Those three words came to mind when I read Abram Sachar's A History of Jews. Sachar passionately tells the story of his people with pride and racial patriotism as he praises Jewish heroes and excoriates the enemies of the Jews. He also has the ability to evoke sympathy for the plight of Jews living as a minority in society for so many centuries. This is the type of patriotic history that is used to build pride in one's heritage and defends its people against its critics.

The first part covers the history of the ancient Israelites. One gets a view of the Old Testament from a secular Jewish viewpoint in the "man created God" mode. Sachar says that Jewish priests wrote the history of Israel primarily during the Babylonian captivity--centuries after the events happened. The lesson of their history is that the Jews lost their country because they did not follow the laws of Yahweh closely enough.

The second part covers the life of Jews during the Middle Ages. There was a golden age in Moslem Spain when the Jews were tolerated quite well and they produced many accomplishments for that society. One learns about all the great Jewish thinkers and leaders in general during the Middle Ages. But the Middle Ages were primarily not a good time for the Jews because there was no concept of religious tolerance during that time. Christian leaders thought that it was very progressive to make their states into wholly Christian ones and therefore tried to drum out infidels. Sachar says that Jews were forced to live in ghettoes in the worst side of town. He says concerning the Talmud trials of the Middle Ages that the accusations against the Talmud are false. The supposedly anti-Christian elements in it are irrelevant since such elements were in irrelevant and obscure parts of Talmud that were not taken very seriously by the Jews. In the latter Middle Ages in Christian Spain, the Jews were forced to convert to Christianity and were known as Marranos who were often considered crypto-Jews even after conversion. The Jews were often restricted economically from participating in gainful occupations. Some became usurers because Christians were generally discouraged from charging interest on loans to other Christians because of religious reasons. There were often accusations from Christians that the Jews were cheating the Christians on such loans, but Sachar says that the few Christian lenders often charged higher interest rates than the Jews. Jews were often the tax farmers for the king who oppressed people with high taxes and many Jews were resented for being agents of the oppressive king. The king would not usually send the Jews out of the country because they were a great source of revenue for him because he also taxed the Jews. One gains an understanding why the Jews did not like Christians that much and vice-versa.

Part Three covers the modern era in which the many Jews supported the new liberalism of the Enlightenment with its values of tolerance of other religions different from one's own and the equality of all people living within the state. The values of cosmopolitanism were supported by many diaspora Jews, in other words. But there was also a Jewish nationalism expressed in the Zionist movement which sought to have a Jewish state in Palestine. Sachar tells of the struggle that Zionists had in getting their state and gives a curiously racialist argument about living among the Arabs. He says that before the Jews arrived Palestine was backwards, with health and wealth standards well below average for the Arabs; but the Arabs were lucky to have the Jews arrive because the Jews improved the society even for the Arabs.

Sachar's history is perhaps not terribly objective, but his passion for the history keeps it from being dry reading.