The Beginning

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Summary

Prize-winning author and Emmy-Award winner Simon Schama embarks on his exploration of the Jewish experience from ancient times to the present day in the first episode of the five-part series, The S...

Prize-winning author and Emmy-Award winner Simon Schama embarks on his exploration of the Jewish experience from ancient times to the present day in the first episode of the five-part series, The Story of the Jews. The story of the Jewish experience begins 3,000 years ago with the emergence of a tribal people in a contested land and their extraordinary book, the Hebrew Bible, a chronicle of their stormy relationship with a faceless, formless, jealous God. It was loyalty to this "œGod of Words" that defined the distinct identity of the ancient Jews and preserved it despite all that history could throw their way "” war, invasion, deportation, enslavement, exile and assimilation. The story unfolds with a cast of historical characters: Sigmund Freud dying in exile in London; Victorian evangelicals and explorers following "œin the footsteps" of Moses; Jewish mercenaries living, prospering and intermarrying in the pagan land of Egypt; Messianic Jews dreaming of the Apocalypse; and a Jewish historian, Josephus, who witnessed first-hand the moment when the apocalypse finally came and the Romans destroyed the Jewish High Temple in Jerusalem.

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