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A History of the Jewish People
A History of the Jewish People presents a total vision of Jewish experiences and achievements--religious, political, social, and economic--in both the land of Israel and the diaspora throughout the ages. It has been acclaimed as the most comprehensive and penetrating work yet to have appeared in its field.
1170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 27, 2008
This tome took me more than 2 years to read, and it was quite a slog. This is indeed a serious work of scholarship, covering almost 5000 years of history. I hesitate to give it 5 stars, however, since the writing was leaden in parts, the narrative thread was sometimes lost, the middle sections are not very well organized, and the authors rely far too heavily on the reprinting of long block quotes from primary sources rather than historical analysis of those sources. Nonetheless, the book is an excellent source of historical data, and the early sections, dealing with the biblical era, and the later sections, describing Jewish history from the 17th to the 20th centuries, were quite rewarding.
January 19, 2022
For those that want an in-depth understanding of the Jewish history, in an easy to read format, this is a good book to start with but, be ready, it is over 1000 pages.
October 15, 2025
I first acquired this book over a decade ago and started reading it in 2014. I found it to be a bit of a slog back then. When it bogged down for me somewhere around page 300, I gave up on it and donated it as part of a major book purge. It remained on my Goodreads currently-reading list, though, and always reminded me of my abject failure to finish the book. This year, 2025, I decided to buy another copy and give it a go again.
My main purpose in acquiring this book in the first place was to supplement my study of the biblical period. Although this period is covered in 3 of the 6 sections of the book (if you count the New Testament), it does not occupy close to half of the material in the book. This is because the last two sections, on the medieval and modern periods occupy about 2/3rds or the book's material.
The book in the main is more or less unbiased, although hints of bias occur in each of the six parts, particularly in part 6 (the modern period) which covers the emergence of the modern state of Israel. Although the activities of Jewish terrorist groups such as Irgun and Lehi (the Stern Gang) are covered and are occasionally described as acts of terror, their destructive tendencies are downplayed, I think. The immigrating Jews are said to be "united by religion, historical origin and emotional identity" which seems to be more fluff than truth. Elsewhere, in part 3 Menachem Stern cites Strabo to claim that the Idumeans were not forcibly converted, a claim that does not seem supported by other evidence I have seen.
In the first two sections, which cover the period of the Hebrew Bible, the authors seem a bit too credulous of the biblical material for my taste. In part 1 (Origins and the Formative Period), when covering the Conquest Abraham Malamat takes the account of the book of Joshua more or less at face value, while recognizing the problems. He claims archaeology supports the idea of a conquest. This may have been the case in 1976 when this book was written, but few archaeologists would now agree, especially after the publication of Israel Finkelstein's Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement in 1988, which put forth the now generally accepted view that Israel emerged from within Palestine indigenously, not as the result of external forces. When Malamat recognizes contradictions between the books of Joshua and Judges, he prefers Joshua over Judges, saying that contradictions concerning Jabin and Hazor in the two books are likely explained by interpolations into Judges. Thus it would be unfair to characterize Malamat as a biblical maximalist. Furthermore Malamat cites data from outside the Bible, in particular many Egyptian documents and artifacts.
Hayim Tadmor, the author of part 2 (The Period of the First Temple, the Babylonian Exile and the Restoration), follows basically the same course as Malamat. He cites some extra biblical material such as the Assyrian chronicles and has the same basic trust in the Bible, but with some reservations. So he cites the statistics in the account of Solomon's building of the Temple as though they are reliable but claims that other statistics such as the number of Solomon's proverbs or the number of Solomon's wives are exaggerated. He recognizes 1 Kings 13.2 as a clear vaticinium ex eventu, and hints without saying it outright that Daniel is a forgery, for example claiming that Nehemiah and not Daniel is the first authentic first person account in the Bible.
Menachem Stern, in part 3 (The Period of the Second Temple) doesn’t have any biblical material to cover, since he is covering the period of the intertestamental period and the New Testament period. His attitude is likely the same as the first two writers, because he out and out declares that the last chapters of Daniel were written during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and not in the 6th century BC as tradition would have it. In other words, he is not a biblical maximalist. His sources for the Maccabean period are mostly 1 Maccabees. For the Hasmonean period and the reign of Herod he only cites Josephus occasionally, leaving us to guess what his other sources are (Greek historians maybe?). Surprisingly, for the period from the death of Herod to the destruction of the Temple he will sometimes cite the N.T. to make a historical point, even preferring its account of the death of John the Baptist to Josephus's.
