Reading and Skiing Like Crazy & Ivanhoe & Zealot, etc.

We desperately need snow, but that has not stopped me from skiing like a mad woman at our local mountain resort. We are so looking forward to a much-heralded snowstorm on Wednesday, which is promising to be the most significant snowfall of the winter thus far. Snow dancers are actively leaping and bounding.

Skiing excessively is good for reading: I become so exhausted from skiing that I come home and fall into the loft bed over the living room and READ for hours and doze a bit until it's time to cook dinner.

Ivanhoe News:
I must say that after reading Chapters 31-40 in Ivanhoe, I'm more eager than ever to read the history of King Henry II's sons, Richard Coeur-de-Lion and John, as well as the aftermath of the Crusades in England. But I'm also fascinated by the sharp divide between the Norman "Conqueror" society and the "defeated" Saxon society. Before reading Ivanhoe, I had assumed, wrongly, that the rift between the two cultures would have been settled by the time of this novel, which I think is, at the least, 200 years after the Norman invasion. Actually, I think the time gap is more like 250 years or more, but I need Katrina of Pining for the West to set me straight on that. I definitely need some tuition in this time period of English history.

The young Jewish woman, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac, is in far greater straits than she was when I last wrote. But because the Black Knight (King Richard) and Wilfred (Ivanhoe) have at long last united to form a bold front that appears to be insurmountable, I'm much less worried. I'm sure they will see that justice is done in Rebecca's case.

Earlier in the novel, it seemed that the fair Saxon princess Lady Rowena would play a greater role in the novel than Rebecca, but that has not happened. I do wonder about English cultural attitudes toward Jews in Sir Walter Scott's time. It would be very helpful to know this as a means of understanding the ways in which Isaac and Rebecca have been presented.

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is so lucidly written, which is so important in unraveling the extraordinarily complex era of the first century in Palestine. I'm halfway through and the pages slip by as I find myself in complete awe of the actual history. Such horrendous turmoil and bloodshed throughout this entire century. With all the dozens and dozens of "messiahs" in this tortuous period in Jewish history, how is it that Jesus of Nazareth was seized upon as the Messiah of early Christians? After reading the 92 pages of Part One, it seems miraculous that a group of believers seized upon this one zealot among so many.  I highly recommend this book. Not a difficult read at all, though well researched and footnoted by a scholar.