KHAZARS 13TH TRIBE RISE AND FALL AND THE INVENTION OF THE JEWS.pdf

7/27/2019 KHAZARS 13TH TRIBE RISE AND FALL AND THE INVENTION OF THE JEWS.pdf

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THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

The Invention of the Jewish People (Hebrew: ? ,Matai veech humtzahaam hayehudi?, literally When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) is a study of the

historiography of the Jewish people by Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel AvivUniversity. It has generated a heated controversy.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

The book was in the best-seller list in Israel for nineteen weeks.[7]

It was reprinted three times

when published in French (Comment le peuple juif fut invent, Fayard, Paris, 2008). In France, it

received the "Prix Aujourd'hui", a journalists' award given to a non-fiction political or historical

work.[8]

An English translation of the book was published by Verso Books in October 2009.[9]

The book has also been translated into German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, and Russian, and as

of late 2009 further translations were underway.[10][11][12][13][14][15]

The Invention of the Jewish

People has now been translated into more languages than any other Israeli history book.[13]

Contents

Book summary

Sand began his work by looking for research studies about forcible exile of Jews from the area

now bordered by modern Israel, and its surrounding regions. He was astonished that he couldfind 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 from his subsequent

investigation is that the expulsion simply didn't happen, that no one exiled the Jewish people

from the region, and that the Diaspora is essentially a modern invention. He accounts for the

appearance ofmillions of Jews around the Mediterranean and elsewhere as something that cameabout primarily through the religious conversion of local people, saying that Judaism, contrary to

popular opinion, was very much a "converting religion" in former times. He holds that massconversions were first brought about by the Hasmoneans under the influence ofHellenism, andcontinued until Christianity rose to dominance in the fourth century CE.

[16]

Jewish origins

Sand argues that it is likely that the ancestry of most contemporary Jews stems mainly from

outside the ancient Land of Israel and that a "nation-race" of Jews with a common origin never

existed. Just as most contemporary Christians and Muslims are the progeny of converted people,

not of the first Christians and Muslims, Judaism was originally, like its two cousins, aproselytising religion. Many of the present day world Jewish population are descendants of

European, Russian and African groups.

According to Sand, the original Jews living in Israel, contrary to popular belief, were not exiled

following the Bar Kokhba revolt.[16]

Sand argues that most of the Jews were not exiled by theRomans, and were permitted to remain in the country. Many Jews converted to Islam following

the Arab con uest and were assimilated amon the con uerors. He concludes that the


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progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews.[17]

Sand writes that the story of the exile was a

myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. They portrayed that event as

a divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel. Sand writesthat "Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled

as a punishment from God."[18]

Jewish peoplehood

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 thirstto create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to

draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a

wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace."[16]

In this, Sand writes, they were similar to other nationalist movements in Europe at the time thatsought the reassurance of a Golden Age in their past to prove they have existed as a separate

people since the beginnings of history. Jewish people found theirs in what he calls "the mythical

Kingdom ofDavid". Before this invention, he says, Jews thought of themselves as Jews because

they shared a common religion, not a common ethnic background.[16]

Return from exile, Zionism

Sand believes that the idea of Jews being obliged to return from exile to the Promised Land wasalien to Judaism before the birth ofZionism, and that the holy places were seen as places to long

for, not to be lived in. On the contrary, for 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem becausetheir religion forbade them from returning until the Messiah came. According to Sand, the

ancestry of Central and Eastern European Jews stems heavily from medival Turkic Khazarswho were converted to Judaism, a theory which was popularized in a book written by Arthur

Koestlerin 1976.[19]

Overall intent of the book

Sand explained during a newspaper interview his reasons for writing the book: "I wrote the book

for a double purpose. First, as an Israeli, to democratise the state; to make it a real republic.

Second, I wrote the book against Jewish essentialism."[20]

Sand explained in the same interview that what he means by 'Jewish essentialism' is, in the words

of the interviewer, "the tendency in modern Judaism to make shared ethnicity the basis forfaith."

