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

by Martin Gilbert

Book Overview

Sir Martin Gilbert, renowned author of many authoritative works of history and biography, speaks in a charming, personal voice in this fascinating volume, the saga of five thousand years of Jewish... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805241884
• ISBN13: 9780805241884
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Schocken
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.5" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

An Amazing Read

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.

5,000 years of Jewish history in an incredible format!

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.

Fascinating history in the form of 141 letters

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 Je

A wonderful concise history

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.