Shlomo Sand
Encyclopedia
Shlomo Sand (born 10 September 1946 in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

) is professor of history at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...

 and author of the controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People
The Invention of the Jewish People
The Invention of the Jewish People is a study of the historiography of the Jewish people by Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. It has generated a heated controversy....

(Verso Books
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...

, 2009). His main areas of interest are nationalism, film as history, and French intellectual history.

Biography

Sand was born in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. His parents had Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 and anti-imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 views and refused to receive compensations from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 for their suffering during the Second World War. Sand spent his early years in a displaced persons camp
Displaced persons camp
A displaced persons camp or DP camp is a temporary facility for displaced persons coerced into forced migration. The term is mainly used for camps established after World War II in West Germany and in Austria, as well as in the United Kingdom, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the...

, and moved with the family to Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...

 in 1948. He was expelled from high school at the age of sixteen, and only completed his bagrut
Bagrut
Te'udat Bagrut is the official Israeli matriculation certificate. The bagrut is similar to the British A-levels, German Abitur, French Baccalauréat, and Austrian Matura...

 following his military service. He eventually left the Union of Israeli Communist Youth (Banki) and joined the more radical, and anti-Zionist, Matzpen
Matzpen
Matzpen is the name of an anti-capitalist and anti-Zionist organisation, founded in Israel in 1962 which was active until the 1980s. Its official name was the Israeli Socialist Organisation, but it became better known as Matzpen after its monthly publication....

 in 1968. Sand resigned from Matzpen in 1970 due to his disillusionment with the organisation.

He declined an offer by the Israeli Communist Party Rakah
Rakah
Rakah may refer to:* Maki , a communist party in Israel, now renamed Maki* Raka'ah, one unit of Islamic prayer, or Salah...

 to be sent to do cinema studies in Poland, and in 1975 Sand graduated with a BA in History from Tel Aviv University. From 1975 to 1985, after winning a scholarship, he studied and later taught in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, receiving an MA in French History and a PhD for his thesis on "George Sorel and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

". Since 1982, Sand has taught at Tel Aviv University as well as at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

 in Paris.

Book's topic

Sand’s best-known book in English is The Invention of the Jewish People
The Invention of the Jewish People
The Invention of the Jewish People is a study of the historiography of the Jewish people by Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. It has generated a heated controversy....

, originally published in Hebrew (Resling, 2008) as Matai ve’eich humtsa ha‘am hayehudi? (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) and subsequently translated into English the following year (Verso, 2009). As reviewed by Ofri Ilani for the left-of-center Israeli newspaper HaAretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

, the book attempts "to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’ with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 thinking."M

One component of Sand's argument is that the people who were the original Jews living in Israel, were not exiled following the Bar Kokhba revolt. He has suggested that much of the present day world Jewish population are individuals, and groups, who converted to Judaism at later periods. Additionally, he suggests that the story of the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. Sand writes that "Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God." Sand argues that most of the Jews were not exiled by the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

, and were permitted to remain in the country. He puts the number of those exiled at tens of thousands at most. He further argues that many of the Jews converted to Islam following the Arab conquest, and were assimilated among the conquerors. He concludes that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews.

Sand's explanation of the birth of the myth of a Jewish people as a group with a common, ethnic origin has been summarized as follows: "[a]t a certain stage in the 19th century intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....

 on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace."

He also comments that: "It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. (...)", and that: "I’ve been criticised in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world."

Analysis

Israel Bartal, dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University, in a commentary published in Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

, writes that Sand's basic thesis and statements about Jewish historiography are "baseless". Bartal answers to "Sand's arguments (...) that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure" [and that] Sand applies marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish historiography and, in doing so, denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical scholarship." Bartal refers to Sand's overall treatment of Jewish sources as "embarrassing and humiliating." He adds that "The kind of political intervention Sand is talking about, namely, a deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true biological origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the promotion of the story of the Jews' exile from their homeland is pure fantasy." Bartel summarizes his critique of Sand's characterization of Jewish historiography as follows: "as far as I can discern, the book contains not even one idea that has not been presented earlier in their books and articles by what he insists on defining as "authorized historians" suspected of "concealing historical truth,"" and calls the overall work "bizarre and incoherent."

