Small Land, Great Light

**They were conquered, scattered, and persecuted for two thousand years. They never stopped hoping.**

Three thousand years ago, a small people in the hills of Judea wrote a book that changed the world. Empires rose against them: Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome. They were exiled, expelled from country after country, and in the twentieth century targeted for total destruction. Every one of those empires is gone. The Jewish people are still here, speaking Hebrew, reading the same ancient words, and once again living in the land where their story began.

*Small Land, Great Light* is the sweeping story of how that happened, and of the remarkable nation it produced.

In this passionate and deeply researched history, political scientist William R. Eagleston takes readers on a 3,000-year journey:

- **The roots:** the kings and prophets of ancient Israel, and the Bible's ideas of human dignity, justice, and a day of rest
- **The long exile:** the rabbis who rebuilt Jewish life after Rome destroyed Jerusalem, the Golden Age of Spain, the expulsion of 1492, and the vibrant world of the shtetl
- **The road home:** the pioneers who drained the swamps, the miraculous revival of Hebrew, the darkness of the Holocaust, and the survivors who rose from the ashes to build a state
- **A nation reborn:** the drama of 1948, the rescue of Jews from Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, and the former Soviet Union, and a democracy that has never stopped arguing with itself
- **Gifts to the world:** drip irrigation, life-saving medicines, world-changing technology, and rescue teams sent to disaster zones across the globe
- **The hope:** courageous peacemaking, a home front that refuses to be broken, and a people that answered October 7 by running toward one another

At its heart, this is a book about resilience: not as a myth, but as the product of memory, learning, community, and choices passed down through a hundred generations. It explains how a nation of ten million, less than eighty years old, has become one of the most creative and inspiring societies on earth.

Whether you know Israel well or are discovering its story for the first time, *Small Land, Great Light* will leave you with a new appreciation for a small land that has given the world so much light.

**Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel lives.**