Part 4 (The Era of the Mishna and the Talmud [70-640]) by Shmuel Safrai was, in my opinion, the least successful of the six sections. It was here that the book began to feel rushed. Strange, for a book which is just shy of 1100 pages, but there is so much material to be covered that inevitably some important things had to be omitted. One thing that I was interested in that was only alluded to was when Jews ceased to be a majority in Palestine. Safrai mentions that their numbers diminished during this period but I had to resort to the internet to get an answer to this question (apparently in the 3rd or 4th century depending on who you ask). The last chapter, The Lands of the Diaspora, was more successful and less rushed than the rest of part 4, especially the sections dealing with the Jews in Babylonia during this period. No doubt this is because of the importance of the Babylonian Talmud.
For me, Part 5 (The Middle Ages), by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson was the most successful of the six parts of the book. Ben-Sasson defines the Jewish Middle Ages as a different chronological period as it is usually defined (from about 500-1500) because he defines it as important changes for the Jews in 632 and the mid 17th century, the earlier line defined as the Muslim conquest and the latter line as a change in the social status of Jews, that is, they largely lost their status as a separate religious community as the European states moved away from a corporatist social structure when each community had a clearly defined political and social status to the more absolutist states of the modern period. Ben-Sasson actually extends this period towards the end of the 17th century, including such figures as Shabbetai Zevi and Baruch Spinoza in his discussion of the Middle Ages Although at first this part seemed rushed (covering the period from 632 to 1096 in only a bit more than 20 pages) in fact this was an incorrect impression on my part. It was at this point that a pattern developed in which the discourse frequently doubled back on itself, so that this period was covered in more detail in later chapters. For example, Ben-Sasson covers in some detail a number of Jewish philosophers from the period from the 9th century through the 11th century. I enjoyed this chapter very much, especially the many sections on R. Saadiah, a philosopher I had never heard of. I was surprised that Ben-Sasson had little to say about Rashi, considering Rashi's importance in later Jewish thought.
Ben-Sasson says much more about Maimonides than Rashi, perhaps because of a bias in favor of philosophers? It seems to me that Rashi is at least as relevant to Judaism as Maimonides. I remember Maimonides chiefly because my dad had a copy of Guide for the Perplexed in his library. Dad was raised an Orthodox Jew but, according to him, he abandoned the religion as quickly as he could and never looked back. I’m not sure if he was being totally honest about that, in part because of the presence of Maimonides in his library and in part because of some comments he would make occasionally about the Jews. I wish that dad was still alive so I could pick his brains about the modern state of Israel.
This part was probably the most difficult for me to read, probably because of my unfamiliarity with the material compared to the other five parts. While Ben-Sasson often stops to define his terms, such as Marranos, I had to look up many terms which the author seems to assume his readers will be familiar with, such as Ethnarch, Ordeal of Fire and Water, Shtadlanim, Almohades, and Semikhah. When Rabbenu Gershom, "the light of the exile" is introduced, I had to look him up because the author did not say which part of the world he was from. I had just assumed that "the exile" referred just to middle eastern lands, but apparently it can refer to Europe as well (Rabbenu Gershom lived in Germany).
Another point of possible bias was Ben-Sasson's discourse on the trajectory of Jewish life in Christian Europe vis a vis Muslim Middle East and North Africa. The first time I read this part I was under the impression that the author had little to say about Jewish life outside of Europe. Again, this was a mistaken impression on my part. The author points out that after the Arab conquest, more than 90% of Jews lived within a single empire, and devotes nearly an entire chapter to Jewish life in the Muslim empire. However, while Ben-Sasson has a great deal to say about massacres of Jews in Christian Europe (in 1096, 1348, 1648-49) he did not, that I could tell, mention any massacres of Jews in Muslim lands (such as 1220 in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Egypt; 1232: massacre of the Jews of Marrakech; 1465, Fez Morocco). In addition to this apparent bias I found the reference to "anti-semites and self-hating Jews" rather strange. What is a self-hating Jew? It seems Ben-Sasson would put Spinoza in that category, claiming that Spinoza wrote that Jews hated all nations besides themselves. In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. I found the article "A Hatred 'Required by Religion'? Spinoza and Cohen on Hatred" by Myriam Bienenstock to be helpful in this regard. She quotes Gebhart "Spinoza did not write all his books *sub quadam specie aeternitatis* [from the perspective of eternity]. To understand his words, one must know for whom, and against whom, he wrote." Indeed.
