Agrippa's Daughter

Agrippa's Daughter is an emotional, deep, compassionate and compelling historical novel. It tells the story of Queen Berenice Bat Agrippa of Israel. Born in 28 CE, Berenice was the daughter of the King of Israel, Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great. A Hasmonean Princess, Berenice was strikingly beautiful, with the flaming red hair of the line of King David Ben Jesse, and fierce green eyes. It is also the story of the Nation of Israel, in the years before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the cruel exile of the Jewish people, from their ancient homeland. After her arranged marriage to King Herod of Chalcis (in Lebanon), who died when Berenice was 23, she married the physician Shimeon Ben Gamaliel, of the House of the great Rabbi Hillel, to whose teachings she became a committed disciple. Later after the murder of Shimeon in Jerusalem, she would travel to Rome , as the mistress of Titus , destroyer of the Temple and later Emperor of Rome. It is a novel of colour, sound and passion. I was deeply moved for my Nation of Israel , reading about the massacre of Jewish children in Jerusalem in 66 CE by the order of the cruel Roman procurator Gessius Florus. Especially, since last year, in August 2003, there was another massacre of Jewish children, by Palestinian terrorists. Through the conflict at the time between Pharisee and Sadducee, Hillelite and Zealot, Sicarii and Hellenist, this is ultimately the story of the Land of Israel and the attachment through the ages of the Jewish Nation to that land. It is the story of the dreams and future of the children of Israel.