Good historical fiction works a special kind of magic, immersing the reader in the dramas and turmoils of previous centuries. Well researched historical novels - and TV dramas - are as close as we’ll get to time travel. Jewish themed historical fiction can draw on 3,000 years of turbulent history and vividly recreate the events that defined our modern Jewish identity. Nothing beats traveling to the locations where your favorite novels are set and exploring them as part of an organized tour!
Jewish History - A Writer’s Dream
The Jewish story spans the last 3,000 years and its landscape covers some of the most fascinating and important cultural sites around the world. Beginning in Ancient Egypt’s fertile Nile Delta and continuing across desert wildernesses, Biblical Jews carved out their kingdoms in the Promised Land, fighting, conquering, rebelling against invaders and finally being dispersed across the world. High dramas like the wars of King David, the Maccabean Revolt, Masada, and the destruction of the Temple are perfect material for historical novelists.
The Jewish story continued in great European cities like Amsterdam, Prague and Berlin, and then the adventures and opportunities of the New World. Jewish communities alternately flourished and suffered across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, even reaching India, China and Japan. Jewish travelers and merchants like Ibrahim ibn Yaqub and Benjamin of Tudela made astonishing journeys through exotic and dangerous locations.
In modern times, Jews faced pogroms, and then the Holocaust. The incomprehensible horror and the tragedy of those years continues to compel novelists, who seek to make sense of the evil that devoured millions of innocents. Arguably, no people or culture on earth has such a range and breadth of both rich and extreme historical experience to inspire modern writers.
Popular Historical Novels with Jewish Themes
There are hundreds of good books that bring historical Jewish communities to life. The best are impeccably researched and wonderfully crafted by writers who immersed themselves in their particular historical period. Many are written by Jews, but Jewish history attracts writers from all backgrounds. Scottish writer Alan Massie wrote a well regarded novel about King David, portraying the biblical monarch as a dangerous and deeply flawed Iron Age warlord.
Books like The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler take the reader back to the fear and religious coercion of the inquisition. A Storm in the Blood by Jon Stephen Fink builds on the Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street to depict a violent terrorist underworld in late Edwardian London. Georgia Hunter’s novel We Were The Lucky Ones (now also a TV series) explores her own family experiences beginning in Radom, Poland in 1939.
Explore the Places Where Your Favorite Novels are Set
If you’re part of a book club or a local literary group, it can be a real adventure to organize a customized group visit to a city or place where your favorite historical novel is set. By chance, I read The Coffee Trader by David Liss (the story of a 17th century Jewish refugee from Portugal who becomes a commodities trader) shortly before a trip to Amsterdam. It was a real pleasure to wander the city and see locations like the Portuguese Synagogue and the De Wallen district mentioned in the novel.
A guided tour of a city like Amsterdam or Lisbon can be carefully tailored to take in all the neighborhoods, and any surviving buildings, that feature in a story. A Jewish travel company can arrange trips to local Jewish museums and galleries to add background and flavor, and can arrange meetings with local Jewish groups and historians. It may also be able to arrange meetings with actual authors!
A big advantage of an organized tour for a book club (or for a group of family and friends) is that travel arrangements, hotels and local transport are all taken care of. It makes a big difference exploring with professional guides whose specialist knowledge really makes historical sites come to life. If you need kosher food, your guides will take you to the best restaurants and delis in town, and your travel company can recommend kosher hotels.
Combine Your Book Tour with a Jewish Heritage Tour
If you’re already planning a book tour to Europe or Israel - or actually most countries in the world - it makes sense to combine the trip with a tailored Jewish heritage tour. The most popular destinations are Eastern and Central European cities and Jerusalem, but it’s possible to arrange Jewish heritage tours as far afield as Argentina and Brazil, India, China, Dubai and Morocco. Whatever your destination, your tour provider will liaise with US and local authorities to assess the security situation and provide professional security cover.
When you’re exploring all the sites in your favorite historical novel, you can get a much deeper sense of background and context through a tailored Jewish heritage tour. Walking quietly through the streets of a medieval Jewish quarter or the ghetto at twilight can be a hugely atmospheric experience. When a book captures our imagination we start to identify with the characters in it and feel that we ‘know them’. Visiting a Jewish cemetery and seeing their actual graves can be an unexpectedly personal and humbling moment.
Gil Travel has decades of experience arranging customized Jewish tours, including book club tours, family history tours and Jewish heritage tours. If you want to explore a location where your favorite book is set, and enjoy a guided tour of specific places - or learn more about historical events, talk to Gil Travel today.
This post was written in collaboration with Iris Hami, President of Gil Travel Group