It spans the millennia and the continents - from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of
Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the
mountains of southern Arabia a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings the palm
groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear from the
severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in
Muslim Spain. Within these pages the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris massed gibbets
hang over the streets of medieval London a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world candles are
lit chants are sung mules are packed ships loaded with spice and gems founder at sea. And a
great story unfolds. Not - as often imagined - of a culture apart but of a Jewish world
immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled from the Egyptians to
the Greeks from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's
story too.
