Comment j'ai cessé d'être juif

by Shlomo Sand

Rare Book

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Religion, Israel, Biography, Middle East

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Shlomo Sand is professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso Books, 2009). His main areas of teaching are nationalism, film as history and French intellectual history.

Sand was born to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. His parents had Communist and anti-imperialist views and refused to receive compensations from Germany for their suffering during the Second World War. Sand spent his early years in a displaced persons camp, and moved with the family to Jaffa in 1948. He was expelled from high school at the age of sixteen, and only completed his bagrut following his military service. He eventually left the Union of Israeli Communist Youth (Banki) and joined the more radical, and anti-Zionist, Matzpen in 1968. Sand resigned from Matzpen in 1970 due to his disillusionment with the organisation.

He declined an offer by the Israeli Communist Party Rakah to be sent to do cinema studies in Poland, and in 1975 Sand graduated with a BA in History from Tel Aviv University. From 1975 to 1985, after winning a scholarship, he studied and later taught in Paris, receiving an MA in French History and a PhD for his thesis on "George Sorel and Marxism". Since 1982, Sand has taught at Tel Aviv University as well as at the University of California, Berkeley and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

Reviews

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 1 out of 5]

On the important things, Shlomo Sand and I agree. We both think the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be a confederation/ federation. We both agree on the importance of living equally and justly with our neighbors. We are both concerned by some trends in the Israeli society, including the failure of religious communities to address violence done in their name and the casual racism excused by the conflict.

However, wow. I do not feel the need to despise my own culture in order to get to that point. I don't like the term "self hating Jew". I think it is far too often utilized to smear critics. However, I also do not see how it is possible to understand Shlomo Sand in any other way.

Shlomo Sand hates being Jewish and it is hard not to feel bad for him. Imagine hating your own culture to that extent that you can no longer see its beauty, not even a bit. And if you can't see the magic of your own culture, you begin to think that such magic never existed in the first place, that you do not belong to Judaism because there is nothing to belong to, Judaism is now racism, Judaism is falsely ethno-centric, Judaism exists by merely not being Christianity, Judaism has no culture of its own, Judaism is the cause of every bad thing that happens in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, being Jewish is merely to be a people who were oppressed.

It is sad to be so uneducated about your own culture. It really is tragic to hate oneself so deeply, especially as a misguided attempt to help others.

So Shlomo Sand reaches the conclusion that secular Judaism does not exist. I think it's pretty obvious that secular Israeli Jewish culture is a fascinating mesh of secular culture and Judaism. You don't believe in God but every Friday without fail, you put on a kippa and bless bread. You break halacha laws constantly but you don't work on Shabbat, you won't work on Shabbat. You have pride in being Jewish, in being part of a people who have survived thousands of years even though you've never seen a Gemara page. You toss in biblical Hebrew terms without realizing their origins. The bluntness, the chaos, the inability to queue, the shouting based argumentative culture, that's Jewish but it's also not religious at all.

And to look at Israeli culture and attempt to separate it from Jewish culture is simply silly. Like really, Shlomo, let's be honest. Israeli culture is the word "kapara". Israeli culture is going to the beach on Shabbat. Israeli culture is combining shnitzel and couscous effortlessly. Israeli culture is crowded public transportation on Thursday evenings. You simply cannot remove the Jewish elements here. Where does the word kapara come from? Why are couscous and shnitzel Israeli?

This, to me, is the peak of Tel Aviv-centrism. Because Shlomo doesn't want to give up his identity. Oh no, he doesn't want to leave the beaches of Tel Aviv, doesn't want to quit teaching at Tel Aviv University, doesn't want to stop hanging out in Tel Aviv cafes and bookshops. So instead, he opts to attack other Jews by claiming that his island in Tel Aviv isn't Jewish.

In this sense, he goes exactly where the Orthodox monopoly wants him to go. We, the liberal Jews, simply can't let the Orthodox community believe they hold the torch of Judaism. Claiming that we're Israeli and not Jewish is a way to admit that they win- their Judaism is the only Judaism. Sand doesn't mind to throw all liberal and secular Jews under the bus because he's simply blinded by his hate for religious Jews.

While doing this, he seems to forget that Jews have always had diverse relations to their Judaism. Marx, Kafka, Einstein and Freud each had drastically different opinions about their Jewish identity. Removing their Judaism and claiming that it's only universalism seems to ignore that they were secular Jews. That line of argument is as ridiculous as claiming that every scientific achievement made by a woman is, in fact, a testament of her universalism and of course, women by themselves don't have anything to contribute to science. Sounds stupid, right?

Moreover, I refuse to believe that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires a vast shift of identity. You wanna explore a world without nationalities? Great but this has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An identity transformation as Sand is describing is both not particularly feasible but mostly, not needed. Let's start this wonderful world without racism in parts of the world that don't have a century old conflict, okay? Even the EU doesn't manage seamlessly the lack of border control or the creation of a meta identity.

Sand would probably argue here that he doesn't think this way because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the vast majority of issues he describes are related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Going, "it's not about Palestinians, Zionism is bad regardless of Palestinians" is a copout meant to make his arguments universal. At the end of the day, it is about Palestinians because other forms of nationalism don't go through this kind of thinking. We, Israelis, do because we are in a conflict and those of us on the left see that nationalism has winners and losers.

