At the New York Times, Patricia Cohen reviews Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, a recent best-seller in Israel that is now available in English. A scholar of modern France from Tel Aviv University, Sand explicitly presents his book as an attempt to undermine the twin notions that the “Jewish people” share a single ancestry and that this people share ancestral rights to the land of Israel.
What accounts for the grasp that some misconceptions maintain on popular consciousness, or the inability of historical truths to gain acceptance? Sometimes myths persist despite clear contradictory evidence because people feel the story embodies a deeper truth than the facts. Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” but the fictional statement captured the sense of a regime that showed disdain for the public’s welfare.
A mingling of myth, memory, truth and aspiration similarly envelopes Jewish history, which is, to begin with, based on scarce and confusing archaeological and archival records.
Experts dismiss the popular notion that the Jews were expelled from Palestine in one fell swoop in A.D. 70. Yet while the destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple by the Romans did not create the Diaspora, it caused a momentous change in the Jews’ sense of themselves and their position in the world. For later generations it encapsulates the essential truth about the Jews being an exiled and persecuted people for much of their history.
Professor Sand accuses Zionist historians from the 19th century onward—the very same scholars on whose work he bases his case—of hiding the truth and creating a myth of shared roots to strengthen their nationalist agenda. He explains that he has uncovered no new information, but has “organized the knowledge differently.” In other words, he is doing precisely what he accuses the Zionists of—shaping the material to fit a narrative.
Read the entire review here.