Airdate: The Story of the Jews

Next month SBS screens a 5 part series, The Story of the Jews, presented by historian Simon Schama exploring the story of the Jewish experience from ancient times to the present day.

Drawing on his scholarship, his original viewpoints, and his own family history, Schama presents a BBC produced series that is at once deeply historical and bracingly contemporary.

Schama explores the impact of the Jews and those moments when the Jewish experience – what Jews have thought, written, uttered and mourned – changed the fate of the world.

Travelling the globe from New York to Odessa, Berlin to Jerusalem, he tells ancient and modern stories that illuminate the passions and complexities of the Jewish people today.

The story unfolds with a dazzling cast of historical characters, starting 3000 years ago with the emergence of a tribal people in a contested land, and moving on to an exploration of how medieval Jews struggled to preserve their identity under Christian and Islamic rule.

Schama then explores the enlightenment, when Jews integrated into modern European culture and commerce, before examining the eventual influence of Jews from Eastern Europe on the modern world.

The story concludes with an exploration of how the Holocaust and the creation of Israel have changed what it means to be Jewish.

Saturday 8 March at 8.30pm on SBS ONE.