The expectations and judgement of Sand are odd because they are unreasonable. I get it, we're all frustrated by how hard it is to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, we should also put things in proportion: much of the issues that Israel faces are similar to those faced by other countries. Not all, we do have the longest military occupation, but when it comes to racism, ethnocentric thoughts, discrimination and economic struggles, we are normal. Which reflects badly on the world but it also means Sand's disappointment is disproportional. We must all strive for a better and more open world, surely, but such challenges exist everywhere. Do we require every country to give up its peoplehood in order to combat racism or is this reserved for Jews?

Embarrassingly, Sand starts by suggesting his Yiddish culture is Judaism. That's a funny trend among those who dislike Israel- Israel has taken all the mainstream symbols of Judaism so if you wish to avoid them, you don't end up with much Judaism. I mean, the Star of David has been a Jewish symbol since about 1000, the menorah has been a Jewish symbol since at least 40 BC. Hebrew has been our language for roughly 2,500 years, even if it is seeped with Aramaic and Arabic. If you reject these symbols, what's left? Next year in Paris? Bagels?

Yiddish can and should be part of Jewish culture but assuming that the Israeli symbolism are somehow not Jewish because of their association to Israel makes very little sense. It also creates a form of Judaism that prioritizes Ashkenazis over other forms of Judaism. Is Judaism defined by the Holocaust entirely? Do we brush away Mizrahi trauma cause it doesn't sit as nicely with anti-Zionism? Why does Sand's Ashkenazi suffering get to be the center?

Sand writes as though we are all going to cry because he doesn't want to be Jewish, as if some Jewish gatekeeper is at the door, begging for him to stay. However, it's fair to say that assimilation is not uncommon. If he doesn't want to identify as Jewish, he doesn't have to. Just don't tell other Jews what to be.

To conclude, I simply don't believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved by denouncing who we are. I mean yes, if tomorrow all the Palestinians said "we're actually from Saudi Arabia, let's go" or if all Israelis were to say, "turns out Jews don't exist, let's go to Europe instead", the conflict would be solved but in light of the reality we live in, I don't see much purpose decrying the very real existence of us. In fact, I believe it is through mutual recognition that we move forward. It starts with knowing who we are and being willing to know who the others are.

what I'm taking with me
- Ughh, Tel Avivians, I just. I am so ready to give Tel Aviv in exchange for Hebron in a peace agreement.
- I will say that this book really does have strong Jewish energy, like is there anything more Jewish than complaining about being Jewish?
- Also, I'm sorry to say this but the days of writing books debating on Zionism are kind of over like this book could have been written in the 1900s and reached an audience but nowadays, the argument about Zionism really is an Ashkenazi (and academic) argument. Zionism is no longer a Jewish theoretical question. We're done agonizing other what Jews are, get with the times, Shlomo.
- A leftist friend was impressed that I read this book so at least we have that?

--------------------
This is, without a doubt, the most cringe piece of writing I have ever had the misfortune to read. I am genuinely embarrassed for Sand.

Review to come! For now, I intend to bring up this book any time someone says secular Jewish education in Israel is sufficient. Like lol, check out this guy who thinks Jews have no culture.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

fascinating and enlightening

something conveniently forgotten, or ignored, about the Balfour declaration

A letter of one hundred eighteen words signed by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary,  committing His Majesty’s government to a Jewish homeland in Palestine at some indefinite future time, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

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Just got done watching this film, The Gate Keepers. The conclusion of six former heads of Shin Bet, the intelligence agency charged with defending against terrorism...

"we have become a cruel people"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdMjr...

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Just a reminder, Israel helped create Hamas....

https://www.dispropaganda.com/single-...

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

An illuminating, somewhat resigned, essay on the perils of identity politics, rather than a polemic. Shlomo Sand examines the myths of Jewish identity, specifically that of the "secular Jew" and predictably disturbs a few sacred cows. He dismisses the "Holocaust industry" – indicting Lanzmann's Shoah, Spielberg's Shindler's List and Elie Wiesel for their exclusive focus on Jews as the victims of Nazism.

It was not enough that the memory of the victims should be engraved in the consciousness of the West. What was demanded was the specificity, exclusiveness, and total national ownership of suffering.

He also questions the supposed univeralist ethic of Jews who historically side with the oppressed.

Anyone who seeks to establish a connection between Jewish morality and social justice, between Jewish tradition and human rights, must ask why the Jewish religious sphere has barely given rise to preachings against repeated Israeli attacks on human rights.

He asks what it means to be a Jew in Israel, and answers "in Israel, being a Jew means, fundamentally and before all else, not being an Arab," a position he has no difficulty naming as racism.

Is not the very fact of defining oneself as a Jew within the State of Israel an act of affiliation to a privileged caste which creates intolerable injustices around itself?… We must recognize that the key axis of a secular Jewish identity lies nowadays in perpetuating the individual's relationship to the State of Israel and in securing the individual's total support for it.

