For almost 500 years the Jews of Europe were kept apart, confined to ghettos or tiny villages in the countryside. Then, in one extraordinary moment in the French Revolution, the Jews of France were emancipated. Soon the ghetto gates were opened all over Europe. The era of Emancipation had begun. What happened next would change the course of history. Emancipation tells the story of how this isolated minority emerged from the ghetto and against terrible...
Even among the well educated, very few people know the history of the Jewish people in Europe. The author has done an amazing job of writing a very readable, interesting and insightful accounting of this time. My hat is off to him. This is an excellent book. I am married to a Jewish woman, I have been to Israel several times, many of my good friends are Jewish. I knew nothing. Thank you Michael Goldfarb.
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This is a fascinating read for non-Jews .... maybe even for members of the tribe. It is well written and hard to put down and I find that an unusual thing to say about a history, but If more history were written this way there would be more people reading it. I bought it on Kindle, a great device with a limited catalog, and would very much like to hear it read by Goldfarb, an occasional radio presenter and reporter for NPR...
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Mr. Goldfarb has indeed written an excellent history of the emancipation of Europe's Jews, well-researched but adding almost nothing new to the story. He writes with the commendable style of a good journalist who avoids commentary. This is fine as far as it goes, but even in his epilogue, where he depicted individual responses to being emancipated, he seemingly leaves its beneficiaries unable to actualize that status, albeit...
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