Part 6 (The Modern Period) by Shmuel Ettinger was also very successful. It didn’t feel as rushed as the rest of the book. Like part 5 it was nearly 400 pages but while part 5 covered a period of about a 1000 years, part 6 covered only about 300 years. So Ettinger was able to cover the period in more detail than Ben-Sasson was able to cover the Middle Ages. Naturally part 6 covered the 20th century in the most detail, because the 20th century encompassed to crucial events in Jewish history: the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern state of Israel. But the 19th century was covered in nearly as much detail as the 20th century.
Again I found myself having to look up many terms, such as Mizrachi, Revisionists, Histadrut, SS (Zionist Socialist Workers Party), and Mapai. SS is especially confusing because it is easy to mistake for the German SS (Schutzstaffel). Probably many of these terms were defined in the book but given my uncareful reading habits I just missed the explanations; for example on my second read-through I noticed that Mizrachi had in fact been explained. But on my second read-through I was especially looking for an explanation of the Revisionists, an explanation that I never found.
I am overjoyed to have this book in my library, and I will likely use it as a reference book for many years to come. It works better as a reference book, I think, than as the sort of book one would sit down and read. For example, the last chapter, "The Consolidation of the State of Israel," was a whirlwind report of the last few decades of Jewish history before the publication of the book. I had trouble following it, but it did inspire me to reserve a few books on the history of the Israeli state, including a biography of Nasser and a book on the Six Day War.
My main purpose in acquiring this book in the first place was to supplement my study of the biblical period. Although this period is covered in 3 of the 6 sections of the book (if you count the New Testament), it does not occupy close to half of the material in the book. This is because the last two sections, on the medieval and modern periods occupy about 2/3rds or the book's material.
The book in the main is more or less unbiased, although hints of bias occur in each of the six parts, particularly in part 6 (the modern period) which covers the emergence of the modern state of Israel. Although the activities of Jewish terrorist groups such as Irgun and Lehi (the Stern Gang) are covered and are occasionally described as acts of terror, their destructive tendencies are downplayed, I think. The immigrating Jews are said to be "united by religion, historical origin and emotional identity" which seems to be more fluff than truth. Elsewhere, in part 3 Menachem Stern cites Strabo to claim that the Idumeans were not forcibly converted, a claim that does not seem supported by other evidence I have seen.
In the first two sections, which cover the period of the Hebrew Bible, the authors seem a bit too credulous of the biblical material for my taste. In part 1 (Origins and the Formative Period), when covering the Conquest Abraham Malamat takes the account of the book of Joshua more or less at face value, while recognizing the problems. He claims archaeology supports the idea of a conquest. This may have been the case in 1976 when this book was written, but few archaeologists would now agree, especially after the publication of Israel Finkelstein's Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement in 1988, which put forth the now generally accepted view that Israel emerged from within Palestine indigenously, not as the result of external forces. When Malamat recognizes contradictions between the books of Joshua and Judges, he prefers Joshua over Judges, saying that contradictions concerning Jabin and Hazor in the two books are likely explained by interpolations into Judges. Thus it would be unfair to characterize Malamat as a biblical maximalist. Furthermore Malamat cites data from outside the Bible, in particular many Egyptian documents and artifacts.
Hayim Tadmor, the author of part 2 (The Period of the First Temple, the Babylonian Exile and the Restoration), follows basically the same course as Malamat. He cites some extra biblical material such as the Assyrian chronicles and has the same basic trust in the Bible, but with some reservations. So he cites the statistics in the account of Solomon's building of the Temple as though they are reliable but claims that other statistics such as the number of Solomon's proverbs or the number of Solomon's wives are exaggerated. He recognizes 1 Kings 13.2 as a clear vaticinium ex eventu, and hints without saying it outright that Daniel is a forgery, for example claiming that Nehemiah and not Daniel is the first authentic first person account in the Bible.
