L0801 – Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, deel 1

Heritage: Civilization and the Jews is the monumental nine-part series spanning three millennia of Jewish history and culture. The series is hosted by former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, who describes it as a celebration of our common humanistic and moral heritage, explored through the mysteries of preservation, renewal and resonance of the Jewish people. From the stony heights of Sinai to the shores of the Dead Sea, from a Greek amphitheatre in Delphi to the Forum of ancient Rome, out of the ashes of concentration camps to the rebuilt cities and villages of Israel. Heritage brings to life the long and complex history of the Jews an their centuries-old interaction with the rest of Western civilization.

Part 1: A people is born:
In the experience of exile the vision of the early Israelites was transformed, and the Jewish tradition, the emergence from Egypt has been celebrated by generation after generation in the springtime holiday of Passover, a festival of liberation as passionately observed as any nations independence day. Through liberation the exiles saw the hand of a universal God. All the worlds nations were linked in a common destiny, bound together by a moral law with inescapable consequences.

Part 2: The power of the Word:
This part begins in the abundant land of Babylon, where the exiled Jew of Judah had settled after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonian forces. They had their own vision. They came to believe more profoundly than ever before that there was a universal dimension to their faith, that their God extended to all lands, to all times. It was here in Babylon that Jewish scribes compiled the writings they had brought from Judah, the history, the laws, the legends for the Jewish people and combined them with what had been passed down by word of mouth to form the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.

Part 3: The shaping of traditions:
When Rome was the ruler of the world and Jews lived scattered throughout the Mediterranean. Wherever they lived, communities of Jews continued to obey the laws of their own faith. By the year 135, the Roman armies of the emperor Hadrian had crushed the land of Judea. For several years, the teaching of Judaism became a capital crime. The Shaping of traditions chronicles the decline of the Jewish faith continued to survive throughout these turbulent .