Tales of unsung Jewish heroes who helped create the modern world

In this multicultural age, when the politics of identity celebrates difference - melting pot be damned - Jews, bizarrely, have ended up less an ethnic group than a subcategory of white privilege. Israel is perceived as a colonial power, and Jews are regarded as blue-blooded patricians with no claim to historical oppression.

This comes as a surprise to Israelis who are the offspring of biblical Jews and who survived many wars initiated by Arabs. And Jews with memories of the Holocaust can recall at least two millennia when Jewish blood was decidedly red and discussed only in the context of blood libels - the surreal accusation that Jews slaughtered Christians to make Passover matzo. (Anyone who has ever eaten the bread of affliction, however, knows that it tastes bad enough without plasma.)

For those who regard Jews as Wonder Bread-eating, upper-class WASPs, albeit with a better sense of humor, and are blindly without reference points on where Jews fit into the human story, Simon Schama's latest book, "The Story of the Jews, Volume Two: Belonging, 1492-1900," will be a revelation. It is an engaging and electrifying read by a skilled literary craftsman, cultural historian and tour guide, traveling through 500 years of history to such far-flung places as Venice, London, Paris, Istanbul, Jerusalem and San Francisco.

(Buy "The Story of the Jews: Volume Two: Belonging, 1492-1900" at a 30% discount! by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 32% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.)

Along the way, Schama, an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker, tells the story of the Jewish people who survived the Middle Ages to enjoy a measure of relief during the Renaissance and Enlightenment - but not without occasional reminders that they were still aliens in the eyes of their host countries.

Schama enchants his readers by introducing colorful characters worthy of a Charles Dickens novel, if Dickens had decided to focus on the not-so-great expectations and bleak houses of the Jewish diaspora. "The Story of the Jews" dazzles with the art and alchemy of an adventure novel. Dashing between nations and centuries, Schama assembles an all-star team of largely unsung Jewish heroes who inject humanity and spunk into what might otherwise have been morbid tales of endless persecution.

There is Daniel Mendoza, an 18th-century British boxing sensation who was the world's first self-promoting sports-hero matinee idol, with his face plastered on posters and teapots, a best-selling book, and championship matches that drew massive crowds and commanded the interest of British royalty. While America was rebelling against the Crown and quarrelling about a constitution, the British were obsessing over the exploits of a Jewish prize-fighter.

For many of these Jews, once the beards came off, so too did the gloves. And a great deal of enterprising, manic energy gave the Renaissance a second gear. With more freedom and social immersion, Jewish ingenuity was partly responsible for the world's triumph over the dark age. No longer cowering caricatures of medieval times, a new breed of Jews arose over the next half-millennium: secular, cosmopolitan and with dreams that might be realized. In Mantua, Italy, in the mid-16th century, Leone de 'Sommi was the predecessor of today's Jewish showman: producer, director, playwright, choreographer, costume and set designer. In Kaifeng, China, during the Ming Dynasty in the mid-17th century, a thriving Jewish community was led by Chao Ch'eng, a Jewish major in the imperial army - a perfect marriage between the Torah and the Tao.

A French doctor in the mid-18th century, Jacob Rodrigues Pereire, taught the deaf to speak. An American naval officer, Capt. Uriah P. Levy, was responsible for resurrecting Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and commissioning the statute of Jefferson that stands on the Mall today. Adah Isaac Menken, a glamorous Jewish American actress, appeared on Broadway in the mid-19th century and wrote pro-Israel poetry a century before the Jewish state came into existence.

It's fascinating to learn that many Jews of this era were obsessed with card games and gambling. Schama observes that it is no surprise that these skills translated well into stock market trading and other speculations. The American story of Manifest Destiny would not be complete without Jewish peddlers traveling west to mining towns where, by happenstance, jeans were invented. Jewish women were hoteliers, innkeepers and restauranteurs across the West.

Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Throughout this period, despite the canards of Jewish usury, it was really the rag trade that kept Jews alive. That's largely because the cloistered, social exclusion of the ghettos carried over to the professions they could pursue. The practice of medicine was one exception; it remained illegal, but everyone wanted to see a Jewish doctor - even back then.

Schama weaves a tapestry of interlocking themes that illuminate the advances and setbacks of life in the diaspora. For instance, wherever they lived, Jews were determined to demonstrate their patriotism. And yet they were repeatedly subjected to false charges of disloyalty - most prominently in France during the Dreyfus affair but even during the American Civil War, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from his military district with General Order No. 11.

One simply can't tell the world's story without including the Jews, a people infinitesimal in numbers and yet essential in enhancing the richness of the cultures in which they were provisionally accepted. Yet, paradoxically, aside from Amsterdam in the 17th century, the United States in the 18th century and the Ming Dynasty in China, Jews throughout Europe, Russia and the Middle East were at times forced to wear identifying badges or hats; never truly came close to achieving equal rights; were relegated to usurious occupations; and were always vulnerable to grotesque caricatures, blood libels, forced conversions and pogroms. And since "Belonging" follows the Jewish story only to 1900, a devastating coda in the nightmare of the Holocaust still awaits these people and their hope for a happy end.

So much destructive and misguided energy was wasted on despising this resourceful minority, one can only wonder what these countries would have achieved had they simply left the Jews alone and empowered them to raise the quality of everyone's lives.

In discussing the philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn, Schama writes: "Where Jews flourished beneath the canopy of toleration, humanity at large likewise prospered. ... Mendelssohn believed that the destiny of the Jews was inseparable from the general happiness of mankind."

Of course, his grandson, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, and the prime minister of Victorian England, Benjamin Disraeli, were both baptized by their fathers, which probably accounts for why "The Story of the Jews" ends with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, who concluded that having an actual homeland was better than being a stranger in another's land.

(Buy "The Story of the Jews: Volume Two: Belonging, 1492-1900" at a 30% discount! by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 32% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.)

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist and distinguished fellow at the New York University School of Law, where he directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society. His forthcoming book is entitled "The High Cost of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment."

(COMMENT, BELOW)