The Invention of the Jewish People
The invention of the Jewish people - Israel's founding myth to the test ("? מתי ואיך הומצא העם היהודי " original) is a book by the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand.
The book, whose original title translates directly " When and How the Jewish People was Invented? " Would be sparked among others in Israel and France from controversy.
In the 2009 preface to the German edition are written in sand, " that the gap between my research and widespread in Israel and elsewhere conception of history is shockingly large." He did not do anything else than to be processed by the Israeli Zionist historiography has long -presented, but forgotten material, in his work " nothing new " had appeared.
Content
After the introduction about " identity and memory " are the titles of the five chapters of the book: " I. Created nations sovereignty and equality "; " II Mythohistorie: In the beginning God created the nation "; " III. The invention of exile: conversion and conversion "; " IV Regions of Silence: In Search of the Lost (Jewish) time "; "V. 'We' and 'them': Identity Politics in Israel. "
In the first two chapters follows the sand criticism of the conception of nationhood, as it was developed by Charles W. German, Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson. He relies on an understanding of the nation as it mainly Ernest Renan has pointed out in 1882. As everywhere in the Europe of nationalism and Jewish intellectuals regarding the Jews have a long shared history, identity designed by no more than a theological work, but as a history book, read the Bible. The Germans have about the national search for roots to Arminius led the French to Vercingetorix or Clovis I. This need for a reaching far back into history, national history have also had an effect on Thomas Jefferson. While these founding stories can been overcome by now, it is amazing sand that did not apply to what is now Israel, namely, because the Bible will continue to be read and interpreted as a founding book.
In the central chapter III sand, the conception of the Jewish exile as a historical reality. He relies primarily on the 1918 published in New York book The Land of Israel in the past and present, that David Ben -Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi wrote in Hebrew before they translated it for American audiences into Yiddish. In them we find the belief that the modern inhabitants of Palestine were ethnically closely related to the scattered Jews. Sand concludes on the basis of these two authors, that the Jews would be scattered in the wake of natural and voluntary migration. Many nations in the Mediterranean had been converted to Judaism in the Roman Empire, where Christianity was soon established itself as a competitor. In Chapter IV he goes after the Yemeni Kingdom of Himyar, the Khazars and the Berbers of the Maghreb; it was everywhere come to conversions.
Sand ends his book with a plea for a state of Israel, in which the citizenship no longer refers to the religion and from the Ethnocracy going to be a real democracy, can live side by side so that Jews and non - Jews equal rights.
Reception of the book
International voices
In book reviews, some found by Sands considerations approval, including his theories on the causes of why many modern Jews are not descended from those of biblical Israel, for the absence of a common language or culture among many Diaspora Jews as well as to problems of self-definition of the State of Israel ( eg the extent Judaism will defined in terms of the traditional religious law ). But the readers have big troubles to distinguish scientifically conclusive passages of play of banalities that would be issued as a revolutionary insights; also will continuously stamped on doors that stood open for a long time. The genetic findings will for example not sufficiently taken into account. The tendency to return all Jews to today's converts, among others fail to these facts. The return of the Sephardic Jews Berber tribes was criticized as absurd fallacy.
Sands argument is partly based on hypotheses about the Khazars, the The Thirteenth Tribe ( The Thirteenth Tribe ) were already represented among others by Arthur Koestler in his book. Thus were the Eastern European, Ashkenazi Jews descendants of converted Khazars. Such theories have been widely referred to in technical and science journalists to be untenable. Koestler himself was a Zionist, but his theories were propagated by neo- Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and the State of Iran. From journalists and historians has been argued that there is certainly archaeological and historical evidence for the presence of Jews after the Bar Kochba revolt.
Sands approach is classified by some commentators in the constructivist turn of the field of nationalism studies, such as those was established with Benedict Anderson, as well. trends in the so-called New Israeli historian According to Sand, the concept of a Jewish people is an invention of Zionism and Jewish nationalism of the 19th century. This conclusion was characterized in meetings as "absurd ", especially Israel and Judaism had early recognized as a specific ( chosen ) people; hardly any modern nation could already draw for the construction of national identity to 2500 years of related efforts. That about the Jewishness of Ethiopian Jews had been invented in Germany in the 19th century, is hardly plausible.