For Sand, his "Jewish" birth is accidental and not determinative; he wants to exit the "exclusive club."

The book is dedicated to the memory of Eric Hobsbawm, author of The Invention of Tradition. We are all a mixture of identities and it's fine to celebrate them, but when we find in them a reason to discriminate and oppress, it is right that they should be exposed as the fictions they are. A calm and courageous book.

[Salma Say · Rating 5 out of 5]

اليهودية في الأصل هي ديانة، لكن الصهيونية حولتها إلى إثنية قومية عنصرية. تدعي أن اليهود كانوا يشكلون دوما كتلة واحدة متماسكة حافظت على نقاءها العرقي على مر القرون، وبالرغم من قلة الدلائل التاريخية (باستبعاد التوراة والتلمود: والتي لا يمكن الاعتماد عليها كمرجع تاريخي موثوق به)، باءت محاولاتهم لايجاد تركيبة جينية خاصة باليهود بالفشل. الفكر الصهيوني مادي استعماري حول الإنسان إلى مادة نفعية، فما المشكلة اذا تم حل المسألة اليهودية في شرق أوربا عن طريق نقل اليهود إلى أرض فلسطين، وتم حل مسألة اللاجئين الفلسطينية بنقلهم وتوطينهم في الدول العربية المجاورة. هذا الكيان الذي يدعي التحضر والتقدم ويتفاخر بكونه الديمقراطية الوحيدة في الشرق الأوسط قد أبخس من قدر الإنسان وتبجح لأبعد حد. واستغل الانهزامية العربية بقذف سهام الاتهامات على العرب والمسلمين، والتي تأثر بها العرب في المقابل وسعوا لدفع هذه التهم عنهم. الصهيونية تستغل الديانة اليهودية لتبرير جرائمها ولا أخلاقيتها.
كتاب مهم ويجب أن يقرأه كل عربي وبخاصة دعاة الانهزامية والتطبيع منهم..
وبالمناسبة فإن القارئ لدكتور عبدالوهاب المسيري سيجد أفكار الكاتبين متشابهة بشكل كبير.

[Mustakim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Worth reading <3

4.5/5

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sholomo Sand's book, How I Stopped Being a Jew, which I received from NetGalley in exchange for a review, addresses the issues many modern Jews face in reconciling their Jewish heritage with their lack of identity with Judaism, and their rejection of a God that actually has power in their lives.

These are issues modern Jews and Israeli citizens face daily. And many of them struggle. Many modern Jews are happy being Jewish, and observing their faith as they choose to observe it.

Others, like Sand, reject the idea of a supreme being. There is nothing wrong with that. People who reject the idea of a supreme being are atheists, and I know several.

I am now probably going to offend those readers who give this book high ratings.

This book, however, is not about being an atheist. It is entitled How I Stopped Being a Jew for a reason. Sand not only rejects Judaism, he devotes his entire book to an apologia for his opinion.

Sand is a well-known, controversial professor and author. Personally, I found this book offensive. I found it offensive as a Jew, I found it offensive as an American citizen, and I found it offensive as a global citizen.

That I found it offensive as a Jew is my personal opinion and just as I choose to practice Judaism, Professor Sand does not. What I find offensive, is Sand's need to bash Israel, the country of which he is a citizen, and the notion of a Jewish identity. I am not offended that he has legitimate concerns and beliefs. I AM offended that he foisted them on unsuspecting readers.

I am offended as an American citizen because I find literature that bashes my country, written by my fellow citizens, offensive. I am not a flag - waver, and I don't support every action our political leadership takes. I willingly read diverse opinions. But when someone just decides to object, politically, to everything this country stands for, well, that's the limit for me. And that's what Sand does to his country.

I am offended as a global citizen because I think any citizen of any country owes at least some allegiance to their country (the exception being citizens of countries led by dictators; citizens who are oppressed constantly and not allowed to express their opinions). I can't tell if Sand has an identity as a citizen of Israel. He seems to find the fact that he is identified by the State of Israel as JEW. This is an unfortunate fact of living in Israel; matrilineal heritage defines you.

I found it almost impossible to read beyond the first page. I have no quarrel with Professor Sand's atheism. But I think he goes way too far in apologizing for how he came to this conclusion.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sand is an Israeli citizen who criticizes what it means to be Jewish in Israel today. He acknowledges that, in a post-Holocaust world, there is good reason for an overall Jewish bond with the State of Israel. However, he finds it an odd coincidence of fate that the State of Israel marked him as “Jew” on his identity card simply because his mother is Jewish, something he had no control over, and did not make any inquiry whatsoever into things that might have been more relevant, such as his ability to speak Hebrew or his religious beliefs. (He doesn’t “believe in a supreme being,” which is all he has to say on that subject in this book, and nowhere does he suggest that secular Jews ought to become religious Jews.) The State of Israel thus treats Jewishness as a race, “as an eternal and ahistorical essence,” which he thinks is an unnecessary interpretation and also lends itself toward discriminatory treatment of people deemed to be non-Jews, particularly as it fuels the growing “politics of segregation that is inherent in the self-definition of the State of Israel” and the occupation of the territories since 1967.

