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The Invention of the Jewish People Hardcover – October 19, 2009

by Shlomo Sand (Author), Yael Lotan (Translator)

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A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland?

Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.

After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

Print length

332 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Verso
Publication date

October 19, 2009
Dimensions

6.66 x 1.24 x 9.47 inches
ISBN-10

1844674223
ISBN-13

978-1844674220
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of the Roman rile, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Sand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There was never a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened—hence there was no return.”—Tom Segev, Haaretz

“The reader will have understood the message: what this well-documented and fearless book explodes is the myth of a unique Jewish people, miraculously preserved, in contrast to all the other peoples, from external contamination ... [Sand’s] conclusions, which are prudently formulated, nonetheless lead one towards a sole solution: the construction of a secular and democratic Israel.”—Jacques Julliard, Le Nouvel Observateur

“Shlomo Sand has written a remarkable book ... Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read it.”—Tony Judt, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

“The Invention of the Jewish People is an indispensable challenge and a very complex intellectual exercise ... a more secure society [than Israel] would include the book in the core curriculum of its school system.”—Avraham Burg, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Yedioth Ahronoth

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso; First Edition (October 19, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 332 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1844674223
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1844674220
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.49 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.66 x 1.24 x 9.47 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #500,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,428 in Jewish History (Books)

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4.6 1,119 ratings

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Shlomo Sand

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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, 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.

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Ben Franklin

The Invention of Biological Markers and a European Colony

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2010

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A fascinating history of how a political movement has turned the world's most diverse, morally-correct culture into an ethno-centric blood-creed of cultural imperialism.

It is written by a secular Jewish professor of History, who worked in France and now teaches in Tel Aviv University.

This book is a history book. The first 100 pages or so beyond the introduction (which is beautiful) is very dry history or European Nationalism. It is tedious reading for the lay person but it sets the stage for the rest of the book.

This book is monumental in its insight, research and revelation. The only shortcoming is that some of the sentences are structurally complex and must be read slowly. This could have been caused by the difficulties is translating from Hebrew to English.

You might have noticed that the reviewers of this book either loved it or hated it, as evidenced by 5 Star and 1 star review rating numbers are much more than 2, 3, or 4 star ratings.

There an obvious reason for that. Sand makes a simple case, based on solid history and references, that the "Jewish race" is an invention of European elitists, driven by the perceived need to nationalize a morally correct, religious, mystical culture. Zionism turned the historic character of this culture on its head.

Shlomo simply shows that the tribal perception that all Jews are related by blood, has been exploited to the maximum, and Sand proves this "Jewish" association to be totally false. Judaism is/was a religious ethnic group/culture through most of its history, and only recently has been remodeled primarily as a blood-identity ethnic group.

Many Palestinians could have more of the original tribal "Jewish blood" than do the Eastern European converts that now oppress them. Few rural Jewish farmers were ever "driven into exile" and may well have converted to Islam centuries ago to keep their farms, and to keep his/her family from scattering into abject poverty and/or homelessness in the wilderness, either of which could have been literally life-threatening.

The great coversions to Judaism in Eastern Europe, North of the Black Sea, in the 700-1000 CE centuries were never recognized by the Zionist, as they rallied Jewish people to believe they were all "bloodline" inheritors of the holy land. This ignoring of historical conversions was essential for the tribal consciousness required to justify the Zionists terrorists seizing farms from indigenous people of former Palestine.

The first 100 pages of the text is difficult reading, as Sand teaches us about the world race towards nationalism in the 20th and 19th century, of which Nazi Germany was the most notorious example. There were rediculous myths and stories of nations' blood line identities in many countries and ethnic groups. The European Jewish people were no different and started the Zionist movement around the turn of the century.

After the first 100 pages or so, the book becomes very interesting. There are footnotes at the bottom of each page, and a robust index.

The book ends declaring that one true democratic State (not a two-state solution; and not an exclusive "Jewish State") of all Israelis, and a right of return for both the indigenous Palestinians as well as Jews, is the only way to peace in Israel.

That's why this book is so contraversial.

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Michael T. Ballard

The invention of bourgeois nationalism, Zionist style....

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2010

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Schlomo Sand is employed as a professor of contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. The Invention of the Jewish People was originally published in Hebrew in Israel. Translations of his work are now being published throughout the world in many languages, including English.

