On March 25, PBS will begin showing the most important TV documentary about Jewish history since Abba Eban’s famous Heritage series aired in 1984. The Story of the Jews, created and hosted by historian Simon Schama, is a dramatic and lyrical introduction to the whole sweep of Jewish history, from its origins in biblical times down to the latest developments in the State of Israel. It appears with a companion book, the first of a planned two, which greatly expands on the story told by the television program: The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 B.C. to 1492 A.D. When the series first aired on the BBC in Britain last year, some 3 million people watched it—and since the country’s Jewish population is only about 250,000, that means that a substantial number of non-Jewish Britons were finding out, through Schama, about what Judaism actually means. When the program airs in America, with its much larger Jewish population, the same thing will likely happen on an even bigger scale.
Seldom does a scholar and teacher get the chance to teach such a crucial subject to such an enormous group of people; and seldom does a historical subject present so many difficulties. When I interviewed Schama recently in his office at Columbia University, he spoke modestly about the challenge of compressing 3,000 years of Jewish history into five hours of television: “It’s certainly true to say I was frightened to do it—I still am frightened to do it, having done it.” But in fact there is no one better qualified to make a documentary like The Story of the Jews than Schama, who is the author of many highly regarded books on modern European history—including the landmark study of the French Revolution, Citizens—and the creator of the hugely successful 15-part BBC series A History of Britain. Indeed, as he says in the first episode of The Story of the Jews, Jewish history was “the story that made me want to be a historian.”