[20]"That is dangerous and it nourishes antisemitism. I am trying to normalise the Jewish

presence in history and contemporary life," Sand said.[20]


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Reception

Sand's book has provoked a range of responses from different points of view.

As a work of history

In a commentary published inHaaretz, Israel Bartal, dean of the humanities faculty of the

Hebrew University, writes that Sand's claims about Zionist and contemporary Israelihistoriography are baseless, calling the work "bizarre and incoherent," and that Sand's

"treatment of Jewish sources is embarrassing and humiliating."[21]

According to Bartal, "No

historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews

are ethnically and biologically 'pure'."

Bartal writes that Sand applies academically marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish

historiography and, in doing so, "denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical

scholarship." Sand, for example, does not mention the fact that, from 2000 onwards, a team ofscholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem labored on the production of a three-volume

study on the history of the Jews of Russia.[22]

He adds that "the kind of political interventionSand is talking about, namely, a deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true

biological origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the promotion of the story

of the Jews' exile from their homeland is pure fantasy."[21]

Historian Anita Shapira criticizes Sand for regularly "grab(bing) at the most unorthodox theory"

in a field and then stretching it "to the outer limits of logic and beyond" during Sand's survey ofthree thousand years of history.

[23]Shapira says that the Sand's political program makes the book

an attempt to "drag history into a topical argument, and with the help of misrepresentations and

half-truths to adapt it to the needs of a political discussion."[23]

A critic of the book has called it, in part, a recycled version ofThe Thirteenth Tribe, another

book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976 by ArthurKoestler. "'The Thirteenth Tribe' was received coolly by critics, and Mr. Sand's repackaging of

its central argument has not fared much better," commented Evan R. Goldstein.[19]

There is not

enough known about the 13th century demography of Eastern European Jews to credibly makeas bold a claim as Sand's.

[19]

In response to criticism of the aspects of the book which deal with history, David Finkel wrotethat the book's chapter on 'Mythistory' is "where Sand fully hits his stride. It is not so much

Jewish history but rather historiography that's decisive, in other words the history of history, theways in which and the purposes for which that history came to be written." Finkel argued thatBartal "dispute[d] little of Sands history but focuse[d] on his historiography", and suggested,

"doesnt all this precisely prove Sands point? The professional intellectuals, ...have no need for

crude myths. Yet this does not prevent every Israeli government, right, center or 'left', throughwhich many of these same intellectuals may rotate as ministers, advisors or spokespersons, from

ustif in land rabs settlements and demolition of Palestinian homes all over 'Greater


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Jerusalem' under the banner of 'the eternal capital of the Jewish people.'" "[24]

Carlo Strengerregards Sand's book as "not a pure work of history". He has written in an opinionpiece for Haaretz where he argued that "in fact, it has a clearly stated political agenda. ...It might

come as a surprise to some who have not read the book that Sand's goal is to preserve Israel as a

democracy with a Jewish character based on a Jewish majority."[7]

As an argument about Jewish identity

Writing in The New Republic, Hillel Halkin calls assertions made in the book "the exact opposite

of the truth" and goes on to say that "Believing Jews throughout the ages have never doubted fora moment that they belonged to an am yisra'el, a people of Israelnor, in modern times, have

non-believing Jews with strong Jewish identities. It is precisely this that constitutes such an

identity. Far from inventing Jewish peoplehood, Zionism was a modern re-conceptualization of itthat was based on its long-standing prior existence."

[25]

British historian Simon Schama, reviewing the book in theFinancial Times, argued that Sandmisunderstands Jews in the diaspora, specifically, that he thinks that "the Khazars, the central

Asian kingdom which, around the 10th century, converted to Judaism have been excised from

the master narrative because of the embarrassing implication that present day Jews might bedescended from Turkic converts."

