BOOK REVIEW: The Invention of the Jewish People. By Shlomo Sand (Jim Miles)

[Tace]

The Invention of the Jewish People. Shlomo Sand. Verso, New York, 2009.

May 11, 2010 (Palestinian Chronicle) -- Historians living within their own nations develop within the mythology peculiar to their nation, in which “various spheres of memory coalesced into an imagined universe representing the past.” The historian is a combination of his own personal experiences and the larger societal “instilled memories.” Recognizing that, Shlomo Sand very capably steps away from the created mythology of Israel, of the national myth of the wandering people for two thousand years before finding home again, in a land that belonged only to that people even though others had lived there during the same two thousand years. The Invention of the Jewish People is his groundbreaking historical study of the nature of the Jewish “nation” and its created mythologies.

This powerful and provocative work is broadly divided into five main sections of critique. Sand first examines the idea of ‘nation’ and all that it entails. The second is “Mythistory: In the Beginning, God Created the People”, dealing with the stories and myths of the original peoples of this part of the Middle East and their development within modern interpretations. The whole idea of the diaspora is dealt with in “The Invention of the Exile: Proselytism and Conversion” the title itself providing a concise summary of the section. Following this he looks at strong historical evidence for the existence of Jewish realms beyond the now mythical diaspora, “Realms of Silence” that do not register with the newly created Zionist history. Finally Sand critiques the contradictions inherent in a “Jewish and democratic state” reiterating the idea of what comprises a nation.

Making Nations

While the focus of the book is Israel, this first section deals with the idea of what a nation consists of and what its attributes are. It all comes across as very vague - even while written with strong academic knowledge - as the idea of a nation or a people evolved as technologies and civilizations evolved. Essentially, all ‘nations’ have created myths and histories about their past lives, and the longer and broader these myths can be created, the stronger the unifying power of the literate elites - in association with their political and economic peers - becomes.

The focus through the rest of the work is the deconstruction of the myth that is Israel, not that Israel does not exist now in some form, not that it existed in the past in some form, but that there is a continual story of a “people”, a “nation”, that covers the span of two millennia with an unbroken story of defeat, exile, a wandering diaspora, and then a coming together, a gathering in the original god given land.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=121:news-wnt-original&id=7687:book-review-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-by-shlomo-sand-jim-miles