"techknow." go behind the scenes and follow our expert contribute orders on twitter, facebook, google+ and more. the jews have a name. sigh simon shama, ethnic people from antiquity to modern day israel. the two books and 5-part series were personal for the award winning teacher, film maker and author. >> a palestinian, a jew, you suck the oxygen out of the whole

adventure. >> he has produced documentaries and books during a career that can attest to the breadth of his passes and his profound curiosity including one that will examined america's greatness and its flaws. >> i am not a pass fist. i don't believe in the dismantling of the military power but you have to think and improvise. >> i spoke at the 6th synagogue. welcome to al jazeera? >> pleasure. >> to write the story of the juice, to write the -- to write the story of the jews, 5700-plus years of memory. >> right. >> people who hold fast? >> it's called chuzpah. >> what made you want to take it on? >> when the bbc said we would like to do the story of the

jews, i thought, you know, how many years have we got left? you can't not do this. partly because jewish history for people who are not jewish tends to be so overwhelmingly dominated by the holocaust and the israeli-palestinian conflict, those rightly exorcise the world but they in some way close off the accessibility of jewish history, a rich and complicated and not always horribly tearful story as one might manual. so here is the possibility and i think even the possibility in the united states to provide a point of access for non-jews as well as jews and to enter this story, which has had such a profound impact. >> were there new discoveries. >> when i began the research five years ago, sir, i didn't really know about the story of how to begin the book, mainly a colony, a town of jewish mercy

meranaries, the 5th century bc, the time that a lot of the bible was being written, there was a town called elephantinia on the nile in which the jews shared space with syrians and egyptians and some of their story, it was a wonderful par dod paradox celebrating passover. in the time of abraham, here is what i call a community of suburban ordinarinesordinarines it's look fort something or another. it's a real, real town. and we know about the things that are daily life things, about their property disputes. jews are obsessed with that. we know about prenup argument did, those kind of things. so slightly mischievously, i

wanted to say, look. this is a place where there was no obligation to suffer and, also, they were very connected in the non-jewish world in which they were part. then i moved to the bible. the bible, for all its riches is not a document of social history. it doesn't really tell us what day-to-day is. this place in egypt does. >> it helps you reclaim very interestingly in the last several decades, there has been some talk in the united states about quote, unquote tough jews, the idea of the schtoker, at least in the elephantine, the idea that they have mercanary soldiers, get me some jews. >> in 18th century london, which i am writing about now, there were roughnecks, the safadi jews that brought fish and chips to the med traiterranean world.

they were kind of debt enforcers really. there was a kind of jewish soprano gang basically. i actually wrote an he is say about the first great sports celebrity in i think the history a jewish boxer known as mendoza, the jew. he was a tough and devious fighter. he incorrected the uppercut, actually, we are told. he was attacked by christian boxers as being typically a jew would always hit you from down below up top. there is this side to our existence as well as you say, the studous philosophers and poets and men over mind. >> time and again, you bring us back to scholars and readers and writers because here is this culture they collision of three continents that is not a culture of images of statutes and aisleses and objects but of ideas and words, words so

precious that they are carried around like idols and sacred objects. >> exactly. that's extraordinary substitution of something which doesn't have a human face attached to it or a body attached to it like greek and mess po tapotamia but is a combn of essentially laws, ethical norms, accompanied by stories of how they got to be in the world. he job description relim on, when you think about it, depended critically on vast colossal thick statutes and en descriptions. the genius of the juice perhaps in adversity was to make it portable, to make this writing in a scroll formed or in a miniature form, that you could carry with you. whatever the markers of your identity were, a building, a temple, there was something you could take with you which would survive. >> there are no more lydians, no

more meads but there are still jews who are comp temporaries of all of those people. why are they alone among those people? no more phonecians. there are jews? >> there are screws who disappeared. chinese jews disappeared where they were quite well treated. this is not a res pay saying persecute us. i do not want to be misunderstood that you need persecution in order really to have a sense for identity. otherwise, you know, there will be no american jews even if you are not strictly fiercely orthodox, you commit yourself to a community of memory. were there any religion which both in the bible and every year at passover, are required to remember and to relate a story so that it doesn't disappear generation to generation. and jews are not at all unique in terms of what they suffered as being treated as permanent

aliens and strangers, but they are probably unique in believing you can do this through the power of the word and the power of the mind, i think, actually. >> you use the word "we." and this is an interesting moment for a historian because, you know, you are not a german romantic poet, a 19th century abolitionist. you have entered the world of a lot of different people. >> right. >> as a historian does. you try to see their world. how do you do it when you are of the people you are writing about as well as learning about the people you are writing about? >> it's true. we all, i think, in growing up in the 1960s, as baby historians, we, most of us took a self-denying oath. that's to say we would, even if there was a -- british historians writing about british history which at that time, i didn't do, you accepted the fact that they were unlike you in time and place. they were kind of imcomensurably strange. you had no illusions you were

