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The description in the article does not make Shlomo Sand's basic thesis clear. Is is that Judaism is a religion, and not a race? If so, nothing controversial in that. Or is it that religion can not form the basis for nationality? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 16:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Looking at User:Sfrantzman is this individual notable enough or established enough for his oped on a website to be quoted?-- Peter cohen ( talk) 23:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
The lead says of Sand that His main areas of teaching are Cinema and History, French Intellectual History, and Nation and Nationalism. Could someone clarify his qualifications in the area of "Nation and Nationalism"? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 16:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
(move left) Why did you remove this section? it's cited so well it's almost a copyvio. I suppose we could argue about Frantzman's article. WP:EL and WP:BLP are generally against that. There are other critics (in Hebrew) which could be added to the article. However, since Sand's theory is currently not developed, we should take care not to give his critics undue weight. -- Nudve ( talk) 14:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I didn't find the references for the following points and I could not source this :
The 1st seems false from my point of view (he didn't write about '48) and the last two ones would require wp:rs sources per WP:BLP. Ceedjee ( talk) 18:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC) Ceedjee ( talk) 18:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
(Outdent) I don't understand why we're farting about with this. To say that Sand is an anti-Zionist on the basis of membership in an organization that hasn't existed for at least 20 years shows failure to understand how verbs work. WP:BLP requires meeting a high standard on issues like this, and so I have removed it. If there is a proper WP:RS for it then it can be re-added -- but we don't sit around waiting a week for someone to come up with sources for controversial claims about living people. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 15:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea about the influence of Shlomo Zand on mass opinion or his involvment in politics.
I guessed (but only guessed) from my recent readings that he was (strongly) post-zionist (opposed to any collaboration with Ariel high school/university - supporter of post-Zionist historians - claiming to have 5 non-zionist PhD students) but claiming not to go as far as "his friend Ilan Pappé) and supporting the existence of Israel as a State but not a Jewish State.
Do people who know more this man think it could be worth developing a "political opinion" section ?
Ceedjee (
talk) 17:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
See [4] Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 14:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Heyo RolandR,
I'd appreciate an explanation to the virtue of the following edit -
[5].
Cheers,
Jaakobou
Chalk Talk 20:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
RolandR wrote (in his edit summery): Neither primary sourcing nor self-promotion, but an interview by a reputable journalist
It makes no difference if he is being quoted by a journalist. If it is a direct statement by Sand, it is still a primary source in the article. See [6]
===Definitions of primary, secondary and tertiary===
Various professional fields treat the distinction between primary and secondary sources in differing fashions. Some fields and references also further distinguish between secondary and tertiary sources. Primary, secondary and tertiary sources are broadly defined here as follows:
* Primary sources are sources very close to the origin of a particular topic or event. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident is an example of a primary source. Other examples include archeological artifacts; photographs; videos; historical documents such as diaries, census results, maps, or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; untabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; the original written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations which have not been published in a peer reviewed source; original philosophical works, religious scripture, administrative documents, patents, and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs. [1]
* Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event or body of primary-source material and may include an interpretation, analysis, or synthetic claims about the subject. [2] Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims. [3] [4]
* Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that sum up secondary and primary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source. Many introductory textbooks may also be considered tertiary to the extent that they sum up multiple primary and secondary sources.
Also, including crap like, There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort, is just an attempt to editorialize the article. Don't do that. If you want to include that view, there needs to be a secondary source to support it. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 17:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
I have added this category because Sand believes that the Jews have conspired to make the world believe that they exist and have a history with ancient origins. Daniel Pipes wrote an essay, Dealing With Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories, which discusses the generation of such fringe theories [9]. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 18:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
This sentence is unsourced : "This is the first analysis of Sand's book by a major scholar to be published in English" and obviously false given Tom Segev is a major scholar and published in English on march 1 a critic of the book. It is also a little bit unrelevant or at least, I don't see the interest of knowing who is or was the first one to analyse Sand's book. So, it must be removed. Ceedjee ( talk) 12:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
RolandR: wrote in his edit summery: Removed alleged quote not found in the source cited
RolandR, this is the link to the article I used [10]. Below I am copying the article with the quote I added in bold.
Last update - 00:00 21/03/2008
Shattering a 'national mythology' By Ofri Ilani
Tags: Palestinians
Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.
According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).
Unlike other "new historians" who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years. He tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a "nation-race" with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist thinking: "There were times when if anyone argued that the Jews belong to a people that has gentile origins, he would be classified as an anti-Semite on the spot. Today, if anyone dares to suggest that those who are considered Jews in the world ... have never constituted and still do not constitute a people or a nation - he is immediately condemned as a hater of Israel."
