I am an "uneducated" godless "gentile" I guess. For me, this was purely an attempt to learn why people through history have hated the Jews. I did not grown up in an anti-Semitic home and never understood why the Jews were generally hated so much in History considering all the great cultural and intellectual contributions they have made. I do remember my Grandparents having some snide remarks about Jews and not wanting them to move into their neighborhood, but that always confused me because my Grandfathers fought in WWII and liberated the Jews from annihilation. BUT, I figured it out pretty quickly. The Jews were great creditors, which by default causes envy and animosity. I "hate" my credit card company, my mortgage lender, medical bills etc...You don't need 5 hours to figure out why the Jews have suffered the way they have. And this is not an endorsement or acceptance of those injustices. This is my interim opinion from the story told in this series, until I have more information. This series has given me a better appreciation of the Jewish faith and cultures. I found myself cheering for the Jews as History's great underdog story. I do agree with other reviews that this is very much a biased telling and felt at times the narrator was not being completely transparent concerning any historical missteps of the Jews. Surely they were not always simply the victim, there must have been times they were the aggressors and a more unbiased narrator may have been able to give a better telling of that. One of the other reviewers peaked my interest about the Jews involvement in Communism and I look forward to researching that history. All in all, this was a great series if you are completely in the dark, as I was, on Jewish History.
Review of The Story of the Jews