Tom Segev
Tom Segev
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.-Early life:Segev was born in Jerusalem in 1945...

 wrote that Sand's book "is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state" and that the book is generally "well-written" and includes "numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time".

Anita Shapira
Anita Shapira
Anita Shapira is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, a Ruben Merenfeld Professor of the Study of Zionism and head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University...

 wrote "Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions without bringing any evidence to bear."

For Ofri Ilani, "(...) most of [the] book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from."

Hillel Halkin
Hillel Halkin
Hillel Halkin is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling Letters to an American-Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic and Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel. He is a prominent translator of Hebrew and Yiddish Literature into English, including...

 has cited the book as an example of the notion that there is "no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone."

Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg is an American journalist. He is an author and a staff writer for The Atlantic, having previously worked for The New Yorker. Goldberg writes principally on foreign affairs, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa...

 likened the book to Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...

's The Thirteenth Tribe
The Thirteenth Tribe
The Thirteenth Tribe is a book by Arthur Koestler, which advances the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people...

, another book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976. "Today", Jeffrey Goldberg said, "The Thirteenth Tribe is a combination of discredited and forgotten." Goldberg also accused Sand of having disingenuous motives:
Sand is not publishing this book at a dignified conference in Bern at which scholars of the Middle East debate the origins of the Jews ... He is dropping manufactured facts into a world that in many cases is ready, willing, and happy to believe the absolute worst conspiracy theories about Jews and to use those conspiracy theories to justify physically hurting Jews. ... It is nothing new ... We [the Jews] survived ... The Thirteenth Tribe; we can survive this.

DNA Analysis

In June 2010, genetic research supervised by geneticist Harry Ostrer
Harry Ostrer
Dr. Harry Ostrer is a geneticist known for his study, writings, and lectures about the origins of the Jewish people. He is a Professor of Pathology and Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University and Director of Genetic and Genomic Testing at Montefiore Medical Center...

 of the New York University School of Medicine
New York University School of Medicine
The New York University School of Medicine is one of the graduate schools of New York University. Founded in 1841 as the University Medical College, the NYU School of Medicine is one of the foremost medical schools in the United States....

, and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics
American Journal of Human Genetics
The American Journal of Human Genetics is a medical journal in the field of human genetics. Since its inception in 1948 by the American Society of Human Genetics, the journal has provided a record of research and review relating to heredity in humans and to the application of genetic principles in...

, led to a whole series of journalistic comments on Sand's book. An article in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

titled "The DNA of Abraham's Children" challenges through genetic analysis Sand's assertion that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group: "The DNA has spoken: no." This study, Newsweek writes, undermines rather than supports Sand's position, showing instead how modern Jewish genes can be traced back to a common people of Middle East origin.
A New York Times article on the same studies notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times". Similarly, an article in Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

states that Sand's hypotheses "clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots". According to Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, Ostrer's study "clearly shows a genetic common ancestry of all Jewish populations." Geneticist Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that although Oster's study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it "doesn't entirely eliminate it either."

Publishing history

The book was in the bestseller list in Israel for 19 weeks and quickly went to 3 editions when published in French. In France it received the "Aujourd'hui Award", a journalists' award for top non-fiction political or historical work.

In October 2009 it was published in English by Verso
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...

.

In March 2010 it was published in Russian by Eksmo
Eksmo
Eksmo is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia. Eksmo and its rival AST together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books.Established in 1991 as a small book-selling company, they gradually developed into a major player on the Russian market, discovering and developing detective...

.

In April 2010 it was published in German by Propyläen Verlag.

In 2010 a Hungarian translation appeared by Kairosz Kiadó.

In August 2011 it was published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog.