According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, "who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland," is nothing but "national mythology." Like other national movements in Europe, which sought out a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past - for example, classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes - to prove they have existed since the beginnings of history, "so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism blossomed in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David."
So when, in fact, was the Jewish people invented, in Sand's view? At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.
Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.
Sand: "My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the 'figment' of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors' references in the ancient period - what they wrote about conversion."
Sand, an expert on 20th-century history, has until now researched the intellectual history of modern France (in "Ha'intelektual, ha'emet vehakoah: miparashat dreyfus ve'ad milhemet hamifrats" - "Intellectuals, Truth and Power, From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War"; Am Oved, in Hebrew). Unusually, for a professional historian, in his new book he deals with periods that he had never researched before, usually relying on studies that present unorthodox views of the origins of the Jews.
Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can't read in the original.
"It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can't stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory."
Inventing the Diaspora
"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom" - thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand's book, entitled "The Invention of the Diaspora." Sand argues that the Jewish people's exile from its land never happened.
"The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?
"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"
And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?
"The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions - pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all."
How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?
"I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina's Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism."
Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria - a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.
Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
"At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe - three million Jews in Poland alone," he says. "The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward."
'Degree of perversion'
If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?
"The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as 'the mother of the diasporas' in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
"It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
Is there no justification for this fear?
"No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."
In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.
"I don't recognize an international people. I recognize 'the Yiddish people' that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation."
What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?
"In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.
"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.
"I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done."
If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?
"To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the "catastrophe" - the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day."
I assume this resolves the issue, and am returning the sentence to the article. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 12:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Under the section of critics, I added a link to a brief critique, with additional links. It was deleted as "irrelevant" and from a "right-wing blog." Given that the blog post is precisely on point, I don't see how it's irrelevant, nor do I see how an editors view that a blog is "right-wing" has anything to do with whether the content is a valid critique. Stop deleting it. Here's the link, which anyone can see is not "irrelevant." [Your response is ridiculous, the author is certainly well-known, better known that Shlomo Sand, and has more experience with the topic at hand than Sand did before he wrote this book. Moreover, the blog post isn't "about a living person," it's a critique of his book. Nevertheless, I take your point that it's better to link to non-self-published sources if similar critiques are available, and since they are, I won't put this back.] http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_08-2009_03_14.shtml#1236900840—Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.172.198 ( talk) 18:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
So, yet another bio overwhelmed by irrelevant criticism, as if articles in the English Wikipedia must be written to bolster the preferred myths of Israel. Sand himself seems to have a highly distinguished career (judging by his Tel-Aviv official CV) but his intellectual accomplishments must be buried in the small print while his politics (30 years old and wholly unverifiable to the English reader) must be broadcast against him.
Sand has been 27 years at a top Israeli University and must have done lots of interesting things other than write this rather well received book, criticism of which has to dominate his article. Who are we to say, in Wikipedia's neutral voice (ie before we release the dogs in the biggest section of all, "Critics") that the Bar Kochba exile is "accepted history"? The archaeological record is clear, there was no Exodus and no Solomon's Temple - the default position for Wikipedia must be to treat this last myth of nationalist historians with deep distrust. 81.152.36.143 ( talk) 14:39, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Well good luck with that. It does seem a bit odd that the "criticism" is considerably longer than the discussion of his ideas! But Sand's views will become the accepted doctrine of the Israeli state long before Wikipedia features an unbiased article about Israeli issues. Grace Note ( talk) 09:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
This article has been mentioned in a comment by one "jimmyo" in his response to an article by Steven Plaut on FrontPage Magazine: "Aside from the absurdity of using Wikipedia as a serious scholarly source, and the even greater absurdity of using the book's own marketing site to praise the book, it should be noted that - like many items about the Middle East on Wikipedia - the entry about Sand and his book was written by a far-leftist anti-Semite who stalks Wikipedia and systematically distorts items about Israel and Jews." RolandR ( talk) 16:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Some comments I put at Talk:The Invention of the Jewish People#The section "DNA Analysis", issues for discussion apply here too. In fact, I propose that this section in this article be removed altogether due to its problematic nature and the difficulty of making it balanced without undue length. The subject arguably belongs in the article about Sand's book but I don't think it belongs here. Zero talk 04:46, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
In fact genetic research has been heavily manipulated. The below article in The Jerusalem Post said that Jews had more common genes with Kurds, Turks and Armenians (non-Semites) than with Palestinian Arabs (Semites). It should be noted that there are also other genetic research comparing Jews with Europeans and concluding that Jews have more similarities with Palestinians than the Europeans. Both these facts do not reject one another.