Sand is the son of a World War II era veteran of the Polish Communist Party. He is also the son-in-law of a Spanish anarchist who fought Franco nationalists in the streets of Barcelona during the Civil War/Revolution. Professor Sand would probably describe himself as an apple, fallen somewhat distant from those trees, perhaps as a cosmopolitan liberal. His view of Israel is that it would better off giving up being an `ethnocracy'--Sand's term for the ethno-biologically defined Jewish political State. Professor Sand's preference is for Israel to become a garden variety, secular capitalist democracy like France or the United States of America.

Dr. Sand gives his readers many insights into the general intellectual foundations of the modern era's nationalist ideological project and of Zionist nationalist project in particular. In this reviewer's opinion, The Invention of the Jewish People is worth reading for these critical observations alone, as nationalism has been and continues to be a strong ideological force in our time.

Sand makes the case that class societies up until the 18th century were made up mostly of sedentary peasants and nomadic herdsmen. Sand effectively argues that there was no official ideology of nationalism embedded in the consciousness of the people who lived within these pre-industrial societies. Historically speaking, these agrarian formations were dominated by classes of aristocrats, landlords and slave owners. The nomadic and peasant majorities of this ancient world had no notion of being part of a nation. Comprehending this insight is fundamental to grasping Sand's arguments about how nationalism, and in particular Jewish nationalism, was an ideological invention. As opposed to modern day nationalist conscious, based on self-regulated `patriotism' , schooled with `pledges of allegiance', ubiquitous posters of `our fearless leader' and `hats off at the sports match in honour of the national anthem', ancient rulers relied on keeping the mostly peasant producers of wealth in a constant state of fear of the absolute power of the sovereign. There was no sense of being a part of a national political State amongst the general populace. At best, the sovereign only had to, "secure the loyalty of the state's administration in order to preserve the continuity and stability of the government, but the peasants were required simply to pass along the surplus agricultural produce and sometimes to provide the monarchy and nobility with soldiers. Taxes were of course collected by force, or at any rate by its constant implicit threat, rather than by persuasion or efforts at consensus." (p.26)

Capitalist rule erupted out of political revolutions against these ancient expressions of absolutism. The revolutions of modernity (from Cromwell's Puritans in the mid 17th century to Colonial America's yeoman farmers and private property owners, to the overthrow of monarchism in France by its citizens and in country after country well into the 19th and 20th centuries) all resulted in the establishment of national political States. All nationalisms were political expressions of the rapidly changing social relations of the producers of wealth. From peasant subjects, to wage-labouring citizens, the producing classes were united, after nationalist revolt, as citizens with the ruling capitalist and landlord classes in one big political State. These conditions were accompanied by new political notions, primary amongst them, the rule of law and the classless identity politics which proclaimed that sovereignty was no long the king's; but for the `people' of the nation. From these material circumstances sprang a need by the ruling class for the legitimation of their system of political dominance thus, the impetus for public intellectuals to invent and spread the gospel of the various and sundry nationalist brands. One of the first tasks these amplified intellectual voices had to confront was to define who `the people' were.

Sand contends that modern public intellectuals invented all nationalist ideologies thus, all `peoples'. Most of these intellectuals mixed history with cultural myths in order to fashion their nationalist ideologies. Sand calls these nationalist ideologies passing for history, `mythistory'. More than a few of these nationalist mythistories were combined with the pseudo-scientific invention of `race', an ideology originating in the 18th century. "In the nineteenth century, national cultures often tied the soft term, `people', to the rigid and problematic `race,' and many regarded the two words as intersecting, supporting, or complimentary. The homogeneous collective origin of `the people'--always, of course, superior and unique, if not actually pure--became a kind of insurance against the risks represented by fragmentary, though persistent, sub identities that continued to swarm beneath the unifying modernity. The imagined origin also served as an efficient filter against undesirable mixing with hostile neighbouring nations." (p.27)

However, by 1945, the horror of the Nazi holocaust, most especially its connection with `Ayrian' racist mythhistory, prompted world leaders and public intellectuals to officially renounce `race' as having any scientifically based, genetic substance. UNESCO statements on race in the early 1950s explained `race' as a social myth and the 1998 American Anthropological Association statement on `race' proclaimed it to be a pseudo-scientific concept. Still, the `commonsense' notion that there are `races' has persisted and is present to this day in public discourse even though, as Sand observes, pre-WWII notions of `race' have more and more morphed into the bourgeois intellectually acceptable concept of `ethnicity'. To be sure, the oppressive force of racism persists. Not only that but, it is often legitmised, Sand would argue, by continuing to legitimate an ethno-biological linkage with nationalist ideological concepts defining, `the people'.

