Judy Siegel-Itzkovich - Jerusalem Post (2/6/2002) wrote:
We haven¹t seen Abba Eban for some time.
Unfortunately, the 87-year-old former diplomat and statesman was too unwell last year to receive his Israel Prize in person at the Jerusalem Theater, and his wife Suzy went to receive it on his behalf. But this incomparable and monumental set presenting the history of the Jews from their biblical beginnings until today will be the articulate Eban¹s worthy legacy. One would have to be a genuine anti-Semite if, after watching all nine hours of the video presentation and exploring the interactive material added to the videos on the DVD-ROM, one did not feel genuine sympathy for the travails of the Jewish People and admiration for their ongoing contribution to the world¹s civilization. It wouldn¹t hurt to send the DVDs to the libraries, schools and leaders of Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Palestinian

Authority and some hostile European countries. Never having seen the series ­ which first appeared on Public Broadcasting System TV in New York in 1984 and received a prestigious Peabody Award ­ I had intended to view several hours of it and examine some of the interactive material to review this set. But starting from the first section, A People is Born, about the ancient Israelites, I just couldn¹t stop. I watched the
entire series, start to finish, from my laptop as the DVD-ROM drive twirled
the disk around.

As a major force in the development of Western culture as a whole, he notes, the Jews have survived continued persecution while adding tremendously to the richness of human history. Eban not only narrates the series with great insight, but he also appears in many locations, from Jerusalem to Prague, Venice and Dachau. ³I am Abba Eban, a Jew, a citizen of Israel, educated in England, by training a scholar of history and language, in recent decades, a diplomat and member of my country¹s parliament,² he introduces himself at the onset (leaving out the fact that he was born in South Africa).
Although Eban presents a torrent of words, they flow seamlessly with the visual material, which consists of many rare video clips, photographs, illustrations and maps. And, at any point in the story, you can click on an icon called Explore Topic at the bottom of the screen; this leads to even more information on a specific theme being presented at that moment. In this treasure trove, you can choose historical documents (such as an anti-Semitic children¹s book or a personal recollection of the Nazi boycott of Jewish stores), graphic material (drag your mouse to view the interior of the 19th-century New Synagogue in Berlin) or music (such as a snippet of klezmer music) or poetry readings (from the golden age of Spanish Jewry). After the biblical first chapter, the disk moves toThe Power of the Word, dealing with the exile from Judea to Babylonia, where, Eban says, ³they forged their identity as a people.² Bereft of the Holy Temple and their priests, the Jews had to relate to God by pursuing their traditional way of life, writing down the laws that had been handed down orally from generation to generation. Since Iraq is obviously out of bounds, the customs of Iraqi Jews ­ including women in traditional garb separating a piece of dough before making bread ­ are presented in a videoclip apparently from an Israeli cultural center celebrating these traditions. Jews of millennia ago are sometimes depicted by Israelis in a dark silhouette or even by Arabs shown working the land or trekking through wasteland with their camels.

In the third episode, The Shaping of Traditions, Eban relates explains the influences of their Greek rulers on the Jews, the story of the Maccabees, the depredations of the Roman Empire and its decline, followed by a process extending over 400 years in which the Jewish faith continued to survive. The Crucible of Europe section focuses on the Golden Age of the Jews in Spain when Arabs and Jews lived (mostly) peaceably side by side, on to Northern Europe, where the Latin Church was gradually consolidating its authority, and then to the Spanish Inquisition, which led to the expulsion of the Jews
and their dispersion to north Africa, parts of Europe and the Middle East. In The Search for Deliverance, the influence of the Renaissance on Jewish history, the difficulties of ghetto life and the Jewish artists, composers and poets who transcended the ghetto walls are recalled. The sixth episode, Roads from the Ghetto,covers a very dramatic period of history in which Jews briefly won political rights but anti-Semitism was poisonous, as illustrated by the Dreyfus affair in France. Born in New York, I quickly decided my favorite of the nine was The Golden Land, which describes the Jewish
presence in and unparalleled contributions toAmerica. The rare films of
Jewish immigrants being examined at Ellis Island (and often having their
unpronounceable names Americanized and forever changed by immigration
clerks), their hellish conditions in Lower East Side tenements, their
struggle for workers¹ rights and the anti-immigrant reaction of the Twenties
are all unforgettable.

Eban painstakingly presents life in the European shtetl; the viewer feels the urge to scream and warn the Jews on the screen to ³Get out!² but no one listens. He retells the signs of the coming Holocaust in Out of the Ashes and brings personal testimony from survivors. ³[The month of] May should be abolished. May hurts. There should be only 11 months in a year. May should be set aside for eons... for 6 million years... to cleanse the earth.² says an anonymous Auschwitz inmate, writing about the month of her mother¹s death In the final chapter, Into the Future, the birth pangs of the Israel are presented, along with an examination of the Jewish State¹s five-decade
relationship to its Arab neighbors, the US and various Jewish communities
around the world, with updated material on the last 15 years of the 20th
century.

Aside from the unforgettable videos, the DVD-ROM disk offers icons for an atlas and index (searchable by category or word). All told, there are over 100 interactive multimedia presentations containing over 800 historical images, 650 translated and annotated historical documents, 541 map views with over 2,250 explanatory essays, information provided by scholar advisors and consultants from 21 universities and academic institutions, plus some 3,600 articles from the Concise Judaica (an abridged version of the Encyclopedia Judaica). All of these cover 5,000 years of history. But you
won¹t get lost in this cornucopia of material; a virtually unlimited
bookmarking system lets you click and save the locations of any video
segment or text to which you want to return.

Incredibly, all the nine hours are on the single interactive DVD-ROM, so I couldn¹t figure out why one needs the accompanying three DVDs with only the video sections ­ except perhaps to share with someone who has a DVD player but no DVD-ROM drive on his computer. But the set is undoubtedly one of the most important ever to be made into a
disk, a priceless education for Jews of all ages, an irrefutable historical
document.