The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
Simon SchamaRead
I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the resilience and rich narrative of the Jewish people throughout history.
In this quote, Simon Schama reflects on the extraordinary endurance of the Jewish people over thousands of years in the face of adversity. He emphasizes that not only have they survived monumental challenges, but they also possess a remarkable history filled with dramatic storytelling that contributes to their identity and cultural heritage.
In practice
During a speech at a cultural event emphasizing the importance of heritage.
The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.
Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.
History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.
History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel.
From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.
This wicked man Hitler, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred. this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame.
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
Every February, we reflect on and honor the achievements, struggles, and icons that comprise Black history. As a proud, Black man running for office and raising two young, Black boys in the South, I am acutely aware that I stand on the shoulders of giants.
Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.
It's a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can't ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it's impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.
The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.