A PBS SPECIAL ON JUDAISM is reviewed by the NYT:

Telescoping 4,000 Years of Talmud and Tradition

By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: May 7, 2008

It is easy to see why someone might approach “The Jewish People: A Story of Survival” with a certain reservation. The documentary, to be shown on Wednesday on WLIW and on other PBS stations in June, condenses four millenniums of atrocity into 60 minutes, allotting the pogroms the amount of time it takes to dust a coffee table.

On the surface “The Jewish People” is like a YouTube video reducing multiple seasons of a complex television show — let’s say “Battlestar Galactica” — into 50 seconds: enslavement, evil pharaohs, the marauding Babylonians, the overpowering Romans, the rise of anti-Semitism, the ravages of the Crusades, shtetls, the birth of Yiddish, the Holocaust, Stalinism, the glories of Theodor Herzl, Zionism. And yet what we get is an impressive and surprisingly rigorous feat of synthesis that roots itself in the lesser-known aspects of Jewish life during the ancient world.

[...]

If Ms. Leibowitz really does take her Talmud on the plane, it must be the Reader's Digest condensed version.