Someone born of a Jewish mother — anywhere in the world — can get a secondary residence in Israel and an identity card, without being obligated to work, pay taxes, serve in the army, or learn the history, geography, or language. They can also bring a non-Jewish spouse to Israel, where the spouse will also be entitled to Israeli citizenship. By contrast, an Arab Israeli is not allowed to bring a Palestinian spouse from the occupied territories into Israel. “To diminish the demographic weight of the Arabs, it is judged better to weaken the Jewish state through non-Jewish dilution, so long as the newcomers are white Europeans.”

He feels a “growing malaise in continuing to define myself as a secular Jew,” further asking: “How, in these conditions, can individuals who are not religious believers but are simply humanists, democrats and liberals, and endowed with minimum of honesty, continue to define themselves as Jews?” He is critical of the idea that there is a significant bond between secular Jews. The very possibility of secularism may be seen as a privilege of certain cultural backgrounds. In Israel, people of Yiddish backgrounds were likely to still be recognized as Jewish even if they were secular, while Jews of Arab backgrounds often felt the need to play up their religiosity so that others would affirm their Jewishness and not lump them together with Muslim Arabs. Today “in Israel, being a Jew means, fundamentally and before all else, not being an Arab.”

Furthermore, ideas of Jewish ethical differences from non-Jews — whether of Jewish “ill repute” or “moral superiority” — are narratives that are not factually based. “Nowhere to be found is there a way of life common to all so-called secular Jews,” and so “it is impossible to assert the existence either of a living, non-religious Jewish culture or of a possible common future, apart from vestiges handed down from a declining religious tradition.” The art, philosophy, history, and politics of people like Tristan Tzara, Harold Pinter, Stanley Kubrick, Henri Bergson, Marc Bloch, Arthur Koestler, and Serge Gainsbourg do not have anything significantly Jewish about them, despite these artists' personal origins in "a Jewish family background of one sort or another.” For some artists, like Franz Kafka, the noticeable absence of Jewish content in their work amounts to a deliberate distancing from their personal background.

Sand implies his approval, as an Israeli, of non-Israelis who protest “the Israeli policies of segregation and occupation,” insofar as the policies are indeed objectionable. He questions, however, how these non-Israelis can coherently identify as “secular Jews”; why they want to identify with “a Jewish ‘community’” in the first place; and why, therefore, they are talking about Israel at all. Although the secular Jew identity stance was “understandable on the part of the generation that immediately followed the genocide,” today it is “a temporary posture with little weight and no political future.”

Frustrated by the unconscious racism of Israeli society and by his recognition that his egalitarian ideals are seen as “exaggerated and impertinent,” he perceives “a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism” and says he wishes to “resign” from a Jewish identity that, in contemporary Israel, aligns him with “a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters”. He no longer assumes that his Yiddish-speaking family background makes him a “genuinely secular Jew”. He feels rather “that such an imaginary characteristic lacks any specific basis or cultural perspective and that its existence is based on a hollow and ethnocentric view of the world.”

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livro fantástico. Emocionante até.

Eu peguei esse livro para ler em função da meu interesse em questões de identidade étnica. Em particular, tenho interesse em entender como grupos étnicos que, em algum momento na história encaixaram-se na categoria de otherness — que, em um sentido marxista, são grupos que ocupam papeis marginais na esfera da produção e, por consequência, são representados na condição de inferioridade na política, cultura, arte, etc. —, deixaram esse papel.

Uma grande característica da otherness é que seu significado e materialidade são estritamente sociais. Desse modo, o sujeito pertencente ao grupo étnico em questão não tem agência sobre sua identidade. O negro em sociedades coloniais, por exemplo, é no imaginário social o feio, fedido, burro e preguiçoso (leia o maravilhoso ensaio de Umberto Eco Inventing the Enemy: Essays). E, embora o afrodescendente nessas sociedades possa desenvolver estratégias para lutar contra a memória coletiva que confere materialidade à sua identidade, a negação de sua identidade não estaria entre essas estratégias. Dizer "Eu não sou negro" não seria uma opção.

Foi por isso que o título desse ensaio me chamou tanto atenção. Como alguém pode decidir deixar de ser judeu?

O argumento do Sand na verdade é simples: a ideia de que é impossível deixar de ser judeu depende de se aceitar que existe algo chamado "judeu secular": uma cultura que existe independente de convicções religiosas. Essa cultura não existe hoje. Não existe língua judia-secular, não existe arte judia-secular e, mais importante, a memória judia secular está se desvanecendo.

Sand argumenta que o auge da Judeophobia no mundo Ocidental foi entre 1850 e 1950. O status de otherness dos judeus foi essencialmente extinto desde então e, embora seja sempre possível citar casos de antissemitismo eventuais, sua prática deixou de ser sistemática (exceção feita a alguns paises da Europa Oriental). Por essa razão a associação comunitária de judeus seculares, visando sobetudo a sobrevivência, perdeu em larga medida a razão de ser.