Menachem Stern, in part 3 (The Period of the Second Temple) doesn’t have any biblical material to cover, since he is covering the period of the intertestamental period and the New Testament period. His attitude is likely the same as the first two writers, because he out and out declares that the last chapters of Daniel were written during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and not in the 6th century BC as tradition would have it. In other words, he is not a biblical maximalist. His sources for the Maccabean period are mostly 1 Maccabees. For the Hasmonean period and the reign of Herod he only cites Josephus occasionally, leaving us to guess what his other sources are (Greek historians maybe?). Surprisingly, for the period from the death of Herod to the destruction of the Temple he will sometimes cite the N.T. to make a historical point, even preferring its account of the death of John the Baptist to Josephus's.
Part 4 (The Era of the Mishna and the Talmud [70-640]) by Shmuel Safrai was, in my opinion, the least successful of the six sections. It was here that the book began to feel rushed. Strange, for a book which is just shy of 1100 pages, but there is so much material to be covered that inevitably some important things had to be omitted. One thing that I was interested in that was only alluded to was when Jews ceased to be a majority in Palestine. Safrai mentions that their numbers diminished during this period but I had to resort to the internet to get an answer to this question (apparently in the 3rd or 4th century depending on who you ask). The last chapter, The Lands of the Diaspora, was more successful and less rushed than the rest of part 4, especially the sections dealing with the Jews in Babylonia during this period. No doubt this is because of the importance of the Babylonian Talmud.
For me, Part 5 (The Middle Ages), by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson was the most successful of the six parts of the book. Ben-Sasson defines the Jewish Middle Ages as a different chronological period as it is usually defined (from about 500-1500) because he defines it as important changes for the Jews in 632 and the mid 17th century, the earlier line defined as the Muslim conquest and the latter line as a change in the social status of Jews, that is, they largely lost their status as a separate religious community as the European states moved away from a corporatist social structure when each community had a clearly defined political and social status to the more absolutist states of the modern period. Ben-Sasson actually extends this period towards the end of the 17th century, including such figures as Shabbetai Zevi and Baruch Spinoza in his discussion of the Middle Ages Although at first this part seemed rushed (covering the period from 632 to 1096 in only a bit more than 20 pages) in fact this was an incorrect impression on my part. It was at this point that a pattern developed in which the discourse frequently doubled back on itself, so that this period was covered in more detail in later chapters. For example, Ben-Sasson covers in some detail a number of Jewish philosophers from the period from the 9th century through the 11th century. I enjoyed this chapter very much, especially the many sections on R. Saadiah, a philosopher I had never heard of. I was surprised that Ben-Sasson had little to say about Rashi, considering Rashi's importance in later Jewish thought.
Ben-Sasson says much more about Maimonides than Rashi, perhaps because of a bias in favor of philosophers? It seems to me that Rashi is at least as relevant to Judaism as Maimonides. I remember Maimonides chiefly because my dad had a copy of Guide for the Perplexed in his library. Dad was raised an Orthodox Jew but, according to him, he abandoned the religion as quickly as he could and never looked back. I’m not sure if he was being totally honest about that, in part because of the presence of Maimonides in his library and in part because of some comments he would make occasionally about the Jews. I wish that dad was still alive so I could pick his brains about the modern state of Israel.
This part was probably the most difficult for me to read, probably because of my unfamiliarity with the material compared to the other five parts. While Ben-Sasson often stops to define his terms, such as Marranos, I had to look up many terms which the author seems to assume his readers will be familiar with, such as Ethnarch, Ordeal of Fire and Water, Shtadlanim, Almohades, and Semikhah. When Rabbenu Gershom, "the light of the exile" is introduced, I had to look him up because the author did not say which part of the world he was from. I had just assumed that "the exile" referred just to middle eastern lands, but apparently it can refer to Europe as well (Rabbenu Gershom lived in Germany).
Another point of possible bias was Ben-Sasson's discourse on the trajectory of Jewish life in Christian Europe vis a vis Muslim Middle East and North Africa. The first time I read this part I was under the impression that the author had little to say about Jewish life outside of Europe. Again, this was a mistaken impression on my part. The author points out that after the Arab conquest, more than 90% of Jews lived within a single empire, and devotes nearly an entire chapter to Jewish life in the Muslim empire. However, while Ben-Sasson has a great deal to say about massacres of Jews in Christian Europe (in 1096, 1348, 1648-49) he did not, that I could tell, mention any massacres of Jews in Muslim lands (such as 1220 in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Egypt; 1232: massacre of the Jews of Marrakech; 1465, Fez Morocco). In addition to this apparent bias I found the reference to "anti-semites and self-hating Jews" rather strange. What is a self-hating Jew? It seems Ben-Sasson would put Spinoza in that category, claiming that Spinoza wrote that Jews hated all nations besides themselves. In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. I found the article "A Hatred 'Required by Religion'? Spinoza and Cohen on Hatred" by Myriam Bienenstock to be helpful in this regard. She quotes Gebhart "Spinoza did not write all his books *sub quadam specie aeternitatis* [from the perspective of eternity]. To understand his words, one must know for whom, and against whom, he wrote." Indeed.
