History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6)

This is where Judaism as we know it was forged. Heinrich Graetz, the great 19th-century historian, traces the Jewish people through six extraordinary centuries: from the warrior-priests of the Hasmonean dynasty, through the catastrophic revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Second Temple, into the long, fragile centuries of diaspora under Persian and Byzantine rule. The narrative follows the rise of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the catastrophic war with Rome, and the birth of rabbinic Judaism from the ashes of Jerusalem. We witness the Bar Kokhba revolt's desperate hope and crushing defeat, the formation of the Talmudic academies in Babylonia, and the slow, remarkable survival of a people without a homeland. Graetz writes with the partisan passion of a 19th-century Jewish intellectual rediscovering his people's epic. This is not detached scholarship but a work of historical memory, concerned with how a civilization rebuilds itself after catastrophe. For anyone seeking to understand the deep foundations of Jewish history, this volume offers an indispensable, opinionated, and deeply learned account of the transformation from ancient Israel to medieval Jewry.