Uma passagem do livro resume de forma bastante bonita esse último ponto. Enquanto Sand — que afirma em seus trabalhos que não há base genética comum entre judeus—, caminhava com seu pai por Paris, o último afirmara que é sempre possível identificar um judeu nas ruas. Diante do ceticismo do filho, o pai aponta para um homem e afirma, ao pé do ouvido de Sand que aquele homem era judeu. Para provar seu ponto o pai de San começa a fala Yiddish com o filho na expectativa do suposto judeu entrar na conversa. O que não acontece imediatamente, mas:

Suddenly the man my father had identified as a Jew, who was sitting in front of us, turned round and began to explain in Yiddish the origin of the column. It turned out that he came from Romania and had arrived in France before the Second World War. He was an engineer and lived in Montmartre. I was flabbergasted and speechless. When we got off the bus, I immediately asked my father how he’d been able to identity this man. ‘It’s because of the eyes,’ he replied. I found this hard to understand. ‘But he had blue eyes!’ I said. ‘It’s not the shape or the colour, it’s the look.’ ‘What look?’ ‘A fleeting and sad look, the mark of fear and deep apprehension,’ explained my father. ‘That’s how the German soldiers sometimes identified Jews in Poland.

Mais importante é a última frase dessa passagem:

But don’t worry, you don’t get that anymore with young Israelis!’

Mas se a necessidade de sobrevivência é menor, não significa que ela não existe. Ainda assim valeria a pena parar de ser judeu? Sand responde afirmativamente a essa pergunta, por uma razão simples: a persistência de identificação étnica entre judeus seculares serve apenas a propósitos etnocentristas do Estado de Israel. Essa identificação é nociva para as minorias que habitam o território israelense atualmente e estão condenadas à mesma otherness a que os judeus estiveram submetidos na Europa entre 1850 e 1950.

***

Gostei muito pela coragem do texto e porque ele exala sinceridade, mas continuei com a pergunta que me fez procurar o livro pela primeira vez: é possivel abandonar o grupo étnico a que você pertence se esse grupo é um otherness? Se a otherness judaica acabou, creio que o Sand pode fazê-lo. Mas e as mulheres, negros, muçulmanos?

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have one or two minor reservations about this book, on relatively trivial aspects: it's imperfectly translated from the Hebrew via the French and uses once-trendy academic franglais such as "problematic " and "imaginary" as nouns; the style generally is a bit florid in parts; and he bends over backwards sometimes a little too far - in my view - to be more than fair to the people and doctrines and behaviours that have led him to renounce his former Jewish identity.
To be fair to him, it is clearly necessary to write with great care to avoid being smeared for having said what one has not when discussing Israel, Zionism and Jewishness, and though he is, he is also frank, lucid and clear and, for concerned but non-expert bystanders like me, informative.
I recommend this to all.

[Safwat Safi · Rating 3 out of 5]

يؤكد شلومو ساند في هذا الكتاب ما ذهب إليه في كتابيه اختراع الشعب اليهودي واختراع أرض إسرائيل بأنه يشعر بالخجل من العنصرية التي تقوم عليها الدولة التي يحمل جنسيتها ويظهر مشاعر التعاطف مع الفلسطينيين الذين تحرمهم العنصرية الصهيونية حقوقهم بل ويعتبر أن الصهيونية قد خلقت من وجهة نظره قومية فلسطينية وإسرائيلية وترفض الصهيونية الاعتراف بهما.
ساند يعتقد بعدم وجود يهودية علمانية بسبب عدم وجود تعريف حقيقي لها وعدم وجود عوامل مشتركة بين من يعتبرون أفرادا فيها.
ساند يعلن في هذا الكتاب وانطلاقا من خجله من عنصريتها اللا أخلاقية أنه ليس جزءا من اليهودية العلمانية. . لكنه إسرائيلي (من دولة إسرائيل التي ولدت بعد 48) ويشعر بالحنين لتل أبيب كل ما سافر خارجها ويدرك بأن حلمه بكونفدرالية بين دولتين فلسطينية ويهودية اقرب إلى المستحيل لكنه يعتقد أن دولة إسرائيل إذا ما تخلت عن تقوقعها وإصرارها على أن تكون دولة يهود العالم وتقبلت الفلسطينيين كمواطنين كاملي المواطنة سيفتح لها أبواب مستقبل أفضل عكس ما ينتظرها إن لم تفعل ذلك.
وجهة نظر شلومو ساند متطورة بالنسبة لغيره من الإسرائيليين سواء تبنوا الأفكار الصهيونية أو شعروا بالخجل منها.. لكنها أبعد بكثير من طموحات وأحلام الفلسطينيين في فلسطين وفي الشتات الحريصين على استعادة حقوقهم في أرضهم كاملة غير منقوصة

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is much shorter and more personal than the other book of his I read, The Invention of the Jewish People, making it I think more accessible to a wider audience. Sand writes very clearly, making solid arguments. There is a strong focus on Israel, but Sand also makes clear why he thinks that it should be relevant to all people who consider themselves Jews. I am someone who also decided to stop calling myself a Jew, for reasons similar to some those expressed by Sand, and now I feel even more justified in doing so. Highly recommended, regardless of whether you might agree with Sand, as he raises many thorny issues to mull over.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a subtle and ultimately punchy engagement with what it means to be Jewish, that in the end is likely to unsettle (as it should) preconceptions and many ‘takens-for-granted’. At the heart of the problem/question Sand sets out to unravel is the problem of being a ‘secular Jew’, if to be Jewish is to worship ones God in a specific way, with all those social practices making a cultural identity, a way of being – what is the common culture of secular Jewishness?