That the Nazi extermination of `inferior races' during WWII, threw a spanner in the ideological works of those attempting to link `race' with `nation', is true. However, as Sand points out, it was particularly problematic for Zionist ideologists. Since its inception in the mid-19th century, its legitimacy was based on the notion of a genetic connection between ancient and modern peoples of the Jewish faith and culture. According to this mythistory, modern day Jews were genetically linked to those people who inhabited that portion of the Middle East known as Israel, Judea and Palestine in the early 1st century CE. A fusing of Biblical stories with actual history had long become part of the Zionist ideological project. As the nationalist ideological story goes (Sand writes a much more detailed account in a chapter he titles, `Mythistory'), the Jewish people were deported from their homeland after much of Jerusalem, along with the Second Temple, was destroyed in 70CE by the Roman soldiers under the command of Titus. As the story went, this came as punishment for an unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Empire by the Jewish people. According to this mythical tale, the whole of this Jewish people then wandered the Earth in exile from their homeland. The Zionist nationalist project was designed to bring the Jewish people home to "Eretz Israel" from their long exile.

What Sand demonstrates, in his meticulously researched book, is that great mass of the people who lived in what was then the Roman province of Palestine in 70CE were not exiled. As he conclusively shows, conquerors of that era, including the Babylonian conquerors related in the Biblical story of the destruction of the First Temple and the Romans who destroyed the Second Temple, never exiled whole peoples because those peoples were the peasant producers of wealth and obtaining that wealth, along with the power that goes with it, is what being a ruling class is all about. Peasants are generally tied to their land and most people living in Roman Palestine were peasants. Peasants don't move around. They're sedentary. Ancient ruling classes always liked it that way. As Sand points out, conquering rulers of ancient times would routinely enslave defeated elites from the ruling class whom they had conquered but, they would leave the great mass of the people (mostly peasant farmers) on the land, to continue to produce wealth, as these peasants had done for various other ruling classes for centuries before. The implications of this revelation for the current relation between peoples identifying themselves as Palestinians and those identifying themselves as Jews both inside and outside the immediate borders of Israel are pretty obvious in this reviewer's opinion. The classless nationalist identity politics, which keep rank and file Palestinian and Israeli workers at each other's throats, is based on a series of invented fictions. Of course, this is true for all the world's nationalisms, for all are ideological inventions which assume that the working class and the employing class have interests in common.

So, where do most of the people of the Jewish faith in the world come from, if not from an ethno-biologically connected people who were exiled from their homeland by the Romans in 70 CE?
Sand's answer is that most come from "proselytising". Sand demonstrates that the first great monotheistic religion, Judaism, was spread to eager pagan converts throughout the Mediterranean basin a long time before the competing monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam arose.
The question which came to this reviewer's mind was, "Why would polytheists find this monotheistic religion, with its invisible deity so attractive?" Shorter work time is one of Sand's fascinating insights. The weekly day of rest, the Sabbath, turned the practice of Judaism into a way of legitimising free time, much to the consternation of the slave owning ruling classes of the ancient, polytheistic world.

As Sand relates, a great victory for the proselytisers of the Jewish faith came with the conversion of the Punics. Punic Carthage was not a Hebrew speaking city state. It was located in what is today the political State of Tunisia. After the defeat of Carthage by the Roman Republic in 146 BCE, the Jewish religion continued to be practiced amongst the peasant people of this region. The faith also spread to nearby nomadic Berbers, who were later to accompany the Arabic Muslim conquerors of Spain as soldiers in 711 CE. The implications here are enormous, especially considering what happened to Jews who refused to convert to Christianity during Ferdinand and Isabella's reign in Spain, circa 1492CE.

Sand presents historically documented evidence of the many other conversions to Judaism within the confines of the heavily used trading routes of Mediterranean, in the late BCE and the early CE of the Roman Empire. He shows that this proselytising tendency was more or less suppressed with the rise of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century CE and of Islam after the 8th century CE.