Genetics and the Jewish identity DIANA MUIR APPELBAUM and PAUL S. APPELBAUM, MD 02/11/2008 The Jerusalem Post
Can be viewed in Google cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3idCiLQN_bIJ:www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx%3Fid%3D91746+THE+JERUSALEM+POST+Genetics+and+the+Jewish+identity&cd=1&hl=ru&ct=clnk&gl=ru —Preceding unsigned comment added by Behruzhimo ( talk • contribs) 15:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I added the following information, please do not remove it:
Sand has repeatedly stated [9] that the founding fathers of Zionism, not Sand, were the first Jews to acknowledge that the Palestinian people were descended from the biblical ancient Hebrews. Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, stated on several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea.[10] [11] [12] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Behruzhimo ( talk • contribs) 15:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Editors please bear in mind the two above linked sources. We prefer secondary sources to primary sources, especially when secondary souring is ample, like in this case. Also we don't add to our articles our analysis of the secondary sources. -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 21:18, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the issue of the Khazars [11] "The Khazars and the Smoking Gun of Haplogroup Q". jogg.info seems like a professional journal and has an editorial board [12] currently led by someone from University of Leicester and its past editor being someone with credential as well [13]. So removing the info of that Ellen-Levy Coffman person [14] because she specializes in law (putting aside her work in archaeology and on three different DNA projects) doesn't take into account jogg.info's editorial board and thus its credentials generally on the topic at hand. Historylover4 ( talk) 22:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
Arxiv.org is clearly WP:SPS is not peer reviewed or anything.The newly added source should be removed until it will be printed in Peer revied journal also please look at [15] espacially for such WP:REDFLAG claim-- Shrike ( talk)/ WP:RX 09:58, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
in other cases where a reliable publication of the same paper cannot be found, then arxiv papers should be considered as self-published sources: only reliable to the extent that their authors are known experts in the subject of the paper.
His claims go against mainstream scholarship.His claims are clearly WP:FRINGE-- Shrike ( talk)/ WP:RX 13:51, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary, [5] and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support, [6].
I never liked the genetics section in this article. It is not proper to select sources in a transparent attempt to argue for or against Sand's hypotheses. It is OR. This new paper is no exception. Although Elhaik cites Sand, he does so only as background and doesn't draw any genetic conclusions from him. It is also clear that people here don't really understand what Elhaik claims to show. He does not claim that European Jews are entirely or even mostly descended from converted Khazars. He only claims that there is a large genetic component from the Caucasus: "We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaized Khazars, Greco-Romans and Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans". He also says that he doesn't claim to disprove the work of Behar and Atzmon. Zero talk 14:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
References
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So now there is a revert war over the paper of Elhaik, which is available for free here. As I've stated above, I'm dubious about having genetics stuff on this page at all. I'll make some comments, though. Genome Biology and Evolution is one of the most prestigious and appropriate scientific journals for this type of study, so claims that Elhaik's work is either unreliable or fringe are untenable. The relevance of the paper to Sand's book is clear enough too: Elhaik repeatedly gives Sand's book as an example of a work supporting the hypothesis that he is investigating. I can't see any reason for Ostrer to be on this page and not Elhaik. Taking them both off would be fine with me, but highlighting one and suppressing the other is a pretty obvious breach of WP:NPOV. Zero talk 00:21, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
User Youngdro2 please imediatly excersise self revert. You have broken 1RR. Elhaik never carried out any genetic study. All his conclusions are based on other geneticists studies, like the studies of Dr Ostrrer.-- Tritomex ( talk) 04:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
@Dougweller, Elhaik cites Sand's work a total of 12 times in the paper. In discussion of his results he cites Sands work as an example of studies that are in agreement with his findings (See eg page 22: "Our findings are also in agreement with archeological, historical, linguistic, and anthropological studies (Polak 1951; Patai and Patai 1975; Wexler 1993; Brook 2006; Kopelman et al. 2009; Sand 2009)"). I don't see any logic in your argument that because he also cites other works as well Sands', Sands work that he cites extensively in the paper is not relevant to the paper. Dlv999 ( talk) 10:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
[18]-- Tritomex ( talk) 10:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The section is about Sand's criticism of genetic studies, not about whether those studies support Sand's hypotheses or not. This is a biography, not a discussion on the likelihood of Sand's hypothesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josephonius ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
Apparently the only allowed claims are those of Ostrer! What about Zoossmann-Diskin, Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D., etc?! If they are not included, then Ostrer should be removed as well. Apparently anything supporting Sand is not allowed again!
