I am glad to say I have seen Hanin Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (where another member, Anastasia Michaeli, came very close to assaulting her before being physically restrained), speak here in Chicago. She is passionately devoted to the cause of equality between Jews and Palestinians in Israel.
Al Jazeera has produced the following video, done in a Tel Aviv cafe, that brings together Zoabi with a group of Jewish Israelis and the mayor of a settlement in the West Bank (who claims his settlement to be part of Israel). The discussion is worth watching as it reveals the variety of views in play. Professor Shlomo Sand is a participant, about whose book I have blogged in the past.
I should add that I cannot get Al Jazeera on my cable TV service because the provider, Comcast, refuses to carry it. This is the case in much of the United States.
Thanks to Jews sans frontieres, the program came to my attention.
Showing posts with label Shlomo Sand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shlomo Sand. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Invention of the Jewish People
I have been so impressed by Shlomo Sand's book, The Invention of the Jewish People, that here I am reproducing the review of it I wrote for Goodreads.com
* * * * *
I have written reviews of many books here. If there is one above all the rest that I would like others to read it would be this one.
Regardless of the country you call home, it rests on a foundation of myths, stories of the distant past that unite the citizenry. Israel is no exception, yet the story of the historical Jews is one that more people in the United States are familiar with that that of any other people.
Shlomo Sand begins his book discussing definitions - what are a people? What is a nation? With his terms defined, he looks at the story of the Jews and how it relates to what has been discovered (or not) by archeology, philology (language study) and archival research.
He takes us from the founding myth of the Jews as a tribe descended from Abraham, in captivity in Egypt, escaping in the Exodus, wandering in the desert for 40 years, defeating the Canaanites, living under kings David and Solomon, exiled to Babylon, returning to Judea, expelled by the Romans and continuing on to the present in Israel.
There's only one problem. Except for the Babylonian exile, none of this account of the Jews in ancient times holds up. There is no evidence for any of it and plenty of facts that deny it. The central fact is that there was never any expulsion of the Jews by the Romans after the Jewish revolt was suppressed in 70 CE.
But the facts are no less interesting than the myth. Did you know there was a Jewish Khazar empire between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? Did you know there was a long period (400 years) of enthusiastic conversion to Judaism prior to the coming of Christianity? Did you know there was a Jewish warrior queen in north Africa and a Jewish kingdom in what is now Yemen?
Sand effectively makes the case that the vast majority of today's Jews have no connection by birth to the Jews of ancient Palestine. The Palestinians of today are more likely related to the Jews of ancient times. Today's Jews are descendants of converts to Judaism. It is impossible to define the Jews by genetics, only by religion.
So where did the mythology come from? It is based on the Biblical account and even that was never considered to be based on hard facts until the coming of Zionism put it to use to create the body of people who would become the people of modern Israel - it was a script, made concrete and embellished by those with an agenda for creating a new country.
And the agenda continues to be followed by historians in the modern state of Israel. One of the most remarkable things mentioned by Sand is the complete lack of scholarly research into the origins of modern Jewry by anyone in Israel. Why? Because it would contradict the story of the nation, the story that is in Israeli textbooks used in Israeli schools to teach history.
The overwhelming evidence for the origin of the Yiddish-speaking millions of eastern Europe (destroyed or driven out by the end of WW2) is the Khazar empire and not Germany. The Sephardim of Spain and north Africa came not from ancient Palestine but from converts to Judaism. There is no Jewish gene, just as there is no Anglican or Methodist or Catholic gene.
The book concludes by an examination of the dilemma of modern Israel - a country that denies there is such a thing as an Israeli or an Israeli culture. Citizens of Israel are defined as Jews quite intentionally to connect them to the Jews of the world and to disconnect them from the Palistino-Israelis, the Arab citizens of Israel who make up a fifth of the population of the country, but are denied acknowledgment as full citizens.
Israelis allow orthodox religious Jews to determine who is a Jew for the purpose of citizenship precisely to maintain the connection to world Jewry as a pseudo-biological link. This mythological link allows Israel to take in foreigners (in all but religion) as rightful heirs to the land while denying legitimacy to those who have actually been living on the land, the Palestinian. It's an inherently unstable situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The book is a warning that things must change in the direction of a true democracy and away from an "ethnocracy".
The Invention of the Jewish People is a riveting read during which Sand systematically and very clearly demolishes myth under the bright light of solid research. In the process he introduces the people who built the myth to epic proportions and relates how they did so. Shlomo Sand is a credit to his profession. Bravo!
P.S. It appears that Bible study in Israeli schools is not thorough enough. In this article, the Israeli Education Minister says "No doubt there was a need for change in the Bible study program, which veered away from the actual folktales". In America we keep religious study completely out of our public schools and we have also escaped the cowboys and Indians historical mythology that mis-educated young Americans for so long. In Israel, it seems there is a need for more emphasis on the mythology that Professor Sand debunks in his book, so that the good guys can continue to be distinguished from the bad guys.
* * * * *
I have written reviews of many books here. If there is one above all the rest that I would like others to read it would be this one.
Regardless of the country you call home, it rests on a foundation of myths, stories of the distant past that unite the citizenry. Israel is no exception, yet the story of the historical Jews is one that more people in the United States are familiar with that that of any other people.
Shlomo Sand begins his book discussing definitions - what are a people? What is a nation? With his terms defined, he looks at the story of the Jews and how it relates to what has been discovered (or not) by archeology, philology (language study) and archival research.
