The Invention of the Jewish People

Shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the 19th century, rather than in biblical times when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. This book demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth and the collective mystification that this requires.

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A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.