As unsettling as this question might be, conceptually, the even more unsettling part of his case is that there is a significant overlap between the wrangling of definitions and identities that go to make up secular Jewishness and the kinds of essentialising, natalist conceptualisation of Jewishness that underpins Judeophobia (he is careful to set aside the language of anti-Semitism) and forms of ‘scientific racism’. Crucially, here, he also links this problem to Zionist practice and the changes in Israeli state policy.

In these 12 short chapters Sand places himself in that question of secular Jewishness, tracing his family history as post-war displaced peoples relocating to Palestine where he grapples with the ambiguities of having Israeli citizenship but not Israeli nationality (there is, officially, no Israeli nationality). Rolled into this is the discourse of a global Jewishness that constructs affective links with inherent political rights (the Law of Return and so on) that are denied Palestinians born in that territory, although this is more alluded to than developed – Sand’s bigger concern is that deployment of a common sense of Jewishness and wondering what it means at the level of selfhood.

These are big and challenging question that Sand unpacks with nuance and care, while also careful not to stray into the wider questions of state legitimacy and identity, that to a large degree would likely open him up to critique from other directions – as we’ve seen with other books of his. At the heart of it all is an argument that he sees, at best, some kind of shared Israeli culture/cultural identity but certainly not something called secular Jewishness.

That said, the deeply personalised mode of argument-making means that it would probably be an error to ‘over-read’ this as a criticism of identity politics: this is a more fundamentally ontological problem than that, framed by a specific set of state-based actions both in a genocide and a settler colonial formation framed as national liberation that alarmingly deploy similar ways of defining a people. This is one to read slowly, reflect on and treat with care – and for all that is well worth it.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To try to equate today's marginal anti-Semitism with the powerful, mainstream Judeophobia of the past amounts to greatly downplaying the impact of Jew-hatred in Western, Christian and modern civilization as expressed until the mid-twentieth century. Yet the conception that makes Jews a 'race' with mysterious qualities, transmitted by obscure routes, still blossoms. While in former times it was a matter of simple physiological characteristics, blood, or facial shape, today it is DNA or, for the more subtle, a paler substitute: the strong belief in a direct lineage down the chain of generations. In a distant past we were dealing with a mixture of fear, contempt, hatred of the other, and ignorance. Today, on the part of the 'post-Shoah goyim', we face a symbiosis of fears, guilty consciences and ignorance, while among "new Jews' we often find victimization, narcissism, pretentiousness, and likewise a crass ignorance."

[...]
In light of the recent tragedies of the first half of the twentieth century, the emotional connection felt by Jewish descendants towards Israel is both understandable and undeniable, and it would be foolish to criticize it. However, in no way does that undeniable connection also necessitate a close connection between the conception of Jewishness as an eternal and ahistorical essence, and the growing support a large number of those who identify themselves as Jews give to the politics of segregation that is inherent in the self-definition of the State of Israel, and to the regime of extended occupation and colonization that has been enforced in the territories conquered in 1967."

[ناديا · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب ساند ' اختراع الشعب اليهودي ' كان اول كتاب فكري ،سياسي أقرأه بحياتي وذلك من عدة سنوات بغية حضور اول نقاش لنادي كتب ايضا بحياتي كلها :) يومها سرني فكرة الكتاب من كاتب يهودي ، وان ظننت حينها بهدف موارب من وراءه وافقني بذلك عدد ممن حضروا النقاش

كيف لم اعد يهوديا ، يدور بنفس المحراب ، يدحض فكرة دولة اسرائيل القائمة على اليهوديه العلمانيه والعنصرية مرددا باكثر من موضع " سكان فلسطين الاصليين " . أعجبني الكتاب اكثر مما اعجبني سابقه ، عرّف اليهوديه وميز بينها حسب الجنسية . اسهب في شرح ميزات ان تكون بهوديا ابن يهودي وتعيش في اسرائيل ، مظهرا الظلم الواقع على الفلسطينين . أعتقد انني سأعيد قراءة الكتاب ورقيا وعلى الغالب سأضمه لمكتبه المنزل .

يبقى السؤال مالغايه من هكذا كتاب ؟ وكيف سُمح له بالنشر ؟ وهل توقف فعلا عن كونه يهوديا مع ان يهودية أي انسان لاتمت للصهيونيه ولا لاسرائيل ؟

[Yaakov Bernadyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A regular reader of Shlomo Sand's books would find this essay of no surprise. What they would find of a surprise is the detailed rationale that he produces so eloquently. Having been a practicing Jew, then secular Jew, and then (ultimately) openly an atheist I found my story resonated with Sand's story.

I'm looking forward to reading Sand's next book on Israel and hopefully some history on the formation of Israel that continues to display to the world the truth of how Israel was created. Sand's books should not be considered antisemitic, self-hatred, nor Anti-Israel, but merely factual statements and analyses.

