At first, it looked like the usual brain dead anti-Semitism we all find so unpredictable and original. Shlomo Sand’s best-selling Invention of the Jewish People is based on the theory that Jews are neither biologically a race or “a people”.
The book has been out in Israel for a while, now it’s in English. Sand has produced what is essentially a selective history of the Jews to prove a political point, according to large numbers of unimpressed Jewish readers. The "moral" of the story is based on disproving the heritage claims of the Jews to Israel.
I’m not qualified to discuss Jewish history. I’m about as WASP as a mammal can get, back to pre-Roman times. I’ve had quite a few Jewish friends and an in-law or so, but that’s not exactly an advanced academic background in the subject.
What I can discuss is marketing, and the sort of cultural imagery this book and its ideologically propelled kind create, from a different perspective.
Push-button polemics are a feature of modern publishing - they’re more significant as marketing exercises than as actual literature. The more outrageous the claims, the wider the readership. Many “authors” sell very well on this basis, and if they can’t claim to cause literacy in any form, they can always claim to be keeping print publishers off the streets.
Accuracy isn’t a requirement. Any historical fact can be spun. Holocaust denial is a case in point. The actual Nazis themselves never denied it, quite the opposite in many cases, but “historians” did, verbosely, in endless reams of non-information.
The content of these books could be better described as a Post-it note’s worth of statements in a phone book. Historical polemicists are usually verbose, regardless of subject, which is where the marketing takes over.
Like the gay Teletubby and other guaranteed irrelevancies to life as a whole, this marketing is based on assertions guaranteed to attract attention.
Sand’s book could have actually been predicted, If you bothered to check out what was most likely to offend or annoy one readership and appeal to another. It could have been written to order. There are people who will read anything, however ridiculous, which is negative about their opponents. There are also people who will read anything which infuriates them. Sales are practically certain.
Marketing is actually based on the “stimulus” factor. It doesn’t matter if the stimulus is positive or negative.
The only truly remarkable thing about Sand’s version of the literary cow prod is that it also appears to support the Zionist nationalism he claims to denounce as the default position. The working logic is that if you don’t agree with Sand, you support Zionism.
That would infuriate a lot of liberal Jews, but again, it’s a “stimulus”. Actually, it’s a bit too good to be true. Deny your heritage, or agree with him? Some choice.
Ah well, maybe the thought processes fray over the darkening publishing troughs. Perhaps, as the shadows draw in around the clichés and the sales figures, some moth will find a flame.
Meanwhile, one cultural note from WASP-dom:
The Jewish people have been a distinct cultural entity since recorded history began. They’re not noticeably a work of fiction.
In all Western history, they are specifically identified as a cultural group, a people. There were even laws passed prohibiting Jews from having Jewish surnames. The term “beyond the pale” refers to a Czarist law prohibiting Jewish settlement outside a particular area. The Inquisition wasn’t guessing about who it considered Jewish, either.
If a theme park called Shlomo Land appears (presumably rising abruptly with plenty of coverage out of the Dead Sea), I won’t be in the least surprised.
