A Short History of the Jewish People

Roth's Short History is actually fairly lengthy. It deals with many periods of Jewish history, from Biblical times to 1967. Among the subjects covered are the Jews and Rome, Hellenic culture, the early Arabs, the Turks, and Spain and other European countries.The treatment of the Biblical era is, according to Roth, not from the perspective of the most modern methods and theories, and instead takes the scriptural account, to some extent, at its word. Not to say that this treatment is religious or literalist. I'm not familiar with the more "modern" methods to which the author refers, but Roth's method makes a good impression on me.I was surprized to learn that the Jews of Spain were often treated better than during the era of inquisition. While the Christian and Muslim treatment of the Jews may or may not be comparable in Spain, neither dominant group, it is said, uniformly treated the Jews poorly or well. Of course, "well" really only means "not as poorly as in some other cases." I was surprized, too, to read about the approach of some of the intellectual modernizers, like the Mendelssohn family. While I had heard of them, I had not realized that so many in the family had regarded conversion to at least some form of Christianity to be a valid part of the process of assimilation between Jews and Gentiles in Europe.I am somewhat skeptical about the author's attitudes toward eastern cultures. Sometimes, though I may be mistaken, he sounds a bit like a supporter of western colonial control of the third world, a control which had hardly begun to abate when the first edition was published. While he points out that Muslim societies have often been more tolerant of the Jewish people than the Europeans have been, he states that Islam is tolerant more in practice than in theory. Other writers on the Middle East are inclined to say the reverse about the "theory," but my own reading isn't extensive enough to contradict Roth.It would have been interesting to know what the author would have said about more recent events.