The Sacred Chain: The History of the Jews

by Norman F. Cantor

Book Overview

An important, controversial account of the history of the Jewish people that is both scholarly and compulsively readable. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060167467
• ISBN13: 9780060167462
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 472 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Best, most nuanced book out there on Jewish History

I've read a lot of history, including history of the Jewish people, and this book is one of the best. Nuanced, honest, courageous.Cantor begins his book with his intention, saying that the field of Jewish history must, and is, maturing beyond a "victimization/celebratory" one. Cantor, as a true historian, looks at Jewish history with its highlights--and its lowlights--as is true of the history of any people. A truly refreshing, fascinating study of where the Jewish people come from and to where they may be going, asking deep and relevant questions in the final chapter. Cantor's writing is excellent as well, thoroughly enjoyable.

Can be renamed "Opinionated review of Jewish history"

I am a Norman Cantor fan. Few people would 100% agree completely with his views, but I think that most of the time there is some truth to what he said. On many controversial points, Cantor has presented a subjective one-sided view points. On the other hand, Cantor didn't pretend to be unbiased. Thus this book is about Cantor's personal veiw on Jewish history, presented in an highly entertaining and provacative manner. I would opt for reading a Cantor book, rather than watching a comedy movie.

A provocative book from a "candid friend" of Judaism.

This stimulating and provocative book will irritate a large number of its Jewish readers both through its contents and probably also through its manner. The book's title, to begin with, is misleading if it suggests that there is a central tradition which runs through the History of the Jews. The title of one of the chapters, "Jewish Diversity" corresponds more closely with the theme of the work; but few of those diversities escape without some reprimand from Professor Cantor, Judaism's "candid friend". Thus the orthodox rabbinate is repeatedly criticized for erecting, from Hellenic times onwards, a high barrier between Judaism and the more advanced cultures surrounding them: Jews must bear some responsibility for ghettoization, for to an extent they ghettoized themselves. On the other hand, he refers several times to Emancipation as a Faustian bargain; and the efforts of Reform rabbis in the 19th and 20th centuries to promote acculturation without assimilation are described as "feeble and inconsequential". The "marvellous varieties of Jewish responses [to the modern world] which have so enriched Western culture" are due to the fact that orthodox and reform rabbis alike have failed to provide adequate intellectual leadership. Only a few Jewish religious thinkers - like Martin Buber, Gershom Sholem, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig - have, in Professor Cantor's view, made an effort which could compare to the attempts of Catholic theologians to meet the challenges of modernity. Cantor is throughout illuminating on Jewish historiography, and he frequently takes issue with its one-sided view of Jewish History. Thus Graetz is criticized for being "insensitive to the Christian side of the story". Writing about the Chmielnicki Massacres, Cantor comments, "the Ukranians had a right to resent the Jews, if not to kill them". A similar line is taken in explaining Tsarist policies with regard to the Jews between the 1820s and the 1860s: the rabbis and tsaddikim had after all done nothing to get the Jews "out of their stinking and impoverished domiciles and into an improved systemic situation." Some readers may be startled to have some received ideas challenged by the revisionist historians whom Cantor quotes. Some examples: the Maccabean War is better understood as a civil war between orthodox and Hellenized Jews than as a national uprising. Jewish historians have stressed how much Aquinas borrowed from Maimonides: here we read that "Maimonides' Guide is simply not comparable as an intellectual achievement with Aquinas's Summa Theologica." Contemporary scholarship drastically reduces the size of the Diaspora of the Sephardi Jews after 1492: so far from the traditional 150,000 Jews having had to leave, there were only some 80,000 professing Jews in Spain before 1492, and of these about half refused to convert and were therefore expelled. Coming to the present, Cantor is very critical of Israeli policy; and he thinks that much Cathol

Sometimes insightful,sometimes infuriating, usually both

I found this book riveting, and the personal, narrative style of Dr. Cantor's writing addictive. I'm no scholar so I can't criticize Dr. Cantor for misinterpreting the Caballah, or incorrectly tracing the lineage of Esther. While at times, this free-ranging book wanders into areas of opinion that don't seem entirely relevant to Jewish history, these wanderings were a very small price to pay to hear this powerful and deeply learned voice.