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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?
In response to The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand