Israel's
Declaration
of
Independence
states that
the Jewish
people arose
in the Land
of Israel
and was
exiled from
its
homeland.
Every
Israeli
schoolchild
is taught
that this
happened
during the
period of
Roman rule,
in 70 CE.
The nation
remained
loyal to its
land, to
which it
began to
return after
two
millennia of
exile.
Wrong, says
the
historian
Shlomo Zand,
in one of
the most
fascinating
and
challenging
books
published
here in a
long time.
There never
was a Jewish
people, only
a Jewish
religion,
and the
exile also
never
happened -
hence there
was no
return. Zand
rejects most
of the
stories of
national-identity
formation in
the Bible,
including
the exodus
from Egypt
and, most
satisfactorily,
the horrors
of the
conquest
under
Joshua. It's
all fiction
and myth
that served
as an excuse
for the
establishment
of the State
of Israel,
he asserts.
According to
Zand, the
Romans did
not
generally
exile whole
nations, and
most of the
Jews were
permitted to
remain in
the country.
The number
of those
exiled was
at most tens
of
thousands.
When the
country was
conquered by
the Arabs,
many of the
Jews
converted to
Islam and
were
assimilated
among the
conquerors.
It follows
that the
progenitors
of the
Palestinian
Arabs were
Jews. Zand
did not
invent this
thesis; 30
years before
the
Declaration
of
Independence,
it was
espoused by
David
Ben-Gurion,
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
and others.
If the
majority of
the Jews
were not
exiled, how
is it that
so many of
them reached
almost every
country on
earth? Zand
says they
emigrated of
their own
volition or,
if they were
among those
exiled to
Babylon,
remained
there
because they
chose to.
Contrary to
conventional
belief, the
Jewish
religion
tried to
induce
members of
other faiths
to become
Jews, which
explains how
there came
to be
millions of
Jews in the
world. As
the Book of
Esther, for
example,
notes, "And
many of the
people of
the land
became Jews;
for the fear
of the Jews
fell upon
them."
Zand quotes
from many
existing
studies,
some of
which were
written in
Israel but
shunted out
of the
central
discourse.
He also
describes at
length the
Jewish
kingdom of
Himyar in
the southern
Arabian
Peninsula
and the
Jewish
Berbers in
North
Africa. The
community of
Jews in
Spain sprang
from Arabs
who became
Jews and
arrived with
the forces
that
captured
Spain from
the
Christians,
and from
European-born
individuals
who had also
become Jews.
The first
Jews of
Ashkenaz
(Germany)
did not come
from the
Land of
Israel and
did not
reach
Eastern
Europe from
Germany, but
became Jews
in the
Khazar
Kingdom in
the
Caucasus.
Zand
explains the
origins of
Yiddish
culture: it
was not a
Jewish
import from
Germany, but
the result
of the
connection
between the
offspring of
the Kuzari
and Germans
who traveled
to the East,
some of them
as
merchants.
We find,
then, that
the members
of a variety
of peoples
and races,
blond and
black, brown
and yellow,
became Jews
in large
numbers.
According to
Zand, the
Zionist need
to devise
for them a
shared
ethnicity
and
historical
continuity
produced a
long series
of
inventions
and
fictions,
along with
an
invocation
of racist
theses. Some
were
concocted in
the minds of
those who
conceived
the Zionist
movement,
while others
were offered
as the
findings of
genetic
studies
conducted in
Israel.
Prof. Zand
teaches at
Tel Aviv
University.
His book,
"When and
How Was the
Jewish
People
Invented?"
(published
by Resling
in Hebrew),
is intended
to promote
the idea
that 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.
Personal
stories, a
prolonged
theoretical
discussion
and abundant
sarcastic
quips do not
help the
book, but
its
historical
chapters are
well-written
and cite
numerous
facts and
insights
that many
Israelis
will be
astonished
to read for
the first
time.
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