JEWS, GOD, AND HISTORY

The author tells us that twenty years of reading went into the creation of Jews, God and History. Conscientious scholarship is evident in this informative record of Jewish history from its inception 4000 years ago to the present. Mr. Dimont traces the nomadic Jewish tribes from their settlement in the ""Promised Land"" to their ultimate dispersion. He describes the Jewish ""age of reason"" under the Islamic Empire in the eighth century, and the ""dark ages"" which followed. The rise of European nationalism, initially a blessing for Jewry, ultimately sowed the seeds of anti-Semitism. After the holocaust of Hitler's Germany and World War II, the Zionist dream of re-establishing a Jewish state became a fact. The author speculates on Jewish survival through the vicissitudes of history. He suggests that the teachings of the prophets and of the Talmud were above all responsible for the endurance of Jews as a distinctive group. Here he unfolds the many-patterned tapestry of Jewish culture against the broader background of world history. The writing has vitality and humor and should appeal to the lay reader as well as to the historian.