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 AD, and the assertion of both cultural and racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israels 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. In this bold and ambitious new book, 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. Sand forensically dissects the official story and demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth and the collective mystification that this requires. A bestseller in Israel and France, Shlomo Sands book has sparked a widespread and lively debate. Should the Jewish people regard themselves as genetically distinct and identifiable across the millennia or should that doctrine now be left behind and if the myth of the Jewish state is dismantled, could this open a path toward a more inclusive Israeli state, content within its borders?
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Verso Books
ISBN-13
9781844676231
eBay Product ID (ePID)
94759672
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Social Organisations
Author
Shlomo Sand
Publication Name
The Invention of the Jewish People
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2010
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
344 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
209mm
Item Width
138mm
Item Weight
458g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Shlomo Sand
Country/Region of Manufacture
United Kingdom
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