I highly recommend this essay. Readers wouldn't be sorry!

[شيماء الوطني · Rating 4 out of 5]

( أعرف عدوك ) المقولة التي أؤمن بها كثيراً ، مشكلتنا كأمة عربية أننا لا نفتش في خبايا أعداءنا بعكسهم ، ولذلك هم دوماً يسبقوننا بخطوة مستغلين نقاط ضعفنا !
في هذا الكتاب يستعرض ( شلومو زاند ) أسرار الدولة الإسرائيلية المزعومة .. يتحدث عن التفرقة ، عن التحيز وعن الأوهام والمظلوميات التي يتشدق بها اليهود من أجل انتزاع التعاطف ، في الوقت الذي يمارسون فيه أبشع الجرائم بحق الشعب الفلسطيني وحتى الشعب اليهودي المنحدر من أصول عربية .

[Nadine · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is in fact contradictory to write a whole book about how Israel, Zionism, and the concept of "Jewish people" were founded, and to still identify as Israeli.
The book provides valid explanations for many myths created by well-known zionists. However, I hope that Shlomo Sand and other Israelis, who love to play the role of the savior, realize that they are part of the oppression, for they are not willing to give up the bundle of privileges they possess as a result of Jewish nationalism.

[Sara Salem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fascinating parts especially on how Zionism constructed Israeli identity.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book, Sand is an interesting guy. Not being of Jewish origin myself, there was a lot a felt I didn't have personal experience with, but Sand nonetheless explains his standpoint (and the standpoints of his opponents) in a very clear manner.

The gist of Sand's book is that there is no coherent reason for a secular person to consider themselves Jewish, beyond a troublesome and latently ethnocentric identity politics. The usual reasons people give to justify a secular Jewish identity don't cut the mustard for Sand. He despises what passes as Jewish mythology and believes what is considered uniquely Jewish culture is tripe, like the frequently quoted Talmud excerpt about how saving one life is like saving the whole world; the full quote makes clear that it is referring to Jewish lives only.

Don't all Jews share a common culture? No, a Jew from New York and a Jew raised in Tel Aviv are substantially different; the New Yorker has far more in common with Gentile New Yorkers than with Israelis. Once upon a time there was a vibrant, secular Yiddish culture, but that time has passed and the Yiddish culture is as good as destroyed.

Don't Jews have common genes, or ancestors? No, and all attempts to define a "Jewish gene" will fail; to even attempt to find such a thing is racism.

Finally, don't all Jews share the experience of being persecuted? Sand is most sympathetic to this argument and held to it for most of his life. However, he feels that this is not a clear-sighted basis for identity because a) to accept this argument is to allow the Nazis and European "Judeophobes" (Sand dislikes the term anti-Semitism) to control their victims in perpetuity, and b) because Jews are no longer the European subaltern they once were, and to suggest so goes some way in masking the oppression of the Palestinian Arabs.

Sand concludes that the only thing he can honestly call himself is an Israeli: an product of decades of aggressive cultural assimilation, ethnic cleansing, power politics and colonialism, but an Israeli nonetheless. This is not a point of pride for him, or a point of shame -- it's just who he is.

Sand's primarily weakness (besides a slightly distracting penchant for the occasional purple prose) is one that he himself hints at near to the end of the book: how are non-Jews supposed to understand this debate? I figured out my response without even thinking. I barely even thought of how it applied to Jews; I instead applied its arguments intuitively to my own social background. Sand's book should not be read as one limited to his own former "tribe", as he occasionally puts it, but to all ethnic identity politics. This is what I believe non-Jews should take from it.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Israel defines itself as a ‘Jewish state’, or as the ‘state of the Jewish people’ throughout the world, but it is not even able to define who is a Jew.

Sand's essay complicates the issue of secular Jewish identity, or, in other words, a shared plane among non-practicing Jews. Apart from the Hebrew hegemony in the land of Israel, and a shared sense of persecution that he claims Jews worldwide are encouraged to share, he finds nothing in Jewish culture that is all-pervasive and warrants the common word 'Jew'. This leads him to the thesis that in Israel, being a Jew is actually being non-Arab (I would go further to say non-non-Jew). According to Sand, the Zionists' rejection of the politically plausible 'Israeli' identity in favour of the mythological 'Jewish' identity leads the door open to a new era of Judeophobia (already much apparent in the Muslim Middle-East).

While it is tough to argue against Sand's conclusions, especially when those are critical of Israeli state policy, his opening salvo, that of finding a void in the name of secular Jewish identity, has its own problems. What is, we may ask, a secular Hindu identity? Or a secular Muslim identity? Or are these questions not being asked because there is no uber Hindu nation-state, or, likewise, no uber Muslim nation-state? It is not difficult to see that the question of a secular Jewish identity arises precisely because there exists a unique, Jewish nation-state, which has, like any nation-state predicated on a religious identity ought to have, certain norms for classifying people as Jews (converted or born of a Jewish mother). If Sand's criticism is based entirely on how the Israeli state defines a Jew, then surely he must be able to provide an alternate definition which does not dilute the case for the very existence of that country named Israel? Pole-vaulting into a wish for pure, cosmopolitan republicanism is precisely the sort of fantasy a historian can be expected to concoct. Credit to Sand, though, for he seems very aware of that last bit.