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22] "Tuscans, Italians, and French", and the recent December 2012 acceptance of Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D.'s article by the prestigious Oxford's "Genome Biology and Evolution" supporting the Khazar hypothesis
[23] which couldn't possibly be anymore relevant as it is the latest research and supports Sand's thesis heavily. But again apparently Zoossmann-Diskin and Elhaik are not allowed and only critics of Sand like Ostrer (who has been called in to question before
[24]) are allowed for some "odd" reason!
Youngdro2 (
talk) 01:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)Historylover4 sock
They don't like Elhaik or Zoossmann-Diskin's conclusions (and want to limit mention of Zoossmann-Diskin's studies and now very absurdly block mention of Dr. Eran Elhaik's study which is again in the prestigious journal "Genome Biology and Evolution" now
[25]), that seems to be the answer Dlv999! The fact the moderators aren't doing something about this is very disturbing and makes one remember a report from a few years back released by one organization
[26]. As for "Tritomex" making his hyperbolic claims as usually about "23 vs. 1" or whatever, this again is a very ridiculous tactic (Zero0000 has responded to his bizarre claim that Elhaik's study supposedly "isn't a study"!) especially in view that Zoossmann-Diskin/Zoossmann-Diskin et al. themselves specifically note what they declare to be the deficiencies of past studies; that is literally a significant point stated openly in his/their studies and papers
[27] "Comments on previous studies" section and
[28]
[29]
Youngdro2 (
talk) 12:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC) historylover4 sock
Once again, this is a biography. It isn't an article about the Ahekenazi, DNA, etc and sources need to discuss Sand. You keep ignoring this. And Div999. the same applies to you. This article is not about a thesis, and I've removed more text that doesn't discuss Sand. Dougweller ( talk) 14:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Dlv999, thank you for your post about the section on DNA analysis. It made me realise that the focus is on the wrong thing. We have an article on the book already, The Invention of the Jewish People. And we seem to have a 2nd article on the book in Sand's biography. Including the lead, there are about 260 words on him, and over 1400 on his book. All we need in this article is an explanation of what the book is about, a brief statement about its reception and also something about any awards, etc. The meat of the discussion about his book belongs in the book's article. Dougweller ( talk) 21:26, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree the article is dominate by the book section more than his biographical section. I think it is normal to include an introduction of his most famous work, but that any summary of content or criticism of his book belongs in his his book page. Therefore, I will remove the 3 last paragraphs that have more to do with the content of the book and move them to the wikipedia page of his book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karimmtl ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Historylover4. Dougweller ( talk) 16:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
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Skapandet av det judiska folket translation in Swedish October 2010 http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn=9186515160 85.224.107.240 ( talk) 00:45, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
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Please change "CV on the Tel Aviv University website" NOTES SECTION to http://humanities.tau.ac.il/segel/shlomosa/ - Shlomo Sand' new personal page in Tel Aviv University site.
89.139.24.11 (
talk) 05:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
In the Biography section the short second paragraph is virtually a verbatim repetition of the last two sentences of the first paragraph. Someone who's allowed to edit this page could tidy it up. Jjc2002 ( talk) 19:57, 18 February 2014 (UTC) Jjc2002
Elhaik genetic study is not needed here. Not just because it has been described as incorrect by bigger and more recent genetic study, but because it has nothing directly to do with Sand biography.-- Tritomex ( talk) 01:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
controversial does not add any information, that is not yet present further below in the article itself. IMHO controversial shall get removed at this very place before too long. -- johayek ( talk) 16:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC) ( Personal attack removed)
Rabbi de Bresser reintroduced the word controversial. Looks like he is up for an edit war. To me this looks like another episode in religious scholars fight worldly scientist. This bashing here with innocent words should be stopped. Who agrees to consider this sophisticated vandalism? Doesn't this ask for steps to protect this page even a little more? -- johayek ( talk) 14:04, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
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There is documentary evidence of correspondence between the King of the Khazars and Jewish communities elsewhere, which definitively demonstrates that there were Khazars who converted to Judaism in the early Middle Ages. How many converted is up for debate, and it has largely been refuted that they constitute any large portion of Ashkenazim. Furthermore there were Crimean Karaites who claimed that they were the descendants of the Khazars during Tsarist persecutions, though they were not necessarily telling the truth.