walking and talking among the dead. it struck me a long time ago whennists writing about the french revolution that the virtues of, you know, chilly distance, unloading it really, the virtues of distance and objectivity can be oversold. >> that's to say when i thought i wanted to do the frefrm revolution book, i went back to read the histories written in 1889 by a generation, only like two or three generations out from what had happened. what you got from there was the kind of just an afterburn of an event, the perils and the tum results of which have been causedtumults of which have bee caus caused, a feverish bunch of words. in a television series, if you are looking for a kind of plates of safety, trying to exquisitely balance one view and the other on cameron, conservative, liberal, black, white,

palestinian and a screw, you were going to suck the oxygen out of the whole adventure really. so i did sort of take a deep breath and say, fine. this will be without too much autobiography. >> but occasionally, there is a wink in the pages of the book, a wink to the reader because you will deliver a set of ideas and then groucho marx steps in from stage right and throws in a little bit of a line? >> i am allowed this because it's a schtick. i think, you know, it happened when it happened. i begin the book with a story of two parents worrying about their soldier boy son in a plates we talked about in egypt. the father has failed to get him his kiss and the father, we only have the letter from the father. the father is very shifty about sailing, his son, he is going in to dangerous territory. he starts to do exactly what jewish boys know jewish fathers do. he is not feeling so well.

the implication being don't give me a hard time. and then i say, and then at the end of this letter, you know, so many thousands of years old, from 475 bc, the three words which all jewish history spring, likewise, your mother. there is no argument. you always have to be wary that you are not kind of embarrassingly and creepily throwing modern dress on people who truly would not have known how to wear it or modern forms of speech. but equally, you want to acknowledge when there is something that strikes you profoundly across the sent rcen. >> i am with simon shama on "talk to al jazeera." when we come back we will talk about the current problems in ukraine and crimea. >> al jazeera america presents extraordinary documentaries. >> i've seen nothing like this before in my entire life.

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>> so join the conversation and make it your own. >> watch the stream. >> and join the conversation online @ajamstream. ♪ welcome back to that y"talk t al jazeera" i am well simon shima. he has a new book "the story of the jews." we are sitting in this glorious early 20th century town which had been an episcopal church for half a sent tree. as neighborhoods in washington changed, now, redesigned, reclaimed as jewish space. the cornerstone of this building laid in 1906 has memorial objects put into it, the minutes of the first board of trustees of the temple and that sort of thing and the u.s. constitution. and i thought that was such a

touching thing. ? >> yeah. >> because this has been, this country has been, a haven for jews, often a difficult home. >> right. >> but arguably, one of the greatest gifts to the jewish people ever. jews come to new port. they come to new amsterdam where they run into dutch. one of them, the governor but they used to come to new port in the middle of the 17th secentur and newport is significant in rhode island because actually, providence colony is founded by roger williams. romminger williams is a kind of -- roger williams is radical, in 17th sent tree terms left, but his view is there is no church that is not corrupt and imperfect. so no good christian is entitled to form a government and not entitled to bar anybody else's worship. >> includes american indians and it certainly includes the jews. there is an incredible spark of

fire of toleration that begins in new england and roger williams is, himself, a refugee from persecution from pure tan, massachusetts, but theitan, massachusetts, but the. crucial thing is jews had a hard time when nations and nation states have founded themselves on myths about soil, blood and tribe. we are never going to make people feel easy if essentially they are aiming to have a country built out of territory and one language and the sense in which you belong to an exclusive tribe to which people have to conform almost biologically. you know, the world now is still fighting those terrible battles. america is truly special because its founded on an idea. >> that's -- it's the ideological and fiphilosophical

guard. it's again the only great country in the world that it, also, is formed out of words. so the union, the communion between american words and jewish words is a natural and surprisingly and remaining to this day absolutely unique. it's not surprising that the possibility of existing outside your own boundaries as part of other people from other cultures with other memories, with other laningsz have united in committing themselves to these extraordinarily noble words represented by the declaration of independence and the constitution came about. >> you have written a lot about america, the american future you have done t.v. around it, looked at america at the 21st century,

