Memoirs Of My People

Jewish self-portraits from the 11th to the 20th centuries...The editor writes of MEMOIRS OF MY PEOPLE: "One of the objects that the book will achieve is a description of the infinite diversity of Jewish life, unmatched, I believe, in any other historical group. Consider a few specimens: Memoirs of Daniel Mendoza, the Portuguese English prizefighter of the 18th century; the Exemplar of Uriel da Costa, a Marrano who returned to Judaism and then was excommunicated by the Amsterdam Jews, like his contemporary, Spinoza, and wrote his vita just before committing suicide; Abraham Aboulafia 's memories of a medieval mystic who tried to convert the Pope to Judaism; the Tagebucher of Theodor Herzl, Viennese founder of the Zionist movement; the Daybook of an Adventurer by Heine 's picturesque granduncle, Simon von Geldern .