[Maho · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR ANTISEMITES


If you still believe in the supremacy of your own ‘race’ or the ‘crook’ nature of Jews or that Israel represents the world Jewry—do not even buy this book.

The author in each chapter questions the validity that Zionism has all along claimed that the Jewish Question can be solved in founding a/the Jewish State (after its (i.e Zionism) own fashion). Therefore, by doing which Sand seems to have solidified the idea that there is still hope, just like the Zionists had believed before the creation of the Jewish State, for peace, or at the very least coexistence, between Palestinians and Israelis.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

La subtilité avec laquelle l'auteur retourne les multiples faces de l'identité juive et israélienne est assez remarquable, en plus détaillée à l'aide de plusieurs exemples, et de preuves historiques ( Shlomo étant un enseignant d'histoire ). Une objectivité recherchée au total. Un essai qui dévoile la face caché du Rubik's cube à une seule face ordonnée qu'est l'Etat irasélien.

[Ayesha Mashiat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the Bangla translation which is not available on GoodReads right now, the translation used some heavy words that weren't necessary in my opinion. But I did enjoy the book. It is informative and give you a new perspective to understanding the whole Zionist agenda. I never even knew that Holocaust killed non-Jews as well, but since they had to glorify or over-glorify Holocaust for a Zionist cause, they denied the idea of there existing other victims.

All in all, an okay read.

[Dani Kass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up not because I wanted to stop being a Jew, but because the premise of getting there was fascinating.

This is a really smart exploration into the creation of Israel and manipulation of Zionism, alongside a really interesting discussion of what it means to be a secular Jew, since there is no sense of shared everyday culture (instead altering based on nationality etc.), language etc., and how needing to be born into it gives it this odd elite exclusionary status. There's also a history of Yiddish that I'd never thought about before.

Sand talks about the racism behind Jews around the world being able to get Israeli citizenship with barely any connection to the country, while Arab people are unable to get citizenship in their own land. It goes into the contradiction behind having a country based on a religion of people, but having it be an entirely secular state for those people, while then manipulating others based on religion.

The discussion of how Israel adjusted the narrative so that no one has suffered more than us is really important to read — even if you're not questioning harm to Jews, you should be questioning why our suffering is worse than any other genocide, and why we have actively ignored about half of the Holocaust victims while discussing loss. I don't agree with everything Sand says, but the logic he uses is a way of seeing into your own pre-conceived/society-induced notions and figuring out your personal take on the meaning of being a Jew to individuals and to a larger community. It questions you in ways worth reviewing.

It's far more about Israel than Judaism, and the way that Israel is trying to define and manipulate Judaism, so any questioning of the country — like its own genocide and apartheid! —and its policies are automatically antisemetic. It doesn't erase Jewish suffering or identity, but makes you think about what is a culture? What is a people? Why does protection look like compared to cruelty?

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

On starting this essay, I was geared up to be annoyed, offended even, but it was a surprisingly enjoyable read. Sand is an engaging writer, who fluidly combines Jewish history and personal experience, giving fascinating insights into the development of Israeli Jewish identity and its ideological and legislative application in the discrimination of Palestinian rights. Ultimately though, I have to disagree with his argument that “the key axis of a secular Jewish identity lies nowadays in perpetuating the individual’s relationship to the State of Israel and in securing the individual’s total support for it.” (p.93) As a member of the Jewish diaspora who is tired of having been tarred with a myopically Israel-centric version of Jewishness and its inherent interests, I found that Sand’s personal disavowal only perpetuated this same account of Jewishness, rather than challenging it. By struggling to understand Jewish life beyond his nation’s hotly-contested borders, Sand makes the short-sighted assumption that Israel forms the lynchpin of identity for all world Jewry. Personally, Israel is a peripheral place of cultural interest and ethical infuriation. For a spiritual homeland I’d look to somewhere a little closer, like North London.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not impressed with this book. The writing is highly academic, and seems to attempt to use big words to try to make the author's opinions seem like they are more important and factual than they actually are. The author posits that there is no such thing as a secular Jew and no such thing as a Jewish culture. He, an Israeli, bashes Israel and it's politics while still claiming to love his country. I found the writing to be verbose and boring and the author's opinions, no matter how they are worded, are simply his own opinions. I received this book free to review from Netgalley.

[Ezri · Rating 5 out of 5]

part political anti-identitarian tract, part personal essay. extremely moving, thought-provoking and depressing. read to prevent yourself from doing that thing in your late-20s where you get into religious traditions to escape nihilism and loneliness

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

An articulate essay making a cogent arguments. Particularly appealing was how its themes can in some cases be applied to other cultures/ethnicities, eg that of Cyprus with which I'm intimately familiar.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and critical viewpoint on jewish culture given by an "insider" historian.

[عبدُ الرَّحمن]

أحتاج لقراءة الكتابين السابقين له حتى أحصل على فهم "كامل" لما يقوله ساند. والكتاب مفيد