Bøger / Books

Shlomo Sand & The Invention of the Jewish People

11. juli 2010

141

Linkbox om Shlomo Sands omdiskuterede bog om det jødiske folks historie, The Invention of the Jewish People, med anmeldelser, debat og interviews.

The Invention of the Jewish People
By Shlomo Sand (Verso, 2009, 400 p.)
“Leading Israeli historian evaluates the national myth of the Jewish exile from the promised land … and argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.”

The Invention of the Jewish People
The book’s site. With interviews, reviews and videos.

See also:
Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Land of Israel (Verso, 2014, 304 p.).
Shlomo Sand: How I Stopped Being a Jew (Verso, 2014, 112 p.).

Leksika

Wikipedia.org

Interviews, reviews and video

Information.dk

Det jødiske folk er en myte. Af Maja Naur (26. september 2011)
“Israels argumenter mod oprettelsen af en palæstinensisk stat bygger på historiefordrejning og myter, der er kreeret til at forsvare det zionistiske projekt.”

Ny Tid

«Jeg vil ikke lenger se på meg selv som en jøde» (19. august 2015)
“Historiker Shlomo Sand forklarer hvorfor han ikke ønsker å være jøde lenger. Hans bakgrunn er jødisk, og han ser på Israel som et av de mest rasistiske samfunnene i den vestlige verden.”

Politiken.dk

Historien om et samlet jødisk folk er en myte. Af Kjeld Koplev (9. august 2013)
“Myterne om det tomme land og jøderne som ét folk spænder ben for en eventuel fredsløsning mellem Israel og palæstinenserne.”

Against the Current

Myths of the exile and return. By David Finkel (Issue146, May/June 2010)
“Although no longer identifying with Marxism … Sand upholds the best democratic values of the left and draws from the broad traditions of historical materialism.”

AlterNet

Controversial bestseller shakes the foundation of the Israeli state. By Joshua Holland (January 28, 2009)
“What if most modern Israelis aren’t descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn’t ‘return’ to the scrap of land we now call Israel …”

CounterPunch

Whatever happened to Shlomo Sand? Missing in action after the storm over the “Invention of the Jewish People”. By Paul Atwood (February 14-16, 2014)
“When Shlomo Sand’s book was published it caused a largely a storm of outrage here in the United States among the few who read it. It was a bestseller in Israel, though mostly reviled, and where it was reviewed in the American corporate press the response was deeply hostile.”

The Guardian

Shlomo Sand: an enemy of the Jewish people? (17 January 2010)
“‘Post-Zionist’ Shlomo Sand has outraged many Jews by disputing the ethnic basis of Jewish identity. Rafael Behr meets him in Paris.”

International Socialism

Zionism, socialism and nationalism (Issue 127, Summer 2010, p.59-66)
“Shlomo Sand talks talks to John Rose about his book and socialist politics.”

Jewish intellectuals and Palestinian liberation. By John Rose (Issue 125, Winter 2010)
“I’ll risk a prediction. Shlomo Sand’s book, already a best seller in Israel and France, will accelerate the disintegration of the Zionist enterprise … His book, with tremendous elan and gusto, is a celebration of an unknown early history of the Jewish religion.”

Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture

Review by Lawrence Davidson (Vol.10, No.1, 2011)
“The book makes Sand one of the very few contemporary Israeli historians claiming that all of Zionist historiography is wrong, and insisting that we all must find a way to ‘de-nationalize national histories….[and] stop trudging along roads paved mainly with materials forged in national fantasies’.”

Le Monde Diplomatique

Israel deliberately forgets its history: Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile. By Shlomo Sand (September 2008)
“An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East.”

MR Online

Video: The invention of the Jewish people by Shlomo Sand (100 min.) + Introduction by Bertell Ollman (20/11/2009)

Israeli bestseller breaks national taboo: Idea of a Jewish people invented, says historian. By Jonathan Cook (09/10/2008)
“No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo.”

An invention called ‘the Jewish people’. By Tom Segev (12/03/2008)
“Sand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and … It’s all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.”

New Left Review

Converts to colonizers? By Gabriel Piterberg (Issue 59, September-October 2009)
“Sand offers an alternative history in which the striking demographic growth of the Jews in the Hellenistic Mediterranean was the product not of mass exile, but of an energetic drive of proselytism and conversion …”

Race and Class

Shlomo Sand’s the invention of the Jewish people. By Moshé Machover (Vol.52, No.3, January 2011;; online at Israeli Occupation Archive)
“It is a commendable exercise in debunking a particular nationalist myth, and by implication all nationalist myths. It contains a concentrated account of fascinating episodes in the history of the Jews, many of which are not widely known. It is an enjoyable read. Recommended.”

Stop Terrorkrigen

En opfindelse kaldet det jødiske folk. Af Tom Segev (2009; online på Internet Archive)
“… en af de mest fascinerende og udfordrende bøger, der er udkommet her i lang tid. Der fandtes aldrig et jødisk folk, kun en jødisk religion, og eksilet fandt aldrig sted – derfor var der heller ingen tilbagevenden.”

Weekly Worker

A nail in the Zionist coffin. By Tony Greenstein (Issue 798, December 17, 2009)
“The major weakness of Sand’s book is that he is not a historical materialist or Marxist … His analysis is subjective and empirical, without at times any explanation as to why, for instance, the Jews have survived as an identifiable religious-political community.”