What an hilarious evening we have had at Lynne's home - the Pooh like Capital Letters, the sparse tight writing, the innuendos and the wit of Lawrence Durrell's short stories reduced us to tears of laughter.
Thanks for choosing it.
Tuesday 16 February 2010
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Following on from our reading of 'When I Lived in Modern Times', I have just read a very interesting book called 'The last Jews of Kerala' by Edna Fernandes. It is about the surviving members of India's oldest Jewish Diaspora (about 2000 years old) in Cochin. The thing that sets them apart from other Jewish communities is that they have never known persecution. They were welcomed by the local Indian rulers, to quote the blurb, into ' ... a land where Jew and Muslim, Hindu and Christian have lived and prayed in harmony for centuries'. This community is now dying, and many have moved to Israel. We wondered how Jewishness was defined, and this puts an interesting slant on that discussion.
Another good read is 'The Thirteenth Tribe' by Arthur Koestler, which traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the dark ages became converted to Judaism.
Another good read is 'The Thirteenth Tribe' by Arthur Koestler, which traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the dark ages became converted to Judaism.
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