How I Stopped Being a Jew Hardcover – 7 Oct. 2014

A good book from an excellent historian. Yet it contains very few new ideas/facts that have not been stated in his earlier books. The title is a bit inadequate, though. The main impression from reading the book is that the author is as Jewish as one can be:) Jewish history and identity are complex and fascinating. Shlomo's merit is divorcing them from simplistic Zionist myths and outright racism.

Shlomo Sand is one of the few Israelis to objectively question what it is that makes a Jew, a Zionist, an Israeli. This book joins his other tomes on this never ending story.

Provoking book thought provoking

Very good

A hard one to review, because it arouses such mixed feelings. Shlomo Sand is a clever, sharp thinker and writer who says a lot of sense about Jewish history and Zionism. He’s got an honest perspective on where Zionism came from and how it has turned out. He understands what Israel has done to the Palestinians, and what Zionism means for both Israelis and for diaspora Jews – which is not the same, but related. In this very short book he gives a potted history of the Jews that isn’t bad, though sometimes the language is over-complex and academic. For the record I entirely agree with it, and with his disappointed hope that Israel would recognise an Israeli nationality and build its own identity around a civic nationalism that wasn’t explicitly Jewish. I think he argues some of this with a great deal of sensitivity, and it’s hard to find fault with it.He’s left out some of the personal anecdotes that he sprinkled through the ‘Invention of the Jewish People’ that I rather liked, though there are some new ones that also help to build sympathy with what might otherwise seem a somewhat unsympathetic position.Which is, that there isn’t really any such thing as a ‘secular Jew’, and that those of us who want to define ourselves that way are both deluding ourselves and also giving tacit support to an ethnocentric and even racist ideological perspective on Jewish history – and one that might once have been just a harmless fantasy but is now intrinsically linked with a racist political system in Israel. And my problem is that I can see some validity in what he says but I don’t want to agree. He rather makes fun of people who disagree with him, and tells the story of a meeting at the London Review of Books bookshop (which I attended) where he presented his views and where the liberal Jewish audience appeared to be arguing that he was wrong because they were allowed to define themselves however they wanted to.Having spent more than half of my life feeling like a non-religious, non-Zionist Jew it’s not nice to be made fun of, or to be told that one’s self-chosen identity is (like all identities, but more so) a fiction. If I felt confident enough to argue with him (which I don’t, because he’s a sharp debater with lots of good examples at his fingertips) I’d say that he persuades himself with a certain sleight-of-hand. He seems to accept that even if there never was a ‘Jewish People’ there was a Yiddish People, created in the same way and at much the same time as the Polish or Lithuanian People. I think he’s a bit flaky with his chronology but we can let that go. He says that Yiddish people has ceased to exist as a result of the holocaust and Zionism and successful assimilation, which I can accept.But I’m very clearly the grandchild of that people. I can accept that there isn't a successful self-sustaining secular Jewish culture that has a creativity of its own. I've tried to be part of passing on the remains of its legacy to my kids (and other people’s kids), and though we had fun I don’t believe the exercise was particularly fruitful. And still I don’t see why I need to repudiate my personal history to gratify the need that others (Israel, the Orthodox, Shlomo Sand) have for sharp and clearly defined boundaries. If others want to say that being a Jew is a religious identity, or a national one that requires loyalty to the ethnos, then I'm going to differ, out of loyalty to myself and my personal history, but also because it’s useful politically to do so. So I won’t stop being a Jew just now, thanks Shlomo. You be what you like, and so will I.

This is a fascinating and very personal consideration of what it is to be a secular Jew living in Israel and more widely, the distinction between being a Jew and being Israeli. Sand, born in a displaced person's camp in Austria just after the end of World War II to Holocaust survivors, has lived most of his life in Israel. He is avowedly secular and an atheist.There is no doubting his love for his country, his affection for the Hebrew language and his life in Israel. He is, though, a critic of what he regards as Israel's racism/apartheid in relation to Israeli citizens of non-Jewish Arab origin and to the Palestinians in the Territories. He despairs of the failure of Jewish morality and sense of social justice to have created within the religious sphere any preaching against Israeli human rights violations. Sand's dream is of an Israel where all children are educated together, where all Israeli citizens have the same rights, for example in relation to land purchase or to drive on every road. There is some interesting discussion about why Jewish identity is more important than Israeli national identity and also of how and why Zionism constructed a Jewish identity. He is pretty scathing about people outside Israel claiming Jewish identity notwithstanding that they do not practice the religion or indeed have any real Jewish cultural identity: there is a reference, whether apocryphal or not I do not know, to a lavish bar mitzvah celebration with non-Kosher food.Sand's is fully aware that in some quarters he will be seen as anti-semitic, "an infamous traitor racked by guilt", indeed his earlier books attracted plenty of opprobrium. He hopes for a solution to the Palestinian issue, even if he is not optimistic, and yearns for an Israeli national identity not dependent on religious affiliation. It is easy to see how some could construct an argument that Sand is anti-semitic, in view of what he has written about the nature of Jewish identity, but that would be grossly unfair to the author. This is a thought provoking read.