Sand was kept methodically extremely unclean single quotes isolated from their textual and historical context to use and not abuse verifiable hypotheses for it. He also bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations. Since he had previously worked mainly with the Marxist intellectual history of the 20th century, in many cases its expertise in ancient Judaism was questioned. Among other things, the sand has been called pseudo - historian, his monograph as fiction.
For the French historian Maurice Sartre, it is not enough to put the they accept as polemical essay book because of its factual errors in question, but it was to investigate whether his general theses endure. The fact is for him that for the Jews and other peoples of the Middle East, the five or six centuries after the conquest by Alexander the Great were a period of exceptional cultural, social and religious upheavals. It was a time of opening and blending, were all from the emerged changed in wide scale. The genetics have not brought any clarification for these operations. In addition, you would be relying on their results to the stability of the people take precedence over the duration of the cultures. So be approximately unclear how many Jews had been converted in the 4th century the dominant Christianity, especially the multiplication of Christians in Palestine could not be explained solely on the conversion of the Gentiles. This rule further research is needed.
Tony Judt notes that sand put the traditional justification for a Jewish state in question. Because the survival of Israel is not based on the credibility of the story about his ethnic origins. A major handicap, it submits that the country insist on the exclusive demand for a Jewish identity. This insistence lead but to the fact that non-Jewish citizens or residents in Israel would be downgraded to second-class citizens. For what will defined as " Jewishness " have fatal effects on those who are not regarded as partakers of her. The implicit conclusion from Sand's book looks Judt is that Israel would do better to identify themselves as Israel and get to appreciate as such. Because states were recognized on the basis of their mere existence as long as they can maintain and protect and would therefore belong to the internationally accepted actors.
Reception in Germany
Micha Brumlik emphasizes that there Shlomo Sand is an attempt to refute the self-representation of Jews as an ethnic collective in barely interrupted continuity since the Augustan period. His Israeli critics as Israel Bartal or Anita Shapira had not noticed here is that the sand of the Zionist historiography, not the concealment of material facts anlaste, but its refinement rather is "to the overridden in the public results especially, Zionist ' research to present again ". Sands of argument let no other conclusion than that the narrative of displacement and re repatriation, as it contained the proclamation certificate of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948 a " history of powerful myth" is, " but nothing to do with the real history of the Jews has ". By differed sand between ethnos as origin and descent community and demos as voluntary association of citizens to establish a free political community, he stands in favor of an Israel as a state of all its citizens a: "If there is not the historical community of descent, the Declaration of Independence was wrong and the Zionist state has no historical reason. "
For Klaus Bringmann reads in the published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 13 April 2010 review the book " as a historical work and at the same time as a general attack on the Zionist national consciousness for therapeutic purposes ." Because 25 percent of the nominal citizens of Israel were made of second-class citizens, which was refused as Jews according to the rule of religious law as descendants of non-Jewish mothers recognition. However, after Sands idea they had to integrate into the democratic state. This intention leads to an " alarmist tone ," views in the sand to reverse from a dead end, in which he sees his country fall. The historical derivation of his theses convinced Bringmann. Because Judaism was a successful missionary religion because in his monotheism religion was ethisiert and have instructed to social welfare, which had worked appealing to the pagan environment. So speak " much for the theory that the majority of Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe were descendants of Khazar converts ." Therefore Bringmann agrees sand, when it has established that the Jews of today can be a Genealogical Society in succession to the ancient Judeans in any historical, but most in a symbolic sense. Sand will provide the meaningful Zionist version of history "radical, knowledgeable and with great courage " in question, from which the induced irritation in Israel would understand.
Sand defended his thesis in an interview with the building in May 2010. A of attached article by Jörg Bremer shows in his sense that there is no archaeological evidence of a " kingdom of David " as claimed by the Israeli government myth.
A research team led by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the School of Medicine at New York University, published in June 2010, a study came to the conclusion that the different groups of Diaspora Jews have common genetic traits, which was considered a refutation of the theses Sands. The American geneticist Noah Rosenberg came to a more cautious assessment: The Khazar theory would not borne out by this study brought fully to case.
The Jewish studies Edna Brocke criticized, " he argues not within Judaism, he argues as someone looking from outside it, in which he says, I dissoziiere me from this group, even if my mother was Jewish and I am the son of a Jewish mother, understand I am in my Jew - being only as a member of the religious community. This I reject, and the other dimension, I say there is not. "