Publications

  • L'Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le débat intellectuel 1900, Paris, La Découverte, 1984
  • Georges Sorel en son temps, with Jacques Julliard (eds), Paris, Seuil, 1985
  • Intellectuals, Truth and Power: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2000 (in Hebrew)
  • Le XXe siècle à l' écran, Paris, Seuil, 2004 — also as Film as History – Imagining and Screening the Twentieth Century, Tel Aviv, Am Oved & Open University Press, 2002 (in Hebrew)
  • Cinema and Memory – A Dangerous Relationship?, with Haim Bresheeth & Moshe Zimmerman (eds), Jerusalem, The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2004 (in Hebrew)
  • Historians, Time and Imagination, From the “Annales” School to the Postzionist Assassin, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2004 (in Hebrew)
  • Les Mots et la terre - Les intellectuels en Israël, Paris, Fayard, 2006—Also as The Words and the Land: Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist Myth, trans. Ames Hodge, Cambridge, Semiotext(e)/Active Agents, 2011.
  • The Invention of the Jewish People
    The Invention of the Jewish People
    The Invention of the Jewish People is a study of the historiography of the Jewish people by Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. It has generated a heated controversy....

    , Tel Aviv, Resling, 2008 (in Hebrew) — also as Comment le peuple juif fut inventé - De la Bible au sionisme, Paris, Fayard, 2008, and The Invention of the Jewish People, New York, Verso 2009.

External links

  • The Invention of the Jewish People, English Edition (Verso Books, 2009) Website
  • Anita Shapira
    Anita Shapira
    Anita Shapira is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, a Ruben Merenfeld Professor of the Study of Zionism and head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University...

    , Review Essay: The Jewish-people deniers, The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2009, 63-72 (in English)
  • "Comment le peuple juif fut inventé" ("How the Jewish People was invented") by Shlomo Sand, Le Monde diplomatique
    Le Monde diplomatique
    Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...

    , August 2008
  • Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile: Israel deliberately forgets its history by Shlomo Sand, Le Monde diplomatique
    Le Monde diplomatique
    Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...

    , September 2008
  • Boycott Ariel college by Shlomo Sand, Haaretz
    Haaretz
    Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

  • History in the (almost) making by Yonatan Gur, Ynetnews
    Ynetnews
    Ynetnews is the online English language Israeli news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read newspaper, and the Hebrew Israel news portal, Ynet...

    , November 2007
  • Post-Zionism only rings once by Neri Livneh, Haaretz, September 2001
  • "Are the Jews an invented people?", Eric Rouleau, Le Monde diplomatique - English edition (May 2008).
  • Martin Goodman
    Martin Goodman (historian)
    Martin David Goodman is a historian and writer on Roman history and the history and literature of the Jews in the Roman period....

    , The Times Literary Supplement
    The Times Literary Supplement
    The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...

    (TLS), February 26, 2010; Shlomo Sand responds, TLS, Letters to the Editor, March 10, 2010; Martin Goodman responds, TLS, Letters to the Editor, March 24, 2010
  • Video of discussion between Avi Shlaim
    Avi Shlaim
    Avi Shlaim FBA is a British/Israeli historian. He is a professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy.Shlaim is especially well known as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict...

     and Shlomo Sand. Chaired by Jacqueline Rose
    Jacqueline Rose
    Jacqueline Rose is a British academic who is currently Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London.-Life and work:...

     at the Frontline Club
    Frontline Club
    The Frontline Club is a media club near London's Paddington Station. With a strong emphasis on conflict reporting, it aims to champion independent journalism, provide an effective platform from which to support diversity and professionalism in the media, promote safe practice, and encourage both...

    , London, November 12, 2009
  • Shlomo Sand interview: 'There are Israeli, not Jewish people' on Russia Today
    Russia Today
    Russia Today may refer to:* Russia Today, an English language 24-hour television news channel from Russia. It was launched in 2005 and is not related to an online news service of the similar name operated by EIN News...

    . Uploaded to YouTube 4 Aug 2009.
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