Part 6 (The Modern Period) by Shmuel Ettinger was also very successful. It didn’t feel as rushed as the rest of the book. Like part 5 it was nearly 400 pages but while part 5 covered a period of about a 1000 years, part 6 covered only about 300 years. So Ettinger was able to cover the period in more detail than Ben-Sasson was able to cover the Middle Ages. Naturally part 6 covered the 20th century in the most detail, because the 20th century encompassed to crucial events in Jewish history: the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern state of Israel. But the 19th century was covered in nearly as much detail as the 20th century.
Again I found myself having to look up many terms, such as Mizrachi, Revisionists, Histadrut, SS (Zionist Socialist Workers Party), and Mapai. SS is especially confusing because it is easy to mistake for the German SS (Schutzstaffel). Probably many of these terms were defined in the book but given my uncareful reading habits I just missed the explanations; for example on my second read-through I noticed that Mizrachi had in fact been explained. But on my second read-through I was especially looking for an explanation of the Revisionists, an explanation that I never found.
I am overjoyed to have this book in my library, and I will likely use it as a reference book for many years to come. It works better as a reference book, I think, than as the sort of book one would sit down and read. For example, the last chapter, "The Consolidation of the State of Israel," was a whirlwind report of the last few decades of Jewish history before the publication of the book. I had trouble following it, but it did inspire me to reserve a few books on the history of the Israeli state, including a biography of Nasser and a book on the Six Day War.
September 25, 2017
I haven't read the whole thing, but it's a good reference work for reading up on specific periods. Very dense with names, dates, and other facts.
July 26, 2022
Okey, so obviously this isn’t meant to be read straight through, but, well that’s done now. For the most part it was enjoyable and was a book that I often found myself wanting to read more of to see how the rich history would progress.
It would’ve held a higher rating if it weren’t for Part V: The Middle Ages. That was the case of an editor needing an editor. There was no through line making it in anyway cohesive. It was more Ben-Sassoon telling something, getting distracted and then going back to tell something else.
As a whole there are many lessons and numerous takeaways that I shall be dwelling on for the rest of my life.
It would’ve held a higher rating if it weren’t for Part V: The Middle Ages. That was the case of an editor needing an editor. There was no through line making it in anyway cohesive. It was more Ben-Sassoon telling something, getting distracted and then going back to tell something else.
As a whole there are many lessons and numerous takeaways that I shall be dwelling on for the rest of my life.
August 6, 2025
I appreciated this book as a thorough, in-depth reference book that covers many topics of Jewish history. It’s not the sort of book you sit down to with a cup of tea, but it was helpful in preparing for my comprehensive exam and I imagine I will continue using it to look up bits of Jewish history as needed.
May 19, 2019
Excelente libro de de rápida lectura para aquellos que queremos conocer acerca de las influencias del Imperio Islámico sobre el Pueblo Judío entre los siglos VII al XII.
February 25, 2020
Until today, the most comprehensive work I've read on the topic
October 24, 2022
Highly informative, covering the entire history as indicated by the title. Discusses the influential and influencing people, places, and events.
March 11, 2021
This is a good source for dipping in and out of specific historical periods. Chapters written by period experts, so there is an uneven style and quality to the volume. It has loads of information, but it's difficult to process given the choppy nature of the edited volume, and the lack of a unifying theme. It's more of a reference book than a volume to read through from start to finish.
August 8, 2011
Compared to other histories Ben Sasson stands out well. He edits this history in a deep fashion. Others are more readable, but his is deeper and fuller. I like his writing as a great resource for the depth of his perspective and seeing the Jewish people in the midst of the world of nations.
January 19, 2015
First used as a textbook in a religious studies class on Jewish history after 70CE. I'm revisiting this in bits and pieces for its broad survey of Jewish history.
January 19, 2022
What an incredible work of scholarship. WOW!!!! I am grateful that this book was available to read.
Want to read
September 13, 2016not at library
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews