The Invention of the Jewish People

Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of Western nationalism. An iconoclastic work of history, The Invention of the Jewish People proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths, and provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.