I propose changing this to something like, "at least some of whom are known to have converted in the early Middle Ages." פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her ( talk) 13:58, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
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The description in the article does not make Shlomo Sand's basic thesis clear. Is is that Judaism is a religion, and not a race? If so, nothing controversial in that. Or is it that religion can not form the basis for nationality? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 16:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Looking at User:Sfrantzman is this individual notable enough or established enough for his oped on a website to be quoted?-- Peter cohen ( talk) 23:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
The lead says of Sand that His main areas of teaching are Cinema and History, French Intellectual History, and Nation and Nationalism. Could someone clarify his qualifications in the area of "Nation and Nationalism"? Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 16:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
(move left) Why did you remove this section? it's cited so well it's almost a copyvio. I suppose we could argue about Frantzman's article. WP:EL and WP:BLP are generally against that. There are other critics (in Hebrew) which could be added to the article. However, since Sand's theory is currently not developed, we should take care not to give his critics undue weight. -- Nudve ( talk) 14:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I didn't find the references for the following points and I could not source this :
The 1st seems false from my point of view (he didn't write about '48) and the last two ones would require wp:rs sources per WP:BLP. Ceedjee ( talk) 18:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC) Ceedjee ( talk) 18:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
(Outdent) I don't understand why we're farting about with this. To say that Sand is an anti-Zionist on the basis of membership in an organization that hasn't existed for at least 20 years shows failure to understand how verbs work. WP:BLP requires meeting a high standard on issues like this, and so I have removed it. If there is a proper WP:RS for it then it can be re-added -- but we don't sit around waiting a week for someone to come up with sources for controversial claims about living people. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 15:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea about the influence of Shlomo Zand on mass opinion or his involvment in politics.
I guessed (but only guessed) from my recent readings that he was (strongly) post-zionist (opposed to any collaboration with Ariel high school/university - supporter of post-Zionist historians - claiming to have 5 non-zionist PhD students) but claiming not to go as far as "his friend Ilan Pappé) and supporting the existence of Israel as a State but not a Jewish State.
Do people who know more this man think it could be worth developing a "political opinion" section ?
Ceedjee (
talk) 17:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
See [4] Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 14:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Heyo RolandR,
I'd appreciate an explanation to the virtue of the following edit -
[5].
Cheers,
Jaakobou
Chalk Talk 20:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
RolandR wrote (in his edit summery): Neither primary sourcing nor self-promotion, but an interview by a reputable journalist
It makes no difference if he is being quoted by a journalist. If it is a direct statement by Sand, it is still a primary source in the article. See [6]
===Definitions of primary, secondary and tertiary===
Various professional fields treat the distinction between primary and secondary sources in differing fashions. Some fields and references also further distinguish between secondary and tertiary sources. Primary, secondary and tertiary sources are broadly defined here as follows:
* Primary sources are sources very close to the origin of a particular topic or event. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident is an example of a primary source. Other examples include archeological artifacts; photographs; videos; historical documents such as diaries, census results, maps, or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; untabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; the original written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations which have not been published in a peer reviewed source; original philosophical works, religious scripture, administrative documents, patents, and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs. [1]
* Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event or body of primary-source material and may include an interpretation, analysis, or synthetic claims about the subject. [2] Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims. [3] [4]
* Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that sum up secondary and primary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source. Many introductory textbooks may also be considered tertiary to the extent that they sum up multiple primary and secondary sources.
Also, including crap like, There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort, is just an attempt to editorialize the article. Don't do that. If you want to include that view, there needs to be a secondary source to support it. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 17:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
I have added this category because Sand believes that the Jews have conspired to make the world believe that they exist and have a history with ancient origins. Daniel Pipes wrote an essay, Dealing With Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories, which discusses the generation of such fringe theories [9]. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 18:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
This sentence is unsourced : "This is the first analysis of Sand's book by a major scholar to be published in English" and obviously false given Tom Segev is a major scholar and published in English on march 1 a critic of the book. It is also a little bit unrelevant or at least, I don't see the interest of knowing who is or was the first one to analyse Sand's book. So, it must be removed. Ceedjee ( talk) 12:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
RolandR: wrote in his edit summery: Removed alleged quote not found in the source cited
RolandR, this is the link to the article I used [10]. Below I am copying the article with the quote I added in bold.
Last update - 00:00 21/03/2008
Shattering a 'national mythology' By Ofri Ilani
Tags: Palestinians
Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.
According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).
Unlike other "new historians" who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years. He tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a "nation-race" with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist thinking: "There were times when if anyone argued that the Jews belong to a people that has gentile origins, he would be classified as an anti-Semite on the spot. Today, if anyone dares to suggest that those who are considered Jews in the world ... have never constituted and still do not constitute a people or a nation - he is immediately condemned as a hater of Israel."
