Shlomo Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People, which recently appeared in English translation, has continued to be attacked on this site as a piece of scurrilous nonsense.
Tony Judt has now joined the distinguished historians who have treated Sand's book with respect, in a favorable piece on the book in today's Financial Times, Israel must unpick its ethnic myth.
He repeats Simon Schama's take that most of the book is true, but obviously so, but counters this by recognizing that the book is chiefly intended for a nonlearned audience, which will not be aware of the facts Sand presents:
The story went like this. Jews, until the destruction of the Second Temple (in the First century), had been farmers in what is now Israel/Palestine. They had then been forced yet again into exile by the Romans and wandered the earth: homeless, rootless and outcast. Now at last "they" were "returning" and would once again farm the soil of their ancestors.
It is this narrative that the historian Shlomo Sand seeks to deconstruct in his controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People . His contribution, critics assert, is at best redundant. For the last century, specialists have been perfectly familiar with the sources he cites and the arguments he makes. From a purely scholarly perspective, I have no quarrel with this. Even I, dependent for the most part on second-hand information about the earlier millennia of Jewish history, can see that Prof Sand - for example in his emphasis upon the conversions and ethnic mixing that characterise the Jews in earlier times - is telling us nothing we do not already know.
Of course, even if the book were just regurgitating well-known facts, saying that it is would be very different from saying that the book is scurrilous nonsense. Judt, like Sand in his review, is saying -- not even just implying -- that the book is essentially true.
But Judt goes on to say more, that for a nonlearned audience the book will be a revelation:
The question is, who are "we"? Certainly in the US, the overwhelming majority of Jews (and perhaps non-Jews) have absolutely no acquaintance with the story Prof Sand tells. They will never have heard of most of his protagonists, but they are all too approvingly familiar with the caricatured version of Jewish history that he is seeking to discredit. If Prof Sand's popularising work does nothing more than provoke reflection and further reading among such a constituency, it will have been worthwhile.
But there is more to it than that. While there were other justifications for the state of Israel, and still are - it was not by chance that David Ben-Gurion sought, planned and choreographed the trial of Adolf Eichmann - it is clear that Prof Sand has undermined the conventional case for a Jewish state. Once we agree, in short, that Israel's uniquely "Jewish" quality is an imagined or elective affinity, how are we to proceed?
Judt goes on to consider what the implications of Sand's book are, whether there should be a one-state or two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how diaspora Jews should react. People curious to know what Judt thinks about these things should follow the link.
Since Judt is now paralyzed from the waist down with Lou Gehrig's disease, his continuing to write such controversial material is a real act of the courage he has shown throughout his academic life.
Simon Schama's earlier review of the book in the Financial Times is here. Sand thought it critical enough to be worth writing a response (which the FT did not publish) to. But Schama's damning-with-faint-praise review essentially admitted that most of what the book says is true even in its first paragraph:
From its splashy title on, Shlomo Sand means his book to be provocative, which it certainly is, though possibly not in the way he intends. Its real challenge to the reader is separating the presentation of truisms as though they were revolutionary illuminations and the relentless beating on doors that have long been open, from passages of intellectual sharpness and learning.
Military historian Max Hastings's nearly simultaneous review in the Sunday Times (of London) was considerably more favorable, and again admitted that Sand's arguments have force:
His book, first published in Hebrew, has caused widespread outrage in his native land. But it represents, at the very least, a formidable polemic against claims that Israel has a moral right to define itself as an explicitly and exclusively Jewish society, in which non-Jews, such as Palestino-Israelis, are culturally and politically marginalised.
Both Schama and Hastings consider at some length Sand's treatment of the Khazars -- an object of particular derision from some people posting here on Daily Kos -- and neither regards what Sand says on this as obvious nonsense. Hastings, for example, writes:
He focuses special attention on the Khazar empire, the Jewish society that flourished around the Volga and Caucasus between the 4th and 13th centuries, and provided seed for the large Jewish communities of eastern Europe. Zionists assert that those Jews had migrated east from Germany. Sand says there is no evidence for this, save that they spoke Yiddish.
He believes, instead, that these were locals who adopted the Jewish religion. He claims that modern Israeli historians refuse to study the Khazar empire honestly, lest they find themselves confronted by evidence that might seem to delegitimise Israel. He writes scornfully of Zionists "entirely caught up in the mythology of an eternal ‘ethnic’ time".
These historians joined leading Israeli historian Tom Segev in treating Sand's book with respect. Segev called Sand's book
one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time
and said:
Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.
When I read Sand's book in its French translation a little over a year ago, I was not convinced by everything in it. But to treat the book as scurrilous nonsense is simply unjust.
And all people of good will can share Sand's desire for an Israel/Palestine in which all citizens receive fair and equal treatment.