“The first volume of Simon Schama’s mammoth undertaking, The Story of the Jews, ended two and a half thousand years after it began, with the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Iberia. The second volume, entitled, with more than a smidgen of irony, Belonging, begins in the Venice ghetto, where many victims of that expulsion found uneasy refuge.
Some had fled from Portugal, where, during the Easter of 1506, about 2,000 “New Christians” (Jews who had been forced to convert) were slaughtered in three days. “The ostensible cause,” writes Schama, “was a vocal comment made by a New Christian in church to the effect that a miraculous illumination on the face of the Saviour on the cross might have been a mere effect of candlelight.”
That incident warrants only passing mention, but it’s a shocking reminder of just how vulnerable Jews have been in Europe over many centuries.
Belonging, which covers the period from 1492 to 1900, is concerned with the Jewish search for security and the efforts – both coerced and voluntary – at assimilation in Europe (there are brief excursions to other settlements, in America, and as far off as China).
Jews have traditionally been caught in a double bind: not trusted as a distinct minority, and trusted even less when they attempt to adopt the majority culture/religion.
It’s a position that has led to repeated cycles of persecution, expulsion, confinement and a ceaseless hankering to be accepted. That, in essence, is the story of the Jews and Schama lays it out in rich, complex and fascinating detail.
Although this is an ambitious doorstop of a book, Schama is not interested in history writ large. His signature method is to recount the plight of individuals against the swirling backdrop of events. It’s a high-wire approach that can leave the reader wondering if the extended anecdotes – a tragic conman in 16th-century Venice, rumours of a Jewish sex cult in 18th-century Moldova – will ever reach the firm ground of historical import.
How my heart sings 