The Gifts of the Jews (1998) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• David: Add a description of this character.
• Moshe
• Avraham
• Avram
• Saul
• Gilgamesh
• Yitzhak
• Sarai
• Judah
• Joseph
• Yaakov
• Pharaoh
• Samuel
• Solomon
• Naomi
• Terah
• Isaiah
• Amos
• Jeremiah
• Dumuzi
• Joshua
• Aharon
• Ruth
• Michal
• Hagar
• Jonathan
• Elijah
• Jethro
• James
• Hosea
• Dan
• Haran

Quotes edit see section history

• “P.29: But a couple of things are clear: as in all warrior societies of the Bronze and Iron Ages, the most valued human relationships are between males (and, whether or not such relationships are actively sexual, they must surely be deemed, precisely, homosexual — that is, of the same sex)...”

• “P.37: There are faint echoes in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" of notes that will sound more forcefully and coherently in the Epic of Israel, the early books of the Hebrew Bible, which, though they will be written down in a later time and in a somewhat different place, grow out of this time and place.”

• “P.66: Avram is brought before the Egyptian king, who utters a memorable "Ma-zot?!" ("What's this?!"), an almost comic exclamation of frustration often heard in modern Israel.”

• “P.126: For all the ancients (except the Israelites, the people who would become the Jews), time as we think of it was unreal; the Real was what was heavenly and archetypal. For us, the heirs of Jewish perception, the exact opposite is true: earthly time is real time; Eternity, if we think of it at all, is the end of time (or simply an illusion).”

• “P.155: This bias toward the underdog is unique not only in ancient law but in the whole history of law. However faint our sense of justice may be, insofar as it operates at all it is still a Jewish sense of justice.”

• “P.156: But, even at their most hairsplittingly bizarre, these laws remain testimony to the fact that the Jews were the first people to develop an integrated view of life and its obligations.”

• “P.169: Each of us has in our life at least one moment of insight, one Mount Sinai — an uncanny, other-worldly, time-stopping experience that somehow succeeds in breaking through the grimy, boisterous present, the insight that, if we let it, will carry us through our life.”

• “P.170: That accomplishment is intergenerational may be the deepest of all Hebrew insights.”

• “P.177: The modern word "charisma," taken from the Greek for "grace" or "divinely conferred gift," exactly describes what the Israelites expected from their leaders: a kind of inner glow, perceptible in a man's physical demeanor, that captures the observer's imagination and converts him to a partisan.”

• “P.206: Gold, silver, bronze, and iron, cloths of scarlet, crimson, and violet, scented wood from Ophir, and Lebanese trunks of cedar and juniper all poured into Jerusalem, along with architects and designers, engravers and carpenters, and skilled workers of all kinds.”

• “P.240-241: The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside—our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact—new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice—are the gifts of the Jews.”

• “P.246: The story of Jewish identity across the millennia against impossible odds is a unique miracle of cultural survival. Where are the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians today? And though we recognize Egypt and Greece as still belonging to our world, the cultures and ethnic stocks of those countries have little continuity with their ancient namesakes.”

• “P.249: There is no way that it could ever have been "self-evident that all men are created equal" without the intervention of the Jews.”

• “P.250: To me, at least, the most satisfying way to read the Bible is to see it as a collection of varied documents, each showing us the same revelation at different stages of development but capable of bringing us at last to a processive, personalist faith in a completely mysterious God.”

• “P.259: The assertion that "individuality is the flip side of monotheism" came out of a discussion I had with Rabbi Burton Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a man whose ordinary conversation is as studded with arresting insights as a spring garden is with daffodils.”

• “P.263: For those interested in the question of how Hebrew became Hebrew, I recommend two books among the welter of possibilities: Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, "The World's Writing Systems" (Oxford, 1996), and Angel Saenz-Badillos, "A History of the Hebrew Language" (Cambridge, 1993).”

• “P.275: In New York, I was able to study the Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in an atmosphere of such beauty, friendship, and peace that its nooks and crannies will always seem like home to me.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had.

  Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers

• The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside—our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact—new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice—are the gifts of the Jews.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• metaphor is the basis of all language and thought, as it is of all religion.

  Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers

• Since time is no longer cyclical but one-way and irreversible, personal history is now possible and an individual life can have value.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• Democracy, in contrast, grows directly out of the Israelite vision of individuals, subjects of value because they are images of God, each with a unique and personal destiny. There is no way that it could ever have been “self-evident that all men are created equal” without the intervention of the Jews.

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• “Nothing that is worth doing,” wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, “can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.” That accomplishment is intergenerational may be the deepest of all Hebrew insights.

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• All evidence points to there having been, in the earliest religious thought, a vision of the cosmos that was profoundly cyclical.

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• There is no way around life and its sufferings. Our only choice is whether we will be consumed by the fire of our own heedless fears and passions or allow God to refine us in his fire and to shape us into a fitting instrument for his revelation, as he did Moshe. We need not fear God as we fear all other suffering, which burns and maims and kills. For God’s fire, though it will perfect us, will not destroy, for “the bush was not consumed.”

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• This God can make use of human beings, whether they mean to do his will or not.

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• All religions are cyclical, mythical, and without reference to history as we have come to understand it—all religions except the Judeo-Christian stream in which Western consciousness took life.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Israel
• Egypt
• Sumer
• Canaan
• Uruk
• Babylon
• Jerusalem
• Mountain
• Enkidu
• Mesopotamia
• Jericho
• Ishtar
• Sinai
• Harran
• Bethlehem
• Middle East
• Samaria
• Heaven
• Hebron
• Judaism
• Wheel

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Thomas Cahill (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 909.04924

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Judaism › History of Religion
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Eastern
• Books › History › World › Jewish
• Books › History › Ancient › Early Civilization

More Books Like This edit see section history