With the Ninth of Av coming up (I am posting this on Tammuz 18 having read on Tammuz 17), I felt this was a good time to read it. I should have read this sooner (ie not during the three weeks of Mourning!) It's a choose your own adventure book! Who doesn't love a choose your own adventure book?

This is a wonderful book for children of all ages (including *ahem* those children who have children as well). So many endings for what could have happened whether one stays in Jerusalem or leaves after the Temple is destroyed. So many options and endings! Some involve changing a religion, others involve meeting great rabbis and having students, and I believe one was being put to death (hey it happens). I know what I am going to read again soon! ( )

It is an excellent book for young adults to learn about life in the first and second century. It starts with the day after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE and follows the path of people who survived it. They may opt to stay in the ruined city or escape to various parts of the then known world, including places like Egypt, Spain, Yavneh, Mesopotamia. They may meet and join famous rabbis. Or they may make different occupational choices. Some of them even change their religion. With all these varieties of lifestyles and places we get an overview of post-Temple life and a sense of what is lost with the dispersion.

Now, forget most of what I wrote in the previous paragraph. There are no real characters in the book, if we discount the historical figures, such as sages and rabbis. This book is a "Do/choose-your-own-adventure style book." For those of you who are not familiar with this style: every page is a vignette size entry, that stands on its own. They describe an event, tell a story, or pose a moral dilemma. At the end of the page the reader can choose between 2-3 options what to do, depending on the temperament and understanding of the text read. This is a great tool to teach decision making, analytical thinking, and dealing with potential consequences. As the whole book is written in second person singular ("you") if read correctly it becomes rather personal book. YOU make the choices and end up living with them.

(My only aversion wit the book is that about third of the possible paths include Jesus and Christianity one way or another. I am not sure whether that proportion is accurate for 1st/2nd century life. I thought that at that point in history the new religion was not as widespread as to warrant such a heavy representation in a volume about Jewish life.)