The Morning News

Monday, February 8, 2010

Currently: Birnbaum reviews the new Marie Ponsot collection, with two of her best poems excerpted. http://tmne.ws/14683
about an hour ago

Back in the Day • Is It Good for the Jews?

Book Cover Let’s face it, the Jews have long been a troublesome people for the rest of the planet. Of course, that topic or virtually anything to do with Jews is a minefield of issues especially since the Jews control the media and the banks and a speck of dust on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. For most people, their latent anti-Semitism is a barely a tic on their panoply of biases and disaffections. But there is that crucial and volatile problem which is, of course, the state of Israel and its right to exist. And more to the point the claims made to reify that right together with oil imperialism, the clash of civilizations, and again the millenia-old contempt for the the Christ killers—all of which have dovetailed into the great cauldron of dilemmas we know as the Middle East.

One can take it on board that every nation and ethnicity has a mythology of creation. Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, in his bestselling (outside the U.S.) and award-winning (in France) The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso), examines the myths and correspondent taboos about Jewish/Israeli history, beginning with questioning whether there was a forced exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans. Essentially, Sands argues most Jews actually descend from converts widely dispersed across the Middle East and Eastern Europe—a stance that casts historic geographic claims in a harsh new light. Which also shines on the millenia-old claim of Jewish distinct ethnicity.

Historian Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945), not a favorite of the Israel lobby, gushes: “…a remarkable book. In cool, scholarly prose he has, quite simply, normalized Jewish history… Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.”

Debunking of age-old myths aside, that’s why you should know about this book. —Robert Birnbaum, Nov. 10, 2009
2 Comments • Tweet this • Post to Facebook • FILE UNDER: anti-Semitism, Back in the Day, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Shlomo Sand, Tony Judt

2 Comments • Add Yours

  • 1

    A very cursory review of a book that claims to cover a very controversial subject. Guess I'll have to read it. Then again, the "claim" that Jews descend from a multitude of racial stock is already well known and considered (by rational people) a positive attribute. The claim also does nothing to detract from Jewish rights to a Jewish state in Israel. All Jews, of whatever national extraction, have had Jerusalem and Israel in their prayers and hearts for over two thousand years, not to mention a continuous Jewish presence in the city for close to 3,000.

    —Barry, Nov. 11, 2009, at 7:17 AM
  • 2

    Shlomo Sand's book "The Invention of the Jewish People" does not tell the truth about Jewish history.

    The books "Abraham's Children" by Jon Entine and "Jacob's Legacy" by David Goldstein explain why the DNA studies on Jewish populations are scientifically valid and test many hypotheses. Most of the geneticists have no political or religious agenda, simply a curiosity to check which populations are related to others. The studies have become very detailed, with ever-larger sample sizes and numbers of participating ethnic groups. For Sand to try to discredit these studies is intellectually dishonest.

    Ashkenazic Jews from Europe have a large amount of Middle Eastern ancestry that can be explained by the (very valid indeed) migration of Jews from Israel to the Roman Empire and from there to Germany and the Czech lands and later to Eastern Europe. It is a fact that thousands of Israelite slaves were brought to Rome to construct the Colliseum and work in other capacities. It is also a fact that these Roman Jews became related to other Jews in Europe, by genetics, by documents, and even in a few cases by names. It is true that they intermarried with converted European women, but that did not erase their Middle Eastern essence.

    The total amount of Khazar ancestry in Ashkenazic Jews appears to be around 20 percent. On the paternal side, when we look at the Y-DNA genetic types found in Ashkenazim that come from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, they add up to around 18 or 19 percent. On the maternal side, mtDNA also fails to show a majority Khazar ancestry.

    But we don't have to rely solely on genetics. Historical documents and name studies also document every stage in the migration of Jews from Israel to Russia. Alexander Beider's brilliant research showed that the German and Czech Jews (of mostly Israelite origins but mixed with some Roman and German converts) were numerically stronger than the Slavic-speaking Khazarian Jews of Belarus and Ukraine.

    My book "The Jews of Khazaria, Second Edition", explains all of this with full citations. I also have an appendix discussing the origins of other groups like Yemenite Jews and North African Jews, and showing that the conversions to Judaism did not account for their entire makeup. Almost every Jewish population in the world is partially Israelite. Details at http://www.khazaria.com/brook.html

    —Kevin Brook, Nov. 11, 2009, at 12:10 PM

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