The Jews from Ancient Canaan to a Global Culture

This accessibly written volume examines the major periods of Jewish history around the world, from the Jews’ distant origins in antiquity through the beginnings of the modern period and the emergence of secular culture.

Although Jews are a small minority, they have settled in almost every part of the world, developing many different subcultures. They have had an outsized impact on global religion even as they have faced prejudice and persecution, and their history makes for a fascinating story of cultural change, adaptation, and survival that is continuing to unfold in the present. Now in a new edition as a split volume, this first volume of a comprehensive history of the Jews draws on up-to-date research to recount the story of the Jews from their beginnings in the ancient Near East through to the dawn of the modern period and the emergence of secular culture. Enhanced by images, limelight given to various historical mysteries, recommendations for how to learn more, as well as other features, the book moves chapter by chapter through the major periods of Jewish history, balancing introductions for those unfamiliar with that history with discussion of new approaches and recent discoveries that have reshaped understanding of the Jewish past.

The book is useful not just for those interested in the Jews themselves but also for readers open to learning about global history from the vantage point of a people whose experiences attest both to the resilience of human culture and to the impact of hate and violence.

Matthias B. Lehmann is Professor of Jewish History at the University of Cologne, where he directs the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies. His publications include The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century (2022), Emissaries from the Holy Land (2014), and the coedited volume Jews and the Mediterranean (2020).

Steven Weitzman is a scholar of ancient Judaism and serves at the University of Pennsylvania as the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures and as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. His publications include The Origin of the Jews: the Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (2017), awarded a National Jewish Book Award, and the soon to appear A History of Signs and Wonders: the Ten Plagues Then, Now and at the End of the World.