Azahari Hassim
“The Invention of the Jewish People“ is a non-fiction book written by Shlomo Sand. The book was published in 2008 by Resling Publishing House. As of 2021, it has been translated into 23 languages.
Contents of the Book:
The book deals with the proto-national and national historiographical tradition that exalted the existence of a Jewish people since the Exodus from Egypt. Through a theoretical discussion on the issue of nationalism and inspired by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, Sand seeks to dismantle the Zionist narrative, which he claims invented the Jewish people in order to create a new nation.
According to Sand, the invention of the Jewish people was based on the Bible as a historical book and on the Christian myth of the Jewish exile following the Great Revolt, thereby creating a long-term national history that never existed.
Sand adopts the hypothesis that the Jews were never exiled from the Land of Israel, and that the Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel over the generations are largely their descendants. Sand argues that Judaism was the first monotheistic religion to embark on a mass conversion campaign, and the origins of Jews are much more diverse and rich than commonly believed.
According to him, Ashkenazi Jews are primarily converts originating from the Khazar Kingdom, the origin of Yemeni Jews is the Himyarite Kingdom, and even North African and Spanish Jews are mostly converts.
Therefore, Jews are a unique religious civilization, but they are not a foreign and wandering people as both anti-Semites and some Zionists have perceived them. In the conclusion of the book, Sand discusses the ethnonationalist identity politics in Israel and expresses concern about the future of this political approach.
Shlomo Sand, in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People” discusses the origins of Ashkenazi Jews. He challenges the conventional historical narrative by arguing that a significant portion of Ashkenazi Jews are not direct descendants of ancient Israelites, but rather, their origins can be traced back to the Khazar Kingdom, a Turkic state in Eastern Europe that converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century.
Sand contends that these converts and their descendants later formed a large part of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, rather than being a diaspora community that originated in the Land of Israel. This argument is central to his thesis that Jewish identity, particularly in the context of Ashkenazi Jews, is more complex and diverse than traditionally understood.
This perspective has been highly controversial and has sparked extensive debate among historians, scholars, and the general public.
“I could not have continued to live in Israel without becoming a Zionist. Therefore I decided to leave Israel. I believe that every individual has the right to be who he is, and a nation has the right to have its own identity, but not at the expense of other people.”
This reflects Sand’s complex relationship with his identity and his critical stance on Zionism
Responses and Criticism:
Sand’s thesis sparked widespread public debate in Israel and around the world.
In March 2009, the book received the “Aujourd’hui” Prize from French journalists for 2009.
Historian Israel Bartal rejected Sand’s criticism of Zionist historiography, arguing that Sand reiterates well-known ideas in historiography—that conversion was a significant phenomenon in Jewish history in antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and that there is a possibility that millions of Yiddish-speaking Jews originated from the Khazars—and that these facts were not suppressed in Zionist historiographical discourse, but there is a gap between it and the political discourse on the memory of the past.
Middle Eastern scholar Shaul Bartal criticized the book, claiming that Sand’s work is a rehash of ideas promoted by Arab elements who sought to deny the historical right claimed by Zionism to establish a Jewish state, and that the book might serve those aiming to delegitimize Israel.
Other critics argue that Sand takes specific and minor events in Jewish history and constructs from them a dubious theory to support his fundamentally anti-Zionist political viewpoint.
Historian Shaul Stampfer asserts that the story of the Khazar conversion, which plays a central role in Sand’s book, has no basis.
Shlomo Sand
Shlomo Sand, born in Linz, Austria, to Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, was raised in a Yiddish cultural environment. His father’s disillusionment with religious institutions led the family away from traditional Jewish practices. Sand’s parents held strong Communist and anti-imperialist views and refused reparations from Germany for their wartime suffering.
After spending his early years in a displaced persons camp, Sand moved with his family to Jaffa, Israel, in 1948. He was expelled from high school at sixteen, studied electronics at night, and worked during the day. He served in the Israeli military during the Six-Day War, an experience that shifted his views toward the radical left. His time in the military, including witnessing violence against Palestinians, deepened his sense of loss and alienation from Israel.
Sand became friends with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, inspiring Darwish’s poem “A Soldier Dreams Of White Lilies.” Sand was involved with the Communist and anti-Zionist Matzpen movement but left in 1970 due to disillusionment. He later studied and taught in France, earning a PhD in French History. Sand has taught at Tel Aviv University, the University of California, Berkeley, and in Paris. His work has included critical views on Zionism and Israeli politics, and he has engaged in academic debates, notably criticizing Claude Lanzmann’s film *Shoah* in his book *Film as History*.
Sand’s best-known book in English is The Invention of the Jewish People, originally published in Hebrew (Resling, 2008) as Matai ve’eich humtsa ha‘am hayehudi? (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) and translated into English the following year (Verso, 2009). It has generated a heated controversy.
Sand was criticized for presenting “dubious theories” regarding Jewish identity as historical facts. One provocative theory espoused by Sand, but challenged by other historians as “a myth with no factual basis,” is the hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Khazars, who purportedly converted in the early Middle Ages.
The book was in the best-seller list in Israel for nineteen weeks. It was reprinted three times when published in French (Comment le peuple juif fut inventé, Fayard, Paris, 2008). In France, it received the “Prix Aujourd’hui”, a journalists’ award given to a non-fiction political or historical work. An English translation of the book was published by Verso Books in October 2009.
The book has also been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, and Slovene and as of late 2009 further translations were underway. The Invention of the Jewish People has now been translated into more languages than any other Israeli history book.
ABRAHAMIC THEOLOGY 