The Invention of the Jewish People
A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.
Paperback, 344 pages
ISBN: 9781844676231
June 2010
$19.95 / £9.99
Other Editions
Ebook
ISBN: 9781844674985
June 2010
$12.99
ISBN: 9781844674220
October 2009
$34.95 / £18.99
Reviews
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“Sand's questions about how Israel's democracy can be liberalized and stabilized are thought-provoking and deserve serious discussion.”
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“Perhaps books combining passion and erudition don't change political situations, but if they did, this one would count as a landmark.”
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“[Sand's] quiet earthquake of a book is shaking historical faith in the link between Judaism and Israel.”
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“Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.”
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“Extravagantly denounced and praised.”
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“No discussion of the region any longer seems complete without acknowledgement of this book.”
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“A radical dismantling of a national myth.”
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“Almost too baseless to debunk.”
Blog
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"Do we, too, have a fabricated history?" : Moncef Marzouki on The Invention of the Jewish People
After reading Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, President Moncef Morzouki of Tunisia asks about the lessons Sand's book might have for other nations and peoples.
Do we, too, have a fabricated history?There is no doubt about it - the book The Invention of the Jewish People by the Jewish Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, which stirred up great controversy in Israel and was translated into 26 languages in less than a year, came as a pleasant surprise to all its Arab readers, including to the author of these lines.
What this historian, whose hostility towards Zionism cannot be dismissed as mere Anti-Semitism, establishes very clearly is that the Zionist claim to their right to the lands of Palestine is void. He proves, relying on a vast amount of sources – many of them Jewish – that the forceful expulsion of the Jews from Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans is a myth.... that the preservation of a pure race during years of exile is a myth... that the claim that the ones who returned to conquer Palestine were the grandchildren of those exiled thousands of years earlier is a myth... And even the exodus from Egypt and the Kingdom of David and Salomon, all of these are legends upon legends.
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Shlomo Sand: ‘"The Zionist Left has never been less colonialist than the Right"
On the eve of the Israeli parliamentary elections, L’Express interviewed the historian Shlomo Sand. He looked back to the use of religious reference points by Israeli politicians ever since the creation of the State of Israel, holding this contradiction to blame for the failure of the Israeli Left.
'The Zionist Left has never been less colonialist than the Right'
The parliamentary elections to be held this Tuesday looked certain to confirm the Israeli electorate’s turn to the Right. On the eve of the vote, L’Express interviewed the historian Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Land of Israel: from Holy Land to Homeland. He looked back to the use of religious reference points by Israeli politicians ever since the creation of the State of Israel, holding this contradiction partly to blame for the failure of the Israeli Left.
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Explaining the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Today is Nakba Day - the annual day of commemmoration of the Palestinian catastrophe, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians.
A selection of Verso's books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, from explanations to considered outcomes.
These are Verso's key books to explain the situation – what others should we include?
The Conflict Explained
The Case for Sanctions Against Israel edited by Audrea Lim
Leading international voices consider all sides of the conflict including boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. With contributions from Angela Davis, John Berger, Naomi Klein, Omar Barghouti, Dalit Baum and Rebecca Vilkomerson.
The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy
The powerful narrative of Israel's invasion and control over Gaza - examining the abandonment of diplomacy in favour of raw military power, turning Gaza into an enormous open-air prison.
“Gideon Levy’s passionate and revealing account is an eloquent, even desperate, call to bring this shocking tragedy to an end, as can easily be done.”
– Noam Chomsky
Discussions
Begin a discussion about this book-
Several critics of Shlomo Sand’s book have seized on recent scientific studies that supposedly proved "that Jewish communities in places as far afield as Europe and the Caucasus are genetically linked, and that their DNA ancestry traces back to the Middle East" and thus that "demonstrate conclusively that the theories propounded by Sand and others ring visibly and unmistakably hollow". Sand himself, in the postface to the paperback edition of his book, argues that: "After exhausting all the historical arguments, several critics have seized on genetics. The same people who maintain that the Zionists never referred to a race conclude their argument by evoking a common Jewish gene. Their thinking can be summed up as follows: ‘We are not a pure race, but we are a race just the same.’ ... As of today, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study ever will." Is Shlomo Sand’s argument—especially where it concerns the role of conversion in the spread of Judaism—vulnerable to objections based on genetic science?
