Portland Public Library

The invention of the Jewish people, Shlomo Sand ; translated by Yael Lotan

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

The invention of the Jewish people

bibliography

317919518

Shlomo Sand ; translated by Yael Lotan

All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official and popular culture, and yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive and influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century CE, and the assertion of both cultural and racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine and the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. Here, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth 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.--From publisher description