but now you are an insider and an outsider. >> right. >> how does the country look now? >> one thing that america has trouble with is a sense of limits. america was not founded on calculatingents really actually. there is a chapter called "american plenty," a film which was filmed in the year of the first obama election in 2008. >> there, this year, as, you know, those years ago, the essential drive to remain special in the world and to keep a national community as driven by extra occur since of determination and self motivation depends upon the calculation of what you can't do

as well as what you can do. this is not an election winner, of course. the same thing would be true of, you know, the irrational exubrents of the money markets that got us into catastrophic trouble. there is no limits to what we could do relative to trading. >> cannot be true. questi we are wrestling with dye log between a political lake that says that's cap itlation and that's the europeans and them telling you what not to do. we are america and we can do absolutely anything but on the other, no we are knitted in this world together. god help us. there are some things we have to calculate that possibly we can't. we do with a more modest sense. >> there is a baby and the bath

water problem because part of the american jeanous is that that sense of no limits drives you to do amazing things this is a moment talking on a dangerous day. i am not a pacifist. you have to improvize. benjamin franklin walks mock us. the lupts to an old way of doing things. those will go the way of ibm. we used to have big blue computers? right? >> what happens.

rather than assume the whole world is ours. >> isn't the tough balancing act, doing that without giving into declinism when the president tried to rally the international community in libya and then again syria and now with at least more partners and support in ukraine and crimea, you are seeing a different kind of projection of power? you can't just simply speak power into being? >> you can't. you can't run away from it either. it is tricky. it's you know believeably tricky. it's the most tricky thing of all, i think, and for all of his faults, there was a way he didn't have to cope with the catastrophic recession but bill clinton did have a way and reagan did, too, they had a way

of saying what could be done in a new way without stentorian and depressing. jummy carter had important things to say but it was a paulingly hopele the way he said it was just making everybody feel naughty and wicked and having to stand in the corner for their sins it struck me this morning thinking about it that whatever happens as a response to the possible annexation of crimea, there is a gigantic issue out there. which america supreme fitted to believe, the definition of what free europe is. it sounds a little cold warrior of me and i couldn't be less of a cold warrior. we need to make it clear that the days of reconstructing the soviet empire are gone.

there is such a thing as a free europe now. we need to worry about where the borders are. but we need to do this. the americans, the atlantic charter, the deck collaration of independence, the gettysburg address, are very, very good at pithily articulated statements of principals which the world immediately understands. there are probably some people hearing about it on the row and thinking why is this my fight? why is whether crimea is russia or ukraine my fight in? >> it turns out unexpectedly that the great issue of our time is ho how do people of different beliefs and different cultures share the same common space? if the answer to that about problems of sharing the common space is you invade a part of a country in order to sort out problems with minorities you are

in a suddenly violently dangerous world. we have after all along with russia, we are signatories to a treaty they gave up nuclear weapons. if that paper is worthlets, we are truly in the 1930s situation in which no current trees are going to feel safe. the baltics will want to have nuclear weapons. scandinavian countries, all of those who used to be part of the long reach of the soviet union will say we can't not rely on american power the answer to our commuter in duluth and san antonio if you believe america is not just about our pair occasion i can parochial shared interests in

the western hemmis fear, we have been saddled with this global role which in some sense the world has benefited by an american presence since the second world war, this is a moment to stip up to the plate. >> i am talking to simon shama. you are watching al jazeera. stay with us.

... a lot of people at first blush were hearing you talk about your latest book may not realize it's only sort of the first of two massive tomes. are you going to land that plane on the deck of the aircraft-carrier? you say you are writing parts of the story. >> jewish mission accomplished. >> yeah. >> i don't know my dear. stay tuned. i am writing as fast as i can. it turns out, who knew, the judz got around a lot.

>> you are a man of many parts, not just sitting with pile did of dusty notes and scribbling away. you like to sing. you like to dance. if i -- >> and cook. >> i think a lot of people have worked with their heads and with writing need some sort of break from it and something that's really and in my case, you know, i am very impractical person. i wouldn't know a cash rateo if it fell on me from the sky. i was not great at various kinds of sport but i knew instantly when i started to cook seriously as a student. the timing. >> a bit of performance to that. >> a lot of performance to it. you are giving pleas you're and you are -- pleasure and agent of antics. i have had more e-mails. my recipe for a mustivy cheese souffle it's why i was put on this earth, it turns out. >> so, some archivist sentencen

no you that. "the story of the jews" simon scharma, great to talk to you. >> you, too. >> >> i'm jonathan betz in new york. tonight on al jazeera america, we take a deeper look at these stories. >> in ukraine russian soldiers use force to take over the last crimean military base. >> childhood illnesses making a come back >> a lead in the missing plane turns up empty and the search may take a treacherous turn.