The Story of the Jews, BBC Two
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As presented by Simon Schama.
Anybody else been watching this on Sunday evenings at 9pm on BBC Two? The first two episodes (of five) have been shown.
Not a huge amount that I did not already know, but nevertheless really captivating stuff and Schama has a great way with words and an ability to present history in an interesting manner.
From grudging tolerance to persecution under Christian and Islamic rule, the Spanish Inquisition, massacres and expulsions in England and Spain, and the original ghetto in Venice. And we're only up to the medieval 15th century. Hopefully episodes 3-5 will be kinder to the Jews. Things are bound to get better, right?
Anybody else been watching this on Sunday evenings at 9pm on BBC Two? The first two episodes (of five) have been shown.
Not a huge amount that I did not already know, but nevertheless really captivating stuff and Schama has a great way with words and an ability to present history in an interesting manner.
From grudging tolerance to persecution under Christian and Islamic rule, the Spanish Inquisition, massacres and expulsions in England and Spain, and the original ghetto in Venice. And we're only up to the medieval 15th century. Hopefully episodes 3-5 will be kinder to the Jews. Things are bound to get better, right?
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BIB
Couldn't get into part one due to my excessively loud children but just seen part 2 in relative peace on iplayer and thought it was captivating stuff. Mr Schama has always been one hell of a story teller and we need more of him on the box (and less Starkey)
I've got it on catch up to watch on the iPlayer so might catch up with it tonight as you've given it such a good recommendation. I do like Simon Schama as a presenter too.
I only watched the first. I really wanted to watch this series because, as a Catholic, I'm quite ignorant of Jewish history, but for some reason I couldn't connect with it.
4 of us were in Seville, Spain, for New Year.
We came out of a restaurant around 00.45 on New Year's Day and wandered into a bar to wind down.
We got into conversation with an American family from San Francisco, Ca., husband, wife, and 2 teenaged children.
During the conversation they asked if we had any further trips planned at that time.
My husband said that he was going to Germany in February, to visit his son from his first marriage, who had married a German girl and lived near Hanover.
The American parents, the husband an author of computer studies books, the wife a college professor, looked aghast.
"Oh, we could never go there, we're Jewish," they said.
I thought that they were kidding, but they were serious.
"Do you really think that you'd be in any danger from the German authorities if you went there," I asked.
"We wouldn't want to take the chance," they replied.
This was around 2002 - 2003, and they were ostensibly an educated family, my mind boggled.
DS viewers? The majority will be watching TOWIE or some such rubbish. :yawn:
I'm finding this a fascinating series if also more than a little depressing - I'm not altogether sure that humanity has learned the lessons it should've learnt from the Holocaust - watching some aspects of this series just makes me feel like the world doesn't really get any better:(
I did wonder about that too, but I think he meant in Eastern Europe [ the pale ?] .
Occupied Western Europe certainly had millions of Jews.
Schama made the point well that it wasn't just Germans who participated in atrocities against Jewry, Lithuanians and other Eastern European peoples willingly took part in shameful episodes of slaughter.
I think he referred to Eastern Europe. Add in Germany, France, Netherlands, the Balkans...
A minor critisism: Schama kept referring to how the sons of the immigrants to the US were hungry, and to what the sons achieved. What about the daughters? I realise the episode was a hour long and it's hard to describe the rich history of Jewish life in America in a limited time, but I would have liked some mention of the women's experience. I'm suprised he didn't refer to the Triangle factory fire of 1913 or the women's role in creating the garment workers' unions.
I hadn't heard of Yip Harburg but again found Sunday's episode really fascinating.
Good point re: the women, but yes, as you say, there must have been an embarrassment of riches when it came to picking and name-dropping Jewish businessmen, influential workers, songwriters, performers, actors, directors, producers, etc that made it big in America, in a one-hour programme. It's almost impossible to overstate the contribution that these Jews made to the arts, to business, to society in general, despite only making up a tiny percentage of the country's population.
Wasn't he talking about the Jews of Lithuania and the Pale?
Anyway, the programme was profoundly moving tonight. The old wood carver, the last Jew in Plonje (?) really got to me.
I've been catching up with this series on iPlayer and the same thoughts occurred to me last night as I was watching. Women seem to have been almost entirely absent from Schama's story so far. Perhaps he'll rectify this later but it does seem that he's really not interested in the female point of view so far.
That is incredible, it's like an educated couple from Uganda saying they'd be terrified
of visiting the U.S. in case they were forced to pick cotton on a plantation.
Interesting but not true to my family. My Husband is a Polish- American Jew and a lot of his family disappeared in WW2 but he married me, a German Catholic. We are very happy and lived in several different countries before we settled in the UK and became British Citizens. I get on well with his Mother, who was actually born in the Warsaw Ghetto and was evidently smuggled out after her Parents sold their gold teeth.
Program is very interesting.
Very sad end to episode 4. The photographs of the poor people of the Pale and the story of the old wood carver brought tears to my eyes. I'll probably be a complete mess by the end of the final episode.
A bit absurd really. Brings to mind the comment that the fellow in the first episode made after Schama asked if Jewish culture was always expecting the worst:
"The Jewish imagination is paranoia, confirmed by history."