The last issue of the Jewish Quarterly features an insightful review of Esther Benbassa's Suffering as Identity: The Jewish Paradigm by Devorah Baum. The book, she writes, is "invaluable for both its political deconstruction of victimhood and its recollection of the lesser known, non-lachrymose history of the Jews."
In the review, Baum touches on the key points of Benbassa's book: the idea that shared suffering can be a powerful catalyser of collective identity; the emergence of a collective narrative of Jewish history as "lachrymose" that has also become a "model to imitate" for other oppressed groups; the relationship between Jewish historiography and religion; and the influence of the Christian tradition on the self-representation of Jewish communities:
this influence has only increased in the modern period, particularly post-war when Jews have often appeared in Jewish and Christian responses to Auschwitz as a martyred people whose martyrdom has been consistently compared to the figure of the suffering of Christ.