. It begins with the Babylonian Exile where the Judean scribes, realizing that they faced the same fate as their ten northern brothers of the extinct Kingdom of Israel, fought to preserve their identity and culture though the written word. From there it describes the struggles that the Jewish people faced against the materialism of the Seleucid Empire to the armed might-makes-right attitude of the Roman Empire. The story culminates with the triumph of individual Jewish sages such as Hillel, Yochanan ben Zakai and Akiva in preserving Jewish tradition that has survived to this day. (from wikipedia.org)