According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, "who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland," is nothing but "national mythology." Like other national movements in Europe, which sought out a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past - for example, classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes - to prove they have existed since the beginnings of history, "so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism blossomed in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David."
So when, in fact, was the Jewish people invented, in Sand's view? At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.
Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.
Sand: "My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the 'figment' of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors' references in the ancient period - what they wrote about conversion."
Sand, an expert on 20th-century history, has until now researched the intellectual history of modern France (in "Ha'intelektual, ha'emet vehakoah: miparashat dreyfus ve'ad milhemet hamifrats" - "Intellectuals, Truth and Power, From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War"; Am Oved, in Hebrew). Unusually, for a professional historian, in his new book he deals with periods that he had never researched before, usually relying on studies that present unorthodox views of the origins of the Jews.
Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can't read in the original.
"It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can't stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory."
Inventing the Diaspora
"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom" - thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand's book, entitled "The Invention of the Diaspora." Sand argues that the Jewish people's exile from its land never happened.
"The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?
"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"
And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?
"The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions - pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all."
How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?
"I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina's Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism."
Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria - a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.
Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
"At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe - three million Jews in Poland alone," he says. "The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward."
'Degree of perversion'
If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?
"The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as 'the mother of the diasporas' in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
"It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
Is there no justification for this fear?
"No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."
In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.
"I don't recognize an international people. I recognize 'the Yiddish people' that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation."
What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?
"In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.
"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.
"I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done."
If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?
"To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the "catastrophe" - the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day."
I assume this resolves the issue, and am returning the sentence to the article. Malcolm Schosha ( talk) 12:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Under the section of critics, I added a link to a brief critique, with additional links. It was deleted as "irrelevant" and from a "right-wing blog." Given that the blog post is precisely on point, I don't see how it's irrelevant, nor do I see how an editors view that a blog is "right-wing" has anything to do with whether the content is a valid critique. Stop deleting it. Here's the link, which anyone can see is not "irrelevant." [Your response is ridiculous, the author is certainly well-known, better known that Shlomo Sand, and has more experience with the topic at hand than Sand did before he wrote this book. Moreover, the blog post isn't "about a living person," it's a critique of his book. Nevertheless, I take your point that it's better to link to non-self-published sources if similar critiques are available, and since they are, I won't put this back.] http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_08-2009_03_14.shtml#1236900840—Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.172.198 ( talk) 18:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
So, yet another bio overwhelmed by irrelevant criticism, as if articles in the English Wikipedia must be written to bolster the preferred myths of Israel. Sand himself seems to have a highly distinguished career (judging by his Tel-Aviv official CV) but his intellectual accomplishments must be buried in the small print while his politics (30 years old and wholly unverifiable to the English reader) must be broadcast against him.
Sand has been 27 years at a top Israeli University and must have done lots of interesting things other than write this rather well received book, criticism of which has to dominate his article. Who are we to say, in Wikipedia's neutral voice (ie before we release the dogs in the biggest section of all, "Critics") that the Bar Kochba exile is "accepted history"? The archaeological record is clear, there was no Exodus and no Solomon's Temple - the default position for Wikipedia must be to treat this last myth of nationalist historians with deep distrust. 81.152.36.143 ( talk) 14:39, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Well good luck with that. It does seem a bit odd that the "criticism" is considerably longer than the discussion of his ideas! But Sand's views will become the accepted doctrine of the Israeli state long before Wikipedia features an unbiased article about Israeli issues. Grace Note ( talk) 09:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
This article has been mentioned in a comment by one "jimmyo" in his response to an article by Steven Plaut on FrontPage Magazine: "Aside from the absurdity of using Wikipedia as a serious scholarly source, and the even greater absurdity of using the book's own marketing site to praise the book, it should be noted that - like many items about the Middle East on Wikipedia - the entry about Sand and his book was written by a far-leftist anti-Semite who stalks Wikipedia and systematically distorts items about Israel and Jews." RolandR ( talk) 16:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Some comments I put at Talk:The Invention of the Jewish People#The section "DNA Analysis", issues for discussion apply here too. In fact, I propose that this section in this article be removed altogether due to its problematic nature and the difficulty of making it balanced without undue length. The subject arguably belongs in the article about Sand's book but I don't think it belongs here. Zero talk 04:46, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
In fact genetic research has been heavily manipulated. The below article in The Jerusalem Post said that Jews had more common genes with Kurds, Turks and Armenians (non-Semites) than with Palestinian Arabs (Semites). It should be noted that there are also other genetic research comparing Jews with Europeans and concluding that Jews have more similarities with Palestinians than the Europeans. Both these facts do not reject one another.
