Jewish
Scholar Says:
`WE WERE INVENTED'
by Willis A. Carto
 A
Jewish scholar, Shlomo Sand, a teacher of contemporary history at
the University of Tel Aviv in Israel, rocked Israel with his best-selling
Hebrew-language book, The Invention of the Jewish People,
which is now available in English in mainstream U.S. bookstores.
 Sand's
book is so powerful and provocative in that it demonstrates that
virtually everything we think we know about the history of the Jews
may just not be true, or, at the least, certainly not what many
have held as an article of faith going back generations.
Because
of the intense interest that Sand's book generated, his publisher
set up a special website on the Internet providing reviews of the
book, commentaries relating to the controversy, and interviews with
Sand. That web site can be found at inventionofthejewishpeople.com.
On the site, the publishers provide an overview of Sand's remarkable
book which follows:
A
historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and
taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The
Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both
that demands to be read and reckoned with.
Was
there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands
of the Romans?
Should
we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both
a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation -- returned at last
to its Biblical homeland?
Shlomo
Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose
native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern
Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation
out of these disparate groups could only take place under the
sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise
of nationalism throughout Europe.
Beneath
the biblical backfill of the nineteenth-century historians, and
the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the
architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish
People uncovers a new narrative of Israel's formation, and
proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the
old myths.
The
central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures
that Sand's arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians
and politicians that he takes to task.
Without
an adequate understanding of Israel's past, capable of superseding
today's opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain
elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides
the intellectual foundations for a new vision ofIsrael's future
WILLIS
A. CARTO,
is founder of The American Free Press and The
Barnes Review.
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at
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