My People: The Story of the Jews

Abba Eban was one of Israel's greatest statesmen. Here the man who helped to make history, documents the history of his own people.My People: The Story of the Jews is the history of the Jewish Nation from the time of Abram and his journey into Canaan, until 1968 CE. He points out that just as the history of the Jewish Nation began in the Land of Israel, with the return of the Jews to Israel and the re-establishment of the State of Israel 'The journey has come back to where it first began'. Eban covers the story of Abram and his journey to Canaan, the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, and their return to Canaan under Joshuah's leadership. He succintly and skilfully describes the history of ancient Israel describing the great Commonwelath of David and Solomon, the division of the Land of Israel into two Kingdoms, and the wisdom of the Prophets. He describes how 'Israel's history assumes a unique quality with the Babylonian captivity.Many people have preserved their nationalism on their own soil, even under foreign conquest, but never before had any people preserved it's national identity and spiritual distinctiveness in exile for thousands of years with sufficient vitality to ensure an ultimate rebirth'. Through millenia the Nation of Israel has remained a unique nation, even in exile retaining it's eternal link with the Land of Israel. As we progress through the history of the Jewish people through the Greek and Roman conquests and the courageous resistance of the Jews to the ocupation of their homeland, through the destruction of the temple and the eventual exile from the land we are reminded of this. One must remember that there always remained a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, throughout the exile, There was never a time when there were no Jews in the Holy Land. This is a story of endurance and renewal. It is a story of how the Jews survived all the massacres and persecution, from the Romans to the Crusaders who swept across Europe anihilating Jewish communities, to the horrific Chmielnitzki massacres and the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the Jews endured. They refused to assimilate or renounce their faith. Some like Mohammed and Martin Luther began with a sympathetic attitude to the Jews in the hope that the Jews would adopt these men's religions. When the Jews refused they turned on the Jews with savagery and hate. The greatest miracle of all was the return to Zion. We learn the real reason why the Arab leaders opposed the retun of the Jews to their ancient homeland. The doctrine of political equality and social justice that had swept through Europe and later across the Atlantic had made no impression on the dark Arab hinterland, and the Arab leaders and landowner feared the influence the Jewish example of democracy and socail justice would make on their own downtrodden masses. That is why they stirred up their subjects to attack the Jewish returnees as they have been doing since 1920. Describing the new Jewish communitie

Abba Eban begins this 550-page work by talking about the Patriarchs. There is a problem with this, given that the history of the Patriarchs is part legend. But it is recent enough so that there is real history to cover plenty of what was going on in the Middle East at the time. And Eban reminds us that the religion of Abraham was not that of, say, Moses. Abraham's "God was not unique, omnipresent, or fully transcendent. He was the deity of Abraham's family, not of other families, still less of all mankind." The author traces the history of the Hebrews from then on, through the age of judges, Kings and Queens, Exile, Roman dominion, the Diaspora, and so on. I was intrigued by the effect of the Fourth Lateran Council, convened in 1215 by Pope Innocent III. This Council appears to have been directly responsible for the next three centuries of Jewish expulsions from various countries in Europe. There is an excellent discussion of Theodore Herzl and the rise of Modern Zionism. Eban has over a page of quotes from Herzl's Diaries about it. "What made me into a Zionist was the Dreyfus case." "Death to Jews all because one was a traitor? But was he really a traitor?" "In a lower stratum of society, I would deny such a possibility among Jews as little as among Christians. In Alfred Dreyfus's case, however, it was psychologically impossible. A wealthy man, who had chosen this career only through ambition, simply could not have committed the most dishonorable of all crimes." Herzl realized that Dreyfus's desire for honor was too great for him to have done it. By the way, not only did the case make Herzl a Zionist, I think it ought to make every human being a Zionist. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and that is merely a commitment to human rights for all people (including Jews). The author discusses the fate of the Jews during World War Two. He explains that the slaughter of the Jews was not the work of only a few people. "Thousands of officials were necessary to carry out these tasks." Nor were the Germans and their allies the only culprits. Lord Moyne, the British Colonial Secretary, refused to allow Romanian Jews to immigrate to the Levant in 1941. Instead, he helped keep the notorious British White Paper of 1939 in force. Moyne later insisted that Britian could "not be a party to any measures which could undermine the existing policy regarding illegal immigration" into the Levant. Perhaps it is not surprising that justice was served when Moyne was assassinated in 1944. Nor is it surprising that Chaim Weizmann, speaking at the 1946 Zionist Congress, in a classic understatement said of the 1939 White Paper, "Few documents in history have worse consequences for which to answer." The book continues through the Six Day War and beyond. That war actually began not on June 5, 1967 with the Israeli air strikes on Egypt but on May 22, 1967 when Egypt's Nasser announced the imposition of a blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba. In a spee