Customer Reviews

Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith

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Overall, Gilbert's comprehensive history is dense, yet readable, with the biggest rewards for me coming in the small details. He clearly proves that Jewish history takes place on a much larger stage and with a much grander scale than some might realize. His synopses of Biblical stories are masterfully interwoven with connections to Jewish traditions and practices, contemporary history and people, and even archeology, so that it is never a dry, facts only history. Indeed, one of the most fascinating elements of this book is Gilberts references to lesser-known Jewish communities, including Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, and my own personal favoritethe Alaskan Jews of Congregation Beth Shalom in Anchorage, who call themselves the Frozen Chosen. Also fascinating are references to Jewish individuals such as many Olympic medallists, other historical figures such as Mahatma Gandis secretary in South Africa, and his personal reflections on Jewish holidays and worship. These sorts of details are inspirational, fascinating, and compelling.

While comprehensive, this book does have a weakness in that it is not always forthright about the differences between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and other branches of Judaism regarding faith and practice. Gilbert only occasionally points out those differences, and therein lies the biggest question that this book would raise for a reader who is unfamiliar with the various movements and their traditions. Sometimes, Gilbert simply says observant Jews, but never quite explains what he really means by that, or what the different movementsOrthodox vs. Reform, for examplewould mean by that. Other questions may arise because of Gilberts writing stylesyntax is often awkward (perhaps due to this British historian writing in the Queens English rather than in the English we Americans are used to) to the point of some paragraphs seeming to contain what are surely unintended errors. Finally, one wishes Gilbert had included Auntie Fori's reaction to this history; that omission makes her quest to learn more of her people's history seem to be only half fulfilled.

This book provides the missing link to the full 5000 years of history--- A kind of "Cliff notes" but wonderful in terms of the ground covered.
I recommend it highly to anyone wanting to get a good overview of 5000 years of Jewish history and traditions.

A Jewish friend loaned me this book, and I promptly fell in love with it. It's compiled from letters that Martin Gilbert sent to an elderly Indian citizen who'd just learned she was born Jewish in Hungary. I wanted to catch up on Bible history and culture, but I ended up learning so much more.

The letters are short, fascinating, easily readable, and together create a wonderful tapestry of Jewish history and culture, and indeed world history too. Starting with Genesis and creation, Gilbert traces the people of the Bible through fascinating retellings of familiar tales with a wealth of invaluable and fascinating context. As the Jewish people move out beyond their homeland, the letters follow, tracing paths through world history that shed light on life past and present. Jewish culture, and Jewish ties to their homeland, come vividly to life. Historical trials, spiritual study, scientific research, and the response of a people set apart to the changing world around them are all beautifully told, and all in bite-sized, letter-sized, easily digested and truly satisfying pieces.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to see their faith, whatever faith, through opened eyes, and to anyone curious and willing to learn, as I was, about Jewish interpretation of the Bible I love so well.

Have recommended this book to so many people, sorry it is out of print, but then again, there is always Amazon to rely upon.

Only Sir Martin Gilbert could put the Biblical Era in
such a wonderful sequence. Letters to Auntie Fori is a wonderful, entertaining, and important book! I couldn't put it down.

Letters to Auntie Fori documents Jewish history, faith and tradition in the form of 141 fascinating letters to a woman in India BK Nehru who reveals she is a Jew born in Hungary who would like to know something about her people. Gilbert traces Jewish history and faith from the Creation until the year 2000.
It is packed with some very interesting information written in a very interesting way. The way that Gilbert chose to present this history works very well.
Gilbert tells Aunt Fori that after Cain slew Abel and G-D, who of course knew of Abel's murder asked Cain where Abel was, Cain answered "Am I my brother's keeper?"
According to Jewish tradition the rest of the Bible explains how the answer is yes to teach us that we are all responsible for each other.
We learn that the matriarch Rachel, known to the Jews as Rachel Imenu (Rachel our mother) weeps in prayer for the Jewish people. It was giving birth to Joseph's younger brother that Rachel died. Her tomb between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is a holy site fr the Jewish people and for Christians, and has been desecrated by Palestinian mobs several times (which makes it odd that Gilbert says that is also a Muslim holy site).
In the section of King David, where Gilbert writes of the psalms David composed, we learn that Natan Scharansky, a Soviet dissident, imprisoned for many years by the Communists, found solace in a small book of psalms which he was able to keep with him, despite the hostility of his Soviet captors.
Interesting lesser known facts include the popular legend among Iraqi Jews that King Hoshea of the northern kingdom of Israel was deported by the Assyrians further east all the way to Japan where he became the first Japanese Emperor Oshe, founder of the Japanese imperial house. Dates which coincide bear out that this actually could be the case.
While Part 1 deals with the events of the Biblical era, Part 2 deals with the era of the Greek conquest of the Land of Israel up to the Zionist revival of the late 19th century.

It deals with Christian and Islamic persecution as well as the different periods in the development of Judaism including the birth of the Chassidic movement and the Haskalah ("Enlightenment") of the 18th century.

It is interesting to note how the cry of anti-Semites was once "Jews, go to Palestine" and is now "Jews, out of Palestine".

The book takes us through modern anti-Semitism, the Holocaust (of which Gilbert is one of the most prolific historians) and the rebirth of the State of Israel, and it's struggle for survival over 60 years.

We read o the many pogroms against Jews in Arab lands during and after world War II (encouraged by the Nazis) which is knowledge for those who thought the Holocaust was merely by Europeans against Ashkenazic Jews in Europe.
While reading about the War of Independence of 1948, it struck me how Israel-haters harp on about the so-called Deir Yassin massacre while airbrushing out of history events such as the Hebron massacre of Jews in 1929 and the massacre by Arabs of a convoy of Jewish nurses and doctors, known as the Hadassah convoy.
After the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 Jews could once again determine their own future, for the first time in 2000 years, without having to passively depend on the hope gentile tolerance or suffer and die from persecution helplessly.
After what the Jews have been through do those who call for the end of Israel (the euphemistically called 'One State solution' ala Rwanda really think the proudest Jews in the world- the Israeli Jews- will lay themselves open to the whims of the Arabs who have showed them so much hate and tried to destroy them, and live or die on Arab whims.
The whole point of Israel is so we didn't have to lie at the feet of those who hate us, begging and praying for mercy, after so many years of persecution because we had no land of our own.

The book traces the history until 2000 when Ehud Barak was the Israeli Prime Minister and the world was hopeful for peace.
A few months after the book concludes, Arafat reacted to a generous offer by Barak of almost all of the disputed territories AND land inside pre-1967 Israel with a war of terror against the Israeli people, supplemented by a massive propaganda war to destroy Israel waged around the world.
The last part of the book is an explanation- in brief- of Jewish faith and worship.

This is a great book, a kind of Cliff Notes of Jewish history from bibical times through to the modern world. No tpoic takes over a few pages and as written by Gilbert it is a pleasure to read.

Martin Gilbert's series of letters to Auntie Fori the Indian friend who at the age of ninety revealed to him her Jewishness is a masterful introduction to Jewish history and to the Jewish religion.