[26]Schama pointed out that, on the contrary, when he was a

child, "the Khazars were known by every Jewish girl and boy in my neck ofGolders Greenery

and further flung parts of the diaspora, and celebrated rather than evaded."[26]

The uncriticalassumption "that all Jews are descended lineally from the single racial stock of ancient Hebrews"

is "a position that no one who has thought for a minute about the history of the Jews would

dream of taking,"[26]

Schama goes on, "Sand's sense of grievance against the myths on which theexclusively Jewish right to full Israeli immigration is grounded is one that many who want to see

a more liberal and secular Israel wholeheartedly share. But his book prosecutes these aimsthrough a sensationalist assertion that somehow, the truth about Jewish culture and history,especially the 'exile which never happened', has been suppressed in the interests of racially puredemands of Zionist orthodoxy. This, to put it mildly, is a stretch."

[26]The review went on to

make other criticisms of the book. Sand responded to Schama's critique on his website by

summarising the methodology used: "one of the most effective techniques adopted to ridicule ormarginalize ones ideological opponents is to create a caricatured and extreme version of their

thesis. Some Zionist historians have become past masters with such methods and Simon Schama

seems to want to emulate them in his review of my book."[27]

British historian and author SirMax Hastings, in his review for the Sunday Times, writes that

Sand "rightly deplores the eagerness of fanatics to insist upon the historical truth of eventsconvenient to modern politics, in defiance of evidence or probability... Yet Sand, whose title is

foolishly provocative, displays a lack of compassion for the Jewish predicament." Hastings

continues, stating that "It is possible to accept his view that there is no common genetic link

either between the world's Jews or to the ancient tribes of Israel, while also trusting the evidenceof one's own senses that there are remarkable common Jewish characteristics indeed, a Jewish

enius that cannot be ex lained merel b reli ion." Hastin notes that "Sand roduces some


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formidable arguments about what Jews may not be, but he fails to explain what it is they are."

Hastings concludes that "His book serves notice on Zionist traditionalists: if an Israeli historian

can display such plausible doubts about important aspects of the Israeli legend, any Arabs hostileto the state of Israel can exploit a fertile field indeed."

[2]

As an argument about the position of "Jewish history" in Israeli universities

Some historians of Judaism have said that Sand is dealing with subjects about which he has nounderstanding and that he bases his book on work that he is incapable of reading in the original

languages.[16]

Most of the book deals with the question of where the Jews come from, rather than

questions of modern Jewish nationalism and the according to Sand modern invention of

the Jewish people."[16]

The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s toseparate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was

assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.

Sand admits that he is "a historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period"[16]

and

that he has "been criticized in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is

my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard conceptsof historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world."

[18]

"There is no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities. Only history is taughtthis way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish history to live in a very insular and conservative

world where they are not touched by modern developments in historical research."[18]

Other reviews

Writing in The Financial Times, British historian Tony Judt commented, "Shlomo Sand has

written a remarkable book. In cool, scholarly prose he has, quite simply, normalized Jewish

history".[3]

British historian Eric Hobsbawm selected Sand's book as one of his "Books of theYear" for 2009: "Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso) is both a welcome

and, in the case of Israel, much needed exercise in the dismantling of nationalist historical myth

and a plea for an Israel that belongs equally to all its inhabitants. Perhaps books combiningpassion and erudition don't change political situations, but if they did, this one would count as a

landmark."[28]

In a similar vein, Israeli historian, Tom Segev, says Sand's book "is intended to promote the ideathat Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' Jews, Arabs and others in contrast to its

declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state."[17]

Segev adds that the book is generally"well-written" and includes "numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to

read for the first time".[17]


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DNA analysis

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on

the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

(January 2013)

In June 2010, an article inNewsweektitled "The DNA Of Abraham's Children" addressesthrough genetic analysis the centuries-old assertion, which the article claims has been revived bythe book, that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group, and not from

the Middle East: "The DNA has spoken: no."[5]

