Shabbat Reading: Steven Weitzman's The Origin of the Jews

#whatireadovershabbat Steven Weitzman’s The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age

If you want what the title seems to promise, look elsewhere—Weitzman never tells you where the Jews came from. Instead, this is a book about various scholars’ failed quest to discover the origin of the Jews. Misleading title aside, the stories Weitzman tells of how people have tried to figure out the Jews’ beginnings (from genealogy to genetics) are fascinating, their motivations compelling. If you’re like me, you’ll come away asking not “Where did the Jews come from!?” but “Why does that question interest me so much?”