This episode starts out bleakly - in the Polish-Lithuanian forest lands that were annexed by the Russian Empire and designated to be the only place in Russia where Jews could live. In those harsh conditions, the mystical tradition of Hasidism, - "direct line" to God, drawing on the Kabbalah, a course in Hebrew magic, - is born.
The Pale lasts for roughly 1.5 centuries, during which East European Jews are heavily oppressed, and in 1881 and 1903-1905 - slaughtered in pogroms. About 2.5 million of them emigrate to the United States during the period of 1880-1920.
We next hear about the successes of the Jewish Americans: Levi Strauss; the bosses of Hollywood companies like MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, and Paramount; and Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, who created the music for "The Wizard of Oz".
The episode ends on a depressing note. The Nazis have started their march eastward, and Schama vividly describes how the Jewish inhabitants of his family's native Lithuanian town were rounded up, subjected to beastly torture, forced to dig their own graves, and then murdered en masse in the summer of 1941.
8/10.
The Pale lasts for roughly 1.5 centuries, during which East European Jews are heavily oppressed, and in 1881 and 1903-1905 - slaughtered in pogroms. About 2.5 million of them emigrate to the United States during the period of 1880-1920.
We next hear about the successes of the Jewish Americans: Levi Strauss; the bosses of Hollywood companies like MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, and Paramount; and Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, who created the music for "The Wizard of Oz".
The episode ends on a depressing note. The Nazis have started their march eastward, and Schama vividly describes how the Jewish inhabitants of his family's native Lithuanian town were rounded up, subjected to beastly torture, forced to dig their own graves, and then murdered en masse in the summer of 1941.
8/10.