Genetics and the Jewish identity DIANA MUIR APPELBAUM and PAUL S. APPELBAUM, MD 02/11/2008 The Jerusalem Post
Can be viewed in Google cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3idCiLQN_bIJ:www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx%3Fid%3D91746+THE+JERUSALEM+POST+Genetics+and+the+Jewish+identity&cd=1&hl=ru&ct=clnk&gl=ru —Preceding unsigned comment added by Behruzhimo ( talk • contribs) 15:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I added the following information, please do not remove it:
Sand has repeatedly stated [9] that the founding fathers of Zionism, not Sand, were the first Jews to acknowledge that the Palestinian people were descended from the biblical ancient Hebrews. Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, stated on several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea.[10] [11] [12] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Behruzhimo ( talk • contribs) 15:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Editors please bear in mind the two above linked sources. We prefer secondary sources to primary sources, especially when secondary souring is ample, like in this case. Also we don't add to our articles our analysis of the secondary sources. -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 21:18, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the issue of the Khazars [11] "The Khazars and the Smoking Gun of Haplogroup Q". jogg.info seems like a professional journal and has an editorial board [12] currently led by someone from University of Leicester and its past editor being someone with credential as well [13]. So removing the info of that Ellen-Levy Coffman person [14] because she specializes in law (putting aside her work in archaeology and on three different DNA projects) doesn't take into account jogg.info's editorial board and thus its credentials generally on the topic at hand. Historylover4 ( talk) 22:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
Arxiv.org is clearly WP:SPS is not peer reviewed or anything.The newly added source should be removed until it will be printed in Peer revied journal also please look at [15] espacially for such WP:REDFLAG claim-- Shrike ( talk)/ WP:RX 09:58, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
in other cases where a reliable publication of the same paper cannot be found, then arxiv papers should be considered as self-published sources: only reliable to the extent that their authors are known experts in the subject of the paper.
His claims go against mainstream scholarship.His claims are clearly WP:FRINGE-- Shrike ( talk)/ WP:RX 13:51, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary, [5] and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support, [6].
I never liked the genetics section in this article. It is not proper to select sources in a transparent attempt to argue for or against Sand's hypotheses. It is OR. This new paper is no exception. Although Elhaik cites Sand, he does so only as background and doesn't draw any genetic conclusions from him. It is also clear that people here don't really understand what Elhaik claims to show. He does not claim that European Jews are entirely or even mostly descended from converted Khazars. He only claims that there is a large genetic component from the Caucasus: "We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaized Khazars, Greco-Romans and Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans". He also says that he doesn't claim to disprove the work of Behar and Atzmon. Zero talk 14:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
References
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So now there is a revert war over the paper of Elhaik, which is available for free here. As I've stated above, I'm dubious about having genetics stuff on this page at all. I'll make some comments, though. Genome Biology and Evolution is one of the most prestigious and appropriate scientific journals for this type of study, so claims that Elhaik's work is either unreliable or fringe are untenable. The relevance of the paper to Sand's book is clear enough too: Elhaik repeatedly gives Sand's book as an example of a work supporting the hypothesis that he is investigating. I can't see any reason for Ostrer to be on this page and not Elhaik. Taking them both off would be fine with me, but highlighting one and suppressing the other is a pretty obvious breach of WP:NPOV. Zero talk 00:21, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
User Youngdro2 please imediatly excersise self revert. You have broken 1RR. Elhaik never carried out any genetic study. All his conclusions are based on other geneticists studies, like the studies of Dr Ostrrer.-- Tritomex ( talk) 04:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
@Dougweller, Elhaik cites Sand's work a total of 12 times in the paper. In discussion of his results he cites Sands work as an example of studies that are in agreement with his findings (See eg page 22: "Our findings are also in agreement with archeological, historical, linguistic, and anthropological studies (Polak 1951; Patai and Patai 1975; Wexler 1993; Brook 2006; Kopelman et al. 2009; Sand 2009)"). I don't see any logic in your argument that because he also cites other works as well Sands', Sands work that he cites extensively in the paper is not relevant to the paper. Dlv999 ( talk) 10:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
[18]-- Tritomex ( talk) 10:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The section is about Sand's criticism of genetic studies, not about whether those studies support Sand's hypotheses or not. This is a biography, not a discussion on the likelihood of Sand's hypothesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josephonius ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
Apparently the only allowed claims are those of Ostrer! What about Zoossmann-Diskin, Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D., etc?! If they are not included, then Ostrer should be removed as well. Apparently anything supporting Sand is not allowed again!
