The Invention of the Jewish People - Schlomo Sand (Yael Lotan, trans.)

Written by Schlomo Sand (Yael Lotan, trans.)
Read by Barry Adams
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

In the book, Sand disputes the historical veracity of the narrative of forced exile of Jews from Palestine under the Romans, arguing instead that most modern Jews descend from converts to Judaism whose native lands were in locations across the Middle East & Eastern Europe.
Sand began his work by looking for research studies about forcible exile of Jews from the region of Palestine & surrounding areas. He was astonished that he could find no such literature, he says, given that the expulsion of Jews from the region is viewed as a constitutive event in Jewish history. The conclusion he came to is that the expulsion simply did not happen, that no one exiled the Jewish people from the region & that the Jewish diaspora is essentially a modern invention. He accounts for the appearance of millions of Jews around the Mediterranean & elsewhere as something that came about primarily through the religious conversion of local people, saying that Judaism, contrary to popular opinion, was very much a “converting religion” in former times.

Sand’s explanation of the birth of the “myth” of a Jewish people as a group with a common, ethnic origin has been summarized as follows: “[a]t a certain stage in the 19th century intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people “retrospectively,” out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. Before this invention, he says, Jews thought of themselves as Jews because they shared a common religion (Judaism), not as a common ethnic group. Amazingly enough, the book was on the best-seller list in Israel for 19-weeks.

Unabridged Length: 15 hours and 50 minutes

Note: Shlomo Sand is a Professor of History at Tel Aviv University in Israel since 2014. First published in Israel, entitled ‘Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi?’ in 2008, English publication in 2009.

Comment: If you haven’t read the book or listened to the audio version, why would you post negative comments??? Well, I presume the answer to that is self-evident : (