The old Jewish joke is: They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.
That’s not quite right. It should be: They did kill us, men, women and children, over and over in every generation in the most brutal and disgusting ways possible.
They failed to erase us, Judaism, and our belief in the Messiah.
Let’s eat.
Eric Rozenman’s The David Discovery is the fictionalized story of generations of the Davidic Dynasty; a phantom-like intergenerational Special Operations team that tries to protect King David’s lineage; and parts of Jewish history you may well have forgotten. It is sad, bloody, and remarkably moving. And, in this period of rising antisemitism not only in the Middle East and Europe, but in the US as well, it is remarkably timely.
Rozenman is the author of From Elvis to Trump, Eyewitness to the Unraveling: Co-Starring Richard Nixon, Andy Warhol, Bill Clinton, The Supremes and Barack Obama! and Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question (reviewed in the Summer 2019 issue of inFOCUS Quarterly). His commentaries have appeared across the American and Israeli media and, full disclosure, after a career at B’nai B’rith and CAMERA, he was Communications Consultant at the Jewish Policy Center.
Jumping from present to past to another past to present to a different past, you find a remarkable group of rabbis who work to track the descendants of King David from the Roman expulsion of 70 CE to the present day. They are aided by a formidable group of protectors/enforcers. Sometimes, they find the right man. Sometimes they protect the wrong man. It doesn’t really matter. They are working with what they have, which is a fascinating group of men. [Note: Yes. Men. There is a discussion early on about why the Moshiach will be a man and cannot be a woman. Women, however, function as they always have in Jewish history, as indispensable parties to Jewish existence – and sometimes to the Organization.]
For American Jews – the most likely readers, but others should read it as well – there is resonance in the chapters set in the present. You will recognize the liberals, traditionalists, feminists, rabbis, nasty people on the streets, and the wafting through of Sunday School and Jewish summer camp lessons.
But the real lessons are in the chapters set in the past.
Be honest, how much did you know about the Jews of North Africa? Yes, you knew they were expelled in the late 1940s and 1950s as a reaction to the establishment of the state of Israel. But their history, their connection with the Berber communities in the 8th century CE?
Or what about the rabbis and mystics of Palestine in the 16th century? If you ever sang “L’cha Dodi” or “Yedid Nefesh” at Kabbalat Shabbat, here are your people. The words were composed by Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz of Sfat – putting the lie to the anti-Israel calumny that Jews came to the Middle East as 20th century colonists; they were always there. The focus here is the 1799 Napoleonic colonialist attempt to invade what was then the Sanjak of Acre, held by Ottoman Turks and British colonialists.
European history tells you how the French fared, but two modern points emerge:1) the indigenous presence of Jews and their relationship with indigenous Muslims, and 2) the absence of anything resembling “Palestine,” “Palestinians,” Palestinian statehood/governance/nationality.
The Spanish Inquisition? Yes, you knew it was nasty, but Rozenman’s description will turn you off of lunch. On the other hand, he launches into the fabulous story of Jewish Caribbean pirates. Expelled from Spain and then from Portugal, Jews went to the Caribbean and South America. Beth Israel of Aruba was formed in the 16th century; it is still there. But the story in this chapter is the actual story of Jewish dispossession – the hero becomes a pirate because he wants to kill Spaniards who killed his mother and his sister.
Follow this one to today’s Cuba, with its small, poor Jewish community bolstered by American Jewish congregations.
As you get closer to the 21st century, something else emerges. America.
The first Jews arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654, fleeing Brazil when Portugal ousted the Dutch, making it as unsafe for Jews as it had been in Portugal itself. Does that change your conception of American Jews as European-based immigrants of the 20th century?
Throughout the stories, the life and work of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (z”l) is discussed – how Jewish history and writing influenced America’s Founding Fathers and why the Jewish experience in the United States is different from other places – Europe especially, but not only. American founding principles are Jewish principles.
In a memorable speech, Rabbi Sacks explained contracts and covenants:
In a contract, two or more people come together to make an exchange… which is to the benefit of the self-interest of each.
A covenant isn’t like that. It’s more like a marriage than an exchange… A covenant isn’t about me, the voter, or me, the consumer, but about all of us together. Or in that lovely key phrase of American politics, it’s about “We, the people.”
Biblical Israel had a society long before it had a state… And there is only one nation known to me that had the same dual founding as biblical Israel, and that is the United States of America which has its social covenant in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and its social contract in the Constitution in 1787.
An extraordinary lesson and a grave warning for all Americans today. If we lose the connection between our Constitution and our people, lose the concept of a covenantal relationship between G-d and man, America will lose what made it the “Goldene Medineh” and the “City on the Hill.”
Buy this one. Buy several copies – one for you, one for each of your children, one for your parents. And worry over the warning inherent in Jewish history. Even in America.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.