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22] "Tuscans, Italians, and French", and the recent December 2012 acceptance of Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D.'s article by the prestigious Oxford's "Genome Biology and Evolution" supporting the Khazar hypothesis
[23] which couldn't possibly be anymore relevant as it is the latest research and supports Sand's thesis heavily. But again apparently Zoossmann-Diskin and Elhaik are not allowed and only critics of Sand like Ostrer (who has been called in to question before
[24]) are allowed for some "odd" reason!
Youngdro2 (
talk) 01:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)Historylover4 sock
They don't like Elhaik or Zoossmann-Diskin's conclusions (and want to limit mention of Zoossmann-Diskin's studies and now very absurdly block mention of Dr. Eran Elhaik's study which is again in the prestigious journal "Genome Biology and Evolution" now
[25]), that seems to be the answer Dlv999! The fact the moderators aren't doing something about this is very disturbing and makes one remember a report from a few years back released by one organization
[26]. As for "Tritomex" making his hyperbolic claims as usually about "23 vs. 1" or whatever, this again is a very ridiculous tactic (Zero0000 has responded to his bizarre claim that Elhaik's study supposedly "isn't a study"!) especially in view that Zoossmann-Diskin/Zoossmann-Diskin et al. themselves specifically note what they declare to be the deficiencies of past studies; that is literally a significant point stated openly in his/their studies and papers
[27] "Comments on previous studies" section and
[28]
[29]
Youngdro2 (
talk) 12:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC) historylover4 sock
Once again, this is a biography. It isn't an article about the Ahekenazi, DNA, etc and sources need to discuss Sand. You keep ignoring this. And Div999. the same applies to you. This article is not about a thesis, and I've removed more text that doesn't discuss Sand. Dougweller ( talk) 14:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Dlv999, thank you for your post about the section on DNA analysis. It made me realise that the focus is on the wrong thing. We have an article on the book already, The Invention of the Jewish People. And we seem to have a 2nd article on the book in Sand's biography. Including the lead, there are about 260 words on him, and over 1400 on his book. All we need in this article is an explanation of what the book is about, a brief statement about its reception and also something about any awards, etc. The meat of the discussion about his book belongs in the book's article. Dougweller ( talk) 21:26, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree the article is dominate by the book section more than his biographical section. I think it is normal to include an introduction of his most famous work, but that any summary of content or criticism of his book belongs in his his book page. Therefore, I will remove the 3 last paragraphs that have more to do with the content of the book and move them to the wikipedia page of his book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karimmtl ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Historylover4. Dougweller ( talk) 16:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
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Skapandet av det judiska folket translation in Swedish October 2010 http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn=9186515160 85.224.107.240 ( talk) 00:45, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
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Please change "CV on the Tel Aviv University website" NOTES SECTION to http://humanities.tau.ac.il/segel/shlomosa/ - Shlomo Sand' new personal page in Tel Aviv University site.
89.139.24.11 (
talk) 05:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
In the Biography section the short second paragraph is virtually a verbatim repetition of the last two sentences of the first paragraph. Someone who's allowed to edit this page could tidy it up. Jjc2002 ( talk) 19:57, 18 February 2014 (UTC) Jjc2002
Elhaik genetic study is not needed here. Not just because it has been described as incorrect by bigger and more recent genetic study, but because it has nothing directly to do with Sand biography.-- Tritomex ( talk) 01:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
controversial does not add any information, that is not yet present further below in the article itself. IMHO controversial shall get removed at this very place before too long. -- johayek ( talk) 16:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC) ( Personal attack removed)
Rabbi de Bresser reintroduced the word controversial. Looks like he is up for an edit war. To me this looks like another episode in religious scholars fight worldly scientist. This bashing here with innocent words should be stopped. Who agrees to consider this sophisticated vandalism? Doesn't this ask for steps to protect this page even a little more? -- johayek ( talk) 14:04, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
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There is documentary evidence of correspondence between the King of the Khazars and Jewish communities elsewhere, which definitively demonstrates that there were Khazars who converted to Judaism in the early Middle Ages. How many converted is up for debate, and it has largely been refuted that they constitute any large portion of Ashkenazim. Furthermore there were Crimean Karaites who claimed that they were the descendants of the Khazars during Tsarist persecutions, though they were not necessarily telling the truth.
I propose changing this to something like, "at least some of whom are known to have converted in the early Middle Ages." פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her ( talk) 13:58, 23 October 2019 (UTC)