"Proselytizing Jews were driven from the arena of rival monotheisms, Christianity or Islam, to the land of paganism, with immigrants who convinced the pagans that their faith was preferable. The great mass proselytizing campaign that began in the second century BCE, with the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom, reached its climax in Khazaria in the eighth century CE." (p. 220)

As Sand shows, the conversion of the Kagan of Khazaria, a kingdom located above the Black Sea, helped create a great mass of people of the Jewish faith. Many of these Jewish religionists spread out into what is now Eastern Europe after Khazaria was overrun by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in the early 13th century CE. Sand writes, "The Khazars were a coalition of strong Turkic or Hunnic-Bulgar clans who, as they began to settle down, mingled with the Scythians who had inhabited these mountains and steppes between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which was known for a long time as the Khazar Sea. At its peak, the kingdom encompassed an assortment of tribes and linguistic groups, Alans and Bulgars, Magyars and Slavs. The Khazars collected taxes from them all and ruled over a vast landmass, stretching from Kiev in the northwest to the Crimean Peninsula in the south, and from the upper Volga to present-day Georgia." (p.214)

As Sand demonstrates time and again, actual history profoundly conflicts with the `mythistory' of the BIBLE which forms the very foundation on which Israeli nationalist ideology and ultimately, the Israeli political State rests. For example, the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948: "After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." (p.129)

The Invention of the Jewish People is a work which will be useful to any reader interested in making sense of the social relations of power and current political conflicts arising from them in the modern day Middle East. Doctor Sand's work should be helpful to those eager to grasp the conceptual intricacies of nationalist ideology and how it has come to distort political judgements amongst and between workers of the world today.

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Gerald Watts

A must-read for understanding the ongoing conflict.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2023

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I bought and read this book in Kindle form after the outbreak of yet another military Israel-Palestine conflict with terrible consequences for civilians. I thought that I had a reasonably good grasp of the history of the conflict but Shlomo Sand has proven me wrong with his masterful book.
The emphasis of the book is on identity and the concepts of ‘people’ and ‘nation’, as applied to the state of Israel. He sets the scene in the first chapter, where he explains that in the Israeli university system there is a complete separation between departments of ‘History’ and ‘Jewish History’, the latter being where the Biblical myths of Jewish origin, exile and the Chosen People are preserved and disseminated within the school education system.
One reason why I was attracted to this book was that back in the seventies I read Arthur Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe about the Khazar kingdom, which converted en masse to Judaism during the so-called ‘dark ages’ (I had also read Koestler’s excellent Thieves in the Night about the early post-war Palestine during the British Mandate).
Shlomo Sand provides a convincing historical context for the Khazar conversion by considering it in the context of many other accounts of conversion to Judaism across North Africa and in the Arabian peninsula, all of which are denied or ignored by the Jewish History establishment.
I finished the book this morning by reading the Afterword, in which Shlomo reflects in depth on the issues raised in the book and the angry criticism that it has generated in some quarters, before discussing the global trends that he sees as challenging for the current Israeli state and the identity myths that it conserves and propagates. As I write this review, some of his predictions seem to be borne out by a shift in global sentiment. Thank you for such a powerful educational experience, Shlomo!

12 people found this helpful

jonathan moises

Regalo

Reviewed in Mexico on April 19, 2020

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Buen libro y excelente el tiempo de envio para regalo

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Amazon Kunde

higly worth reading

Reviewed in Germany on May 27, 2018

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I highly recommend this comprehensive and very well written book by Shlomo Sand. For people interested in why politics drives into certain directions and leads to path dependency, into apparently ineluctable stable constellations, Sand recapitulates modern instruments in historical sciences since the 1980ies, that is to say the reality of constructivism in its consequences, and comes back to the politics of normative definition, decisive in politics. Worthwile view on the concept of "nation" and and "nationalism" in the modern age adapted to the specific subject matter.
If one is interested in humanities: An interesting and important lens for the wish to understand the sociopolitical situation in the middle-east. Moreover: Very well written.

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Bernard Bayon de Noyer

Good and interesting book, well documented.

Reviewed in France on August 16, 2017

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Good and interesting book, well written and well documented. Not that easy to read, the work of a great scholar.

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