Ian Pindar reviewed the paperback edition of Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People for The Guardian on Saturday 26th June. Full review below (not yet available online):

The idea of the Jews as a single people or race is a myth, a fi ction based on Old Testament “mythistory”, argues Shlomo Sand, a Jewish historian based at the University of Tel Aviv. It is also one of the founding assumptions of the state of Israel, and throughout this polemical, revisionist history Sand has Zionist ideology in his sights. (He is not anti-Israel, but he is “post-Zionist”.) In essence, his book undermines the moral right of the state of Israel to define itself as exclusively Jewish and how you respond to it will very much depend on your political views. Sand admits none of his findings is new and there are no revelations, but what he offers is a radical dismantling of a national myth. He can find no evidence of any Jewish exile, and without exile there can be no right to return. However, even if it is founded on a myth, the state of Israel exists. Sand wants it to abandon ethnic nationalism and to modernise and democratise, and as this controversial book was a bestseller in Israel, perhaps there is hope that some Israelis want this too.

The Jewish Chronicle reported on the ‘controversial’ shortlisting of Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2010.

A controversial book which argues that the idea of a Jewish people descended from the ancient Israelites is a Zionist myth, has been shortlisted for British Jewry’s main literary award…

…Alan Mendoza, director of the Israel-Diaspora Trust, said: “The cultural, historical and religious roots of the Jewish people are self-evident and Sands’ desire for self-immolation is not shared by Anglo-Jewry. Was this decision motivated by intellectual navel-gazing of the most banal kind, or does it reflect an attempt to appease those viscerally anti-Israel elements within the broader liberal intelligentsia? Either way, this is a pathetic attempt at gesture politics, and one that cheapens the Wingate Prize.”

The Invention of the Jewish People by Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand is one of four books up for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize.

Read the full article here.

One episode of Press TV‘s political book review programme, Epilogue, presented by Derek Conway and Ken Livingstone, has focused on Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of Jewish People.

Once weekly, our renowned hosts Ken Livingstone and Derek Conway tackle the books with the big questions – in this compelling 30 minute book review show.  We want to delve into the realities behind a recently published political book. With the insights of a distinguished panel of expert guests and a short video to highlight the topic at hand. Together they read between the lines and decide the merits of the book of the week.

The episode is available on YouTube.

Shlomo Sand’s Invention of the Jewish People is mentioned in a Ha’aretz article by Matt Lerner on Jewish identity:

Traditional knowledge holds that there was once a distinct nation of people who all practiced the Jewish religion, a Hebrew people with a common geographic origin and, in all likelihood, relatively uniform physical appearance.

But there are those, like Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand, who question both the relevance and validity of this notion in modern discourse.

Sand is the author of a book called “The Invention of the Jewish People”, and a proponent of the belief that today’s Jews are the descendants of different global populations who converted to Judaism over the ages, rather than the offspring of an exiled Hebrew nation.

Sand rejects the traditional narrative of a Roman-instigated diaspora and views the notion of Jewish ethnicity as a racist one used to perpetuate a Zionist myth of ownership of the land of Israel.

Read the full article here.

Martin Goodman reviewed Shlomo Sand’s Invention of the Jewish People for the Times Literary Supplement, but neglected to mention that he was criticised in the book. Shlomo Sand replied last week, and now Martin Goodman has responded—you can read his letter here.