An amazing read...

Sometimes the grammar is a bit tricky because it has been translated. However, it is a very interesting read. I especially appreciated reading about how there has been a concerted campaign to describe the holocaust as an exclusively Jewish phenomenon.

Great book. After reading this work I have started to wonder if I should think of stopping being a Jew.

Outstanding

The title of this book should be "The invention of Secular Judaism", and in this way it would naturally close the trilogy that started with "The Invention of Jewish People" and was followed by "The Invention of the Land of Israel". Among Sand's discussion on those three inventions, the one referred to secular judaism (the object of the new book) is perhaps the most directed to the jewish public, or likely to have jews as the most interested readers. The central subject relates to the jewish identity, a question that simply has been torturing jews around the world at least since the end of nineteen century. Sand is not absolutely interested in doing any type of proselitism: he does not want to convince any jew to stop being jewish as he did. Sand simply wants to dramatically invoke all jews to deeply re-think and face fearless the identity question again as he thinks this is the crux of the matter of all historical contraditions between Judaism an Zionism (and he is surely echoing Boas Evron call in this same direction, as stated on his magnific 1995 book - Jewish State or Israeli Nation? ).Like his arguments or not, the book is certainly extremely rich as a source for relevant subjects in the discussion agenda of the jewish identity question. Like his conclusions or not, the point is that it is almost impossible not to see and feel an overall beauty in the last chapter remarks, where Sand let the reader get in contact with his profound and declared love for Israel, something really amazing when contrasted with the usual image of "Israel traitor" drawn by many of Sand's detractors.After reading the chapter last lines, I had the impression that Sand would like to tell us, among other things, that to keep faithfully loving Israel, a non-religious and pro-enlightment israeli jew must "leave judaism" in a very precise way: by getting rid of any kind of secular messianic concept of jewish redemption, by recognizing that jewishness is not a sufficient condition for nation building and that it's prominent consideration involves a very high token to pay in terms of exclusion and descrimination. For "diasporic" jews, Sand's conclusion seems to raise a similar dramatic and "revolutionary" question: in order to "save" both Liberal Judaism and Liberal Zionism, they must be divorced: jews must establish a radical separation between their community affiliation and the national project of the Israeli people. Hard questions, difficult thoughts. But we cannot avoid them anymore.Thank you Sand, for this conceptual earthquake.

Very good book

Shlomi Sand thinks out of the box

Perhaps a more felicitous title for this book might have been The Myth of the Secular Jew, or better yet, The Impossibility of Secular Zionism. While in a universe unaffected by the self-anointed hasbara literary death squad this worthwhile and thoughtful little book would warrant a four star rating. I gave it five stars to counterbalance those who would rate it without a reading (literally) and think Leon Uris a first rate historian and the sectarian militia commonly known as the IDF is the world's most moral army.

I really like this book, he covers many of my own questions and concerns but seeing from an Israeli perspective, not the gola like my case. I really appreciate with critical thinking, his honest dilemmas and the data he shares of the inequities inside Israel for non Jews. A very challenging and interest book , very fast to read.