ANew York Times article on the same studies

notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his bookTheInvention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people

in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times."[6]

Michael Balter,

reviewing the study in the journal Science, says the following:

Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University in Israel argues in his bookThe Invention of the Jewish

People, translated into English last year, that most modern Jews do not descend from the

ancient Land of Israel but from groups that took on Jewish identities long afterward. Such

notions, however, clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the

Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots. In what its authors claim is the most comprehensive

study thus far, a team led by geneticist Harry Ostrerof the New York University School of

Medicine concludes today that all three Jewish groupsMiddle Eastern, Sephardic, and

Ashkenazishare genomewide genetic markers that distinguish them from other worldwide

populations.[4]

Ostrer said, "I would hope that these observations would put the idea that Jewishness is just acultural construct to rest." However, geneticist Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan,

Ann Arbor, says that although the study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it"doesn't entirely eliminate it either."

[4]

Shlomo Sand has contested the claim that his book has been contradicted by recent geneticresearch published inNature journal and theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics. In a new

afterword for the paperback edition ofThe Invention of the Jewish People, Sand writes:

This attempt to justify Zionism through genetics is reminiscent of the procedures of late

nineteenth-century anthropologists who very scientifically set out to discover the specific

characteristics of Europeans. As of today, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has

succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study

ever will. It is a bitter irony to see the descendants ofHolocaust survivors set out to find a

biological Jewish identity: Hitler would certainly have been very pleased! And it is all the more

repulsive that this kind of research should be conducted in a state that has waged for years a

declared policy of "Judaization of the country" in which even today a Jew is not allowed to marry


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a non-Jew.[29]

In 'The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the KhazarianHypotheses' published in the journal, Genome Biology and Evolution, by Oxford UniversityPress, Dr. Eran Elhaik, claims to present a complete analysis of the comprehensive genetic data

published in preceding studies. He states that "My research refutes 40 years of genetic studies, allof which have assumed that the Jews constitute a group that is genetically isolated from othernations". According to his studys findings, European Jews genome is mostly Western European.

"[They are] primarily of Western European origin, which is rooted in the Roman Empire, and

Middle Eastern origin, whose source is probably Mesopotamia, although it is possible that part ofthat component can be attributed to Israeli Jews, he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz by

phone from Maryland.[30][31]

On the publication of Elhaik's study, Haaretz approached historians and geneticists for comment,

but only received a reply from Sand, who was highly critical of 'geneticists looking for Jewish

genes.' The discipline, he stated, seems 'crowned with a halo - as a precise science that deals with

quantitative findings and whose conclusions are irrefutable,' and yet he regards geneticists asdeficient in anything more than a high-school level of history, just like his knowledge of their

discipline. Geneticists, he claims adapt their scholarly findings to the received historical narrative

that that there is one Jewish nation. To search for a common gene to define a people or nation, asthe Germans once did to argue for their ethnic blood ties, is dangerous. It is an irony of history

that whereas in the past those who defined the Jews as a race were vilified as antisemitic, now

assertions to the contrary are taken as antisemitic.[32]

As in historical research so in genetics, heargues: 'It is very easy to showcase certain findings while marginalizing others and to present

your study as scholarly research.'[33]

References

1. ^ Sela, Maya (March 12, 2009). "Israeli wins French prize for book questioning origins ofJewish people". Haaretz. Retrieved November 18, 2009.

2. âbHastings, Max (November 15, 2009). "The Invention of the Jewish People by

Shlomo Sand". The Sunday Times. Retrieved November 29, 2009.3. ^

ab

Judt, Tony (2009-12-07). "Israel Must Unpick Its Ethnic Myth". The Financial Times.Retrieved 2010-03-07.

4. âbc

Balter, Michael (June 3, 2010). "Tracing the Roots of Jewishness". Science(journal). Retrieved June 10, 2010.

