The Invention of the Jewish People

The Invention of the Jewish People

The Invention of the Jewish People

The Invention of the Jewish People

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781844674985
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 06/14/2010
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 344
Sales rank: 123,896
File size: 579 KB

About the Author

Shlomo Sand studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris. He currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. His books include The Invention of the Jewish People, On the Nation and the Jewish People, L’Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le débat intellectuel 1900, Georges Sorel en son temps, Le XXe siècle à l’écran and Les Mots et la terre: les intellectuels en Israël.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English-Language Edition ix

Preface to the 2020 Edition: Ten Years Later xiii

Introduction: Burdens of Memory 1

Identity in Movement 1

Constructed Memories 14

1 Making Nations: Sovereignty and Equality 23

Lexicon: "People" and Ethnos 24

The Nation: Boundaries and Definitions 31

From Ideology to Identity 40

From Ethnic Myth to Civil Imaginary 45

The Intellectual as the Nation's "Prince" 54

2 Mythistory: In the Beginning, God Created the People 64

The Early Shaping of Jewish History 65

The Old Testament as Mythistory 71

Race and Nation 78

A Historians' Dispute 81

A Protonationalist View from the East 87

An Ethnicist Stage in the West 95

The First Steps of Historiography in Zion 100

Politics and Archaeology 107

The Earth Rebels against Mythistory 115

The Bible as Metaphor 123

3 The Invention of the Exile: Proselytism and Conversion 129

The "People" Exiled in 70 ce 130

Exile without Expulsion-History in the Twilight Zone 136

Against Its Will, the "People" Emigrate from the Homeland 143

"All Nations Shall Flow unto It" 150

The Hasmoneans Impose Judaism on Their Neighbors 154

From Hellenistic Sphere to Mesopotamian Territory 161

Judaizing in the Shadow of Rome 166

How Rabbinical Judaism Viewed Proselytizing 173

The Sad Fate of the Judeans 178

Remembering and Forgetting the "People of the Land" 182

4 Realms of Silence: In Search of Lost (Jewish) Time 190

Arabia Felix: The Proselytized Kingdom of Himyar 192

Phoenicians and Berbers: The Mysterious Queen Kahina 199

Jewish Kagans? A Strange Empire Rises in the East 210

Khazars and Judaism: A Long Love Affair? 218

Modern Research Explores the Khazar Past 230

The Enigma: The Origin of Eastern Europe's Jews 238

5 The Distinction: Identity Politics in Israel 250

Zionism and Heredity 256

The Scientific Puppet and the Racist Hunchback 272

Founding an Ethnos State 280

"Jewish and Democratic"-An Oxymoron? 292

Ethnocracy in the Age of Globalization 397

Afterword: A People without a Land, A Land Without a People? Some Replies to My Critics 314

"The Jews Have Always Existed as a People" 314

Exile and Historical Memory 317

Are the Palestinians the Descendants of the Ancient Jews 318

The Last Resort: A Jewish DNA 318

Acknowledgments 326

Index 327

What People are Saying About This

Tony Judt

Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.

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