This is their story, the story of Jewish survival. How did a band of desert nomads, against such overwhelming odds, survive four millennia and shape the course of world history? Their odyssey is one of history’s “most illogical survivals,” wrote scholar Max Dimont. With their wanderings in Canaan, enslavement in Egypt, destruction in Judah, captivity in Babylon, strife under the Maccabeans, oppression by the Romans, as a “People of the Book” under Muslim rule, as victims of anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages, as statesmen, scholars and concentration-camp victims in the Holocaust, and as a people who returned at the end of a near 2,000-year absence to the ancient homeland of “Canaan” as its rulers, how the Jews survived such long odds while vaunted empires and civilizations crumbled around them is a question that has fascinated scholars for generations. It’s also the subject of The Jewish People: A Story of Survival. While other PBS films have explored Jewish history and, more recently, American Jewish history, this program is the first Jewish film organized around the central themes of survival – around the world – and achievement of a people. As the film spans millennia of history, the key elements of Jewish survival surface – family, faith, memory, tradition and the texts central to Judaism – the Hebrew Bible (Torah). Perhaps ironically, the film also shows that actually living outside of the “land of Canaan” in a Diaspora helped them survive. Also included is approximately 30 minutes of bonus material – additional interviews not seen in the broadcast. Running Time: 87 minutes (approx.) total -- 57 minutes program, 30 minutes bonus material
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