתוֹכֵנוּ.
אוֹרוֹת אֵלֶה הַמַּבְהִיקִים בְּחֶשְׁכַת הַלַיִל –
הֵם הֵם שֶׁמַּרְאִים לָאָדָם אֶת הַדֶּרֶךְ.

There are stars whose light reaches Earth

only when they themselves are gone and no more.

There are people whose radiant memories shine 

when they themselves are gone and no longer among us.

These lights, brilliant in the dark of night – 

they are the ones that illuminate one’s path.

Her metaphor is at once both cosmic and historical. Just as there are stars in the night sky whose radiance is reflective of the brilliance they exuded many light-years ago, only reaching and illuminating the earth eons later, so too are there people who lived centuries ago, yet their influence is still felt as immediately as one perceives the stars in the night sky. 

The goal of The Jewish People is to provide a constellation map to Jewish history, the broad swath of stars that provide light and inspiration for the Jewish people even today. This book is introductory in tone and the scope is broad, from the distant origins of the people to the present generation. Depth and complexity are unfortunately sacrificed in a compressed work of this nature, and I have frequently employed the Rabbinic dictum of “revealing a handbreadth while concealing two” for the sake of providing readers with a coherent narrative arc. This history seeks to present the ancestral traditions that the Jewish people have revered for millennia on the one hand, while recognizing the persuasive arguments raised against elements of that narrative over the last two hundred years of archaeological and literary research, on the other. For some readers, this book will be insufficiently divorced from Rabbinic teachings; for others, it will be positively heretical, and I do not expect I will satisfy all readers with this historiographic approach. My limited goal is to achieve the qualified praise awarded a certain historian in an Encyclopaedia Judaica article: “not an original or profound scholar, but he did much to popularize Jewish history.”^[i] It is hoped that motivated students will consult the references for more nuance, detail, and differing perspectives. For those who are so inclined, I discussed in greater detail in the essay “On Covenantal History” at the conclusion of this work.

Translations are generally my own unless otherwise indicated, using Koren publications such as the Tanakh Magerman Edition and the Noé Edition of the Koren Talmud Bavli as references. Dates are provided in the standard Gregorian calendar, using BCE (before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). The names of geographic locations, a source of perennial dispute, are generally provided using terms familiar to contemporary readers, even if anachronistic: Jerusalem rather than Aelia Capitolina or Al-Quds, for example. The Middle Eastern home of the Jewish people is rendered as the Land of Israel, distinguished from the post-1948 State of Israel, or simply Israel.

My research and writing benefited from corrections, observations, and insights from colleagues and students, many of whom are mentioned in the acknowledgments section at the end of this book. All errors of fact or interpretation, sadly, are my own.

I begin this work with humility and gratitude to the Source of all blessing, who has provided me with the opportunity to spend my life studying Torah and the history of the Jewish people. Of all the gifts I have received, the most precious is my beloved wife Ilana, who has guided me with wisdom from the very beginning.

יָפָ֨ה אַ֤תְּ רַעְיָתִי֙ כְּתִרְצָ֔ה נָאוָ֖ה כִּירוּשָׁלָ֑͏ִם אֲיֻמָּ֖ה כַּנִּדְגָּלֽוֹת.

 הָסֵ֤בִּי עֵינַ֙יִךְ֙ מִנֶּגְדִּ֔י שֶׁ֥הֵ֖ם הִרְהִיבֻ֑נִי

You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, enchanting as Jerusalem, 

terrifying as a bannered army.

Turn your eyes from me, for they overwhelm me.

Song of Songs 6:4–5

HMA

Fair Lawn, New Jersey

Heshvan 5784/November 2023

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