He takes us from the founding myth of the Jews as a tribe descended from Abraham, in captivity in Egypt, escaping in the Exodus, wandering in the desert for 40 years, defeating the Canaanites, living under kings David and Solomon, exiled to Babylon, returning to Judea, expelled by the Romans and continuing on to the present in Israel.
There's only one problem. Except for the Babylonian exile, none of this account of the Jews in ancient times holds up. There is no evidence for any of it and plenty of facts that deny it. The central fact is that there was never any expulsion of the Jews by the Romans after the Jewish revolt was suppressed in 70 CE.
But the facts are no less interesting than the myth. Did you know there was a Jewish Khazar empire between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? Did you know there was a long period (400 years) of enthusiastic conversion to Judaism prior to the coming of Christianity? Did you know there was a Jewish warrior queen in north Africa and a Jewish kingdom in what is now Yemen?
Sand effectively makes the case that the vast majority of today's Jews have no connection by birth to the Jews of ancient Palestine. The Palestinians of today are more likely related to the Jews of ancient times. Today's Jews are descendants of converts to Judaism. It is impossible to define the Jews by genetics, only by religion.
So where did the mythology come from? It is based on the Biblical account and even that was never considered to be based on hard facts until the coming of Zionism put it to use to create the body of people who would become the people of modern Israel - it was a script, made concrete and embellished by those with an agenda for creating a new country.
And the agenda continues to be followed by historians in the modern state of Israel. One of the most remarkable things mentioned by Sand is the complete lack of scholarly research into the origins of modern Jewry by anyone in Israel. Why? Because it would contradict the story of the nation, the story that is in Israeli textbooks used in Israeli schools to teach history.
The overwhelming evidence for the origin of the Yiddish-speaking millions of eastern Europe (destroyed or driven out by the end of WW2) is the Khazar empire and not Germany. The Sephardim of Spain and north Africa came not from ancient Palestine but from converts to Judaism. There is no Jewish gene, just as there is no Anglican or Methodist or Catholic gene.
The book concludes by an examination of the dilemma of modern Israel - a country that denies there is such a thing as an Israeli or an Israeli culture. Citizens of Israel are defined as Jews quite intentionally to connect them to the Jews of the world and to disconnect them from the Palistino-Israelis, the Arab citizens of Israel who make up a fifth of the population of the country, but are denied acknowledgment as full citizens.
Israelis allow orthodox religious Jews to determine who is a Jew for the purpose of citizenship precisely to maintain the connection to world Jewry as a pseudo-biological link. This mythological link allows Israel to take in foreigners (in all but religion) as rightful heirs to the land while denying legitimacy to those who have actually been living on the land, the Palestinian. It's an inherently unstable situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The book is a warning that things must change in the direction of a true democracy and away from an "ethnocracy".
The Invention of the Jewish People is a riveting read during which Sand systematically and very clearly demolishes myth under the bright light of solid research. In the process he introduces the people who built the myth to epic proportions and relates how they did so. Shlomo Sand is a credit to his profession. Bravo!
P.S. It appears that Bible study in Israeli schools is not thorough enough. In this article, the Israeli Education Minister says "No doubt there was a need for change in the Bible study program, which veered away from the actual folktales". In America we keep religious study completely out of our public schools and we have also escaped the cowboys and Indians historical mythology that mis-educated young Americans for so long. In Israel, it seems there is a need for more emphasis on the mythology that Professor Sand debunks in his book, so that the good guys can continue to be distinguished from the bad guys.
Monday, September 13, 2010
two paragraphs of great insight
Shlomo Sand, a professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv has produced what I consider a masterpiece of rationality, The Invention of the Jewish People.
Two paragraphs from near the end of the book cry out for a large audience because they summarize the situation of Israel so concisely and pertain so directly to what this blog examines. See if you don't agree...(boldface mine)
Two paragraphs from near the end of the book cry out for a large audience because they summarize the situation of Israel so concisely and pertain so directly to what this blog examines. See if you don't agree...(boldface mine)
No Jew who lives today in a liberal Western democracy would tolerate the discrimination and exclusion experienced by the Palestino-Israelis (Arab citizens of Israel), who live in a state that proclaims it is not theirs. But Zionist supporters among the Jews around the world, like most Israelis, are quite unconcerned, or do not wish to know that the "Jewish state", because of its undemocratic laws, could never have been part of the European Union or one of America's fifty states. This flawed reality does not stop them from expressing solidarity with Israel, and even regarding it as their reserve home. Not that this solidarity impels them to abandon their national homelands and immigrate to Israel. And why should they, seeing that they are not subjected to daily discrimination and alienation of the kind that Palestino-Israelis experience daily in their native country?There it is in a nutshell - an explanation for the dedication and power of the Israel lobby in the United States. The challenge for Americans is to break this power over Congress and that's what all my blogging is about.
In recent years the Jewish state has become less interested in large-scale immigration. The old nationalist discourse that revolved around the idea of aliyah (Jews moving to Israel) has lost much of its appeal. To understand current Israeli politics, replace the word "aliyah" with "diaspora" (the spread of Jews throughout the world). Today, Israel's strength no longer depends on demographic increase, but rather on retaining the loyalty of overseas Jewish organizations and communities. It would be a serious setback for Israel if all the pro-Zionist lobbies were to immigrate en masse to the Holy Land. It is much more useful for them to remain close to the centers of power and communication in the Western world - and indeed they prefer to remain in the rich, liberal, comfortable "diaspora".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)