5. âb

Begley, Sharon (June 3, 2010). "The DNA Of Abraham's Children". Newsweek.Retrieved June 10, 2010.

6. âb

Wade, Nicholas (June 9, 2010). "Studies Show Jews' Genetic Similarity". New YorkTimes. Retrieved June 10, 2010.

7. ^ ab Shlomo Sand's 'The Invention of the Jewish People' is a success for Israel | By CarloStrenger | Published 27.11.09 | Haaretz.[1]

8. ^"Prix Aujourdhui". Prix Litteraires.net. 2010-02-12. Retrieved 2010-03-16.9. ^The Invention of the Jewish People, English Edition (Verso Books, 2009)

10. ^ . ISBN978-3548610337. Missing or empty |title= (help)

11. ^ . ISBN978-8817044516. Missing or empty |title= (help)

12. ^[2]13. ^

ab[3]

14. ^[4]


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15. ^[5]16. ^

abcdefg

Ilani, Ofri (March 21, 2008). "Shattering a 'national mythology'". Haaretz.Retrieved November 18, 2009.

17. âbcSegev, Tom (February 29, 2008). "An invention called 'the Jewish people'".

Haaretz. Retrieved November 18, 2009.18. ^

abc

Cook, Jonathan (October 6, 2008). "Book refuting Jewish taboo on Israels

bestseller list". The National (Abu Dhabi). Retrieved November 18, 2009.19. âbc

Goldstein, Evan R. (October 29, 2009). "Where Do Jews Come From?". The WallStreet Journal. Retrieved November 17, 2009.

20. âbc

Shlomo Sand: an enemy of the Jewish people? [6]" Retrieved 2011-01-18.21. ^

ab

Bartal, Israel (July 6, 2008). "Inventing an invention". Haaretz. Retrieved October 22,2009.

22. ^ Kulik, Alexander (2010). History of the Jews in Russia: vol. 1, From Ancient Times tothe early Modern Ages. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History. ISBN978-965-227-276-8.

23. âbShapira, Anita (March 2009). "The Jewish-people deniers" (PDF). The Journal of

Israeli History28 (1): 6372. doi:10.1080/13531040902752531. ISSN1353-1042. RetrievedNovember 18, 2009.

24. ^ Myths of the Exile and Return: The History of History, David Finkel, MayJune 2010. [7]25. ^ Indecent Proposal, Hillel Halkin, Jan. 9, 2010, The New Republic, [The Invention of the

Jewish People. [8]26. ^

abcdSchama, Simon (November 13, 2009). "The Invention of the Jewish People".

Financial Times. Retrieved November 17, 2009.27. ^Sand, Shlomo (November 21, 2009). "Shlomo Sand responds to Simon Schamas

review in the Financial Times". Retrieved November 29, 2009.28. ^ Hobsbawm, Eric (2009-11-22). "Books of the Year, 2009". The Observer. Retrieved

2010-03-07.29. ^ Sand, Shlomo (2010-06-10). "New York Times on Sand and Jewish Origins".

inventionofthejewishpeople.com. Retrieved 2010-07-05.30. ^http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-jewish-people-s-ultimate-treasure-

hunt.premium-1.49053931. ^http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/14/gbe.evs119.short?rss=132. ^ Some people, historians and even scientists, turn a blind eye to the truth. Once to say

Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they're not a race is anti-Semitic. It's crazy howhistory plays with us. Shlomo Sand cited Danielle Venton, 'Highlight: Out of KhazariaEvidencefor Jewish Genome Lacking,' in Genome Biology and Evolution, Vol.5, Issue 1, 2013 pp.75-6.

33. ^ Ofer Aderet, 'The Jewish people's ultimate treasure hunt,' at Haaretz, 28 December2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_the_Jewish_People

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KHAZARS 13TH TRIBE RISE AND FALL AND THE INVENTION OF THE JEWS.pdf