In this book, eight of the world's preeminent Jewish historians narrate the story of the Jewish people, from their remote beginnings in the Middle East to the recent homecomings to Israel. Reaching beyond the often dramatic, seminal events in Jewish history, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People offers a fascinating and colorful portrait of the people themselves: where, how and with whom they lived; what they believed; and what they created. With 150 black-and-white and full-color illustrations that weave their own visually stunning narrative, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People chronicles the Jews' development from their emergence as a distinct Middle Eastern people with a highly developed religious life and a famous Temple in Jerusalem, to their dispersion to places as diverse as Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, the Rhineland and Constantinople. It tells the story of the sibling rivalry between the Jews and the Christian minority, which culminated in the triumph of Christianity, and the Jews' subsequent life under Christian and Muslim rule. It describes in great detail the cultural and social flourishing of Jewish life, born of stability in Modern Europe, and the utter destruction of that life in the Holocaust. And, finally, it tells how the remnants, the embers, of European Jewry came to fuel not only the birth of Israel but a second Diaspora as well, sending Jews to all parts of the globe.