Having read Sand's seminal works "The Invention of the Jewish People" (2010) and "The Invention of the Land of Israel" (2012) I started reading this small book with great expectations and read it in one day. The first fat question mark I set where Sand denies that one can point to "Jewish elements in the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Albert Einstein" (p.20). See my refutation in the appendix!Next question mark: Sand reduces the seven-hundred-years-long blood libel delusion to the machinations of "a number of provocateurs" (p.67). He should know that this "inflammatory connection between infant blood and matzo" reflects the whole Pauline doctrine which connects the virgin-born Godson in the manger with the eucharistic consumption of a matzo wafer meaning the flesh of Jesus crucified by Jews. This is the taproot of millennial European anti-Semitism that led to Zionism, and in historical veracity Sand should not minimize it for appeasement.More question marks: The shortness of his essay results in misleading abridgements that contradict the well-researched historical data Sand affirms in his earlier big volumes. Depicting Jewish history as "a dense and varied fresco of the motley groups that converted to Judaism in Asia, Europe and Africa" (p.48) surely exaggerates the fact of strong pre-Constantine Jewish proselytism he rightly expounded in his Invention of the Jewish People. Contrarily, he starkly exaggerates exclusivism claiming that "if someone is not a Jew, she cannot become one, try as she might" (p.91). Whereas in his work of 2012 he compellingly explains why the genocidal book of Joshua was taken into the Bible canon, here he simply states that "God also undertook to exterminate all the inhabitants of Canaan"(p.72); Whereas in 2012 he disclaimed any actual genocides of resident tribes ("Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites ...) by archaeological evidence and contradicting bible passages, quipping: "Strange though it seems, God first ordered the complete extermination of the local population and then issued instructions not to marry those who had been annihilated", now he just cites Exodus 23:23: "My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites ... and I will make an end of them."And then, oops, the funny inconsistency of an Israeli PM: As a Jew in Israel, says Sand, you do not "have to respect the commandments ...You may, like Ariel Sharon, eat locusts while keeping a kosher household" (p.85). Oy vey Shlomo! Indeed you may, since even an Israeli Jew should know that locusts are the only kosher insects that Torah (Leviticus 11:22) allows!On page 95, Sand asks: "But if those who call themselves anti-Zionist Jews without having lived in Israel ... make accusations against Israel ... how can one criticize overt pro-Zionists for granting themselves the privilege of actively intervening in decisions regarding the future and fate of Israel?" So how long must I have lived in this alleged "Jewish state" Sand regards as "one of the most racist societies in the Western world" to finally get entitled to criticize its Zionist politics?"Know, Sire, that Judaism is one of the incurable diseases" said Spanish physician Solomon Ibn Verga, baptized by force in Portugal 1497; and Shlomo Sand isn't curable either. Only the very last pages reveal that the book's title is misleading. Though being "pessimist" in view of the "accursed and interminable occupation" and fearing that it's "already too late", Sand still has a "deep attachment to the place" and when he is far from Israel he looks forward "to the moment I can return to it". It's just for leaving the "exclusive club of the elect" and "tribal Judeocentrism" that Sand wishes "to resign and cease considering myself a Jew". But these (understandable) Jewish feelings have been described (more elaborately) by Anne Karpf and other British Jews in 2008; and by Brian Klug in 2012, even with the same words: one friend of Klug "wondered out loud if she could 'resign' from being Jewish" after Gaza operation Cast Lead (ending in January 2009 with 1100 dead).Resume: This book is an expression of an Israeli Jew's deep concerns and dark premonitions about Zionist Israel. It is a necessary book. Just today (Oct 21, 2014) Israel's President Reuven Rivlin (Likud) lamented that Israeli society is sick of racism, and he begged academics to help healing this violence engendering illness. Exactly this seems to be Sand's therapeutic intention. However, he impedes greater medical efficiency by lack of elaboration and redaction, of diligence in pondering words and phrases.The best passages are those Sand takes from his life experience: His father, a holocaust survivor, betting with him that he can recognize Jews on Paris' sidewalks in 1975 just by their "fleeting and sad look, the mark of fear and deep apprehension" (p.26; Sand senior won), or his five year-old daughter challenging him with questions after a Passover seder, with the final shock question "Did God also kill the little babies, if they were the first boy in the family?" (p.66) And this wise-child-question about cruel adult narrations still believed to be God's own word is worth the book's whole price.Appendix: "Jewish elements in the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Albert Einstein".As to Freud, the Jewish atheist in 1926 wrote to Jewish friends in Vienna: "... only to my Jewish nature I owed the two characteristics which had become indispensable to me on the difficult journey of my life. Because I was a Jew, I found myself free of all prejudices which restrict others in the use of their intellect; as a Jew, I was prepared to enter opposition, renouncing consent with the compact majority" (Heer, Friedrich: Gottes erste Liebe, 1981, p.316).In 1939, Freud ascribed the specific Jewish intellectuality to religious tradition: "The primacy which during about two millennia was granted to spiritual efforts in the life of the Jewish people naturally has had its effect; it helped to curb the crudeness and inclination to violence which usually ensues where the development of muscle power is a people's ideal." Here in his last work about "Moses and Monotheism", Freud interprets the specific Jewish spirituality as the result of the second temple's destruction - and of that second commandment which is "more significant than one recognizes at first. It is the prohibition to make an image of God ... For it implied a triumph of intellectuality by prompting man to acknowledge `spiritual' powers in the first place; powers which cannot be perceived by the senses but nevertheless exert indubitable and even overly strong effects ... Hence also the discovery of soul was given, as the spiritual principle in the individual person." (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion. Frankfurt on Main 1990, p.114-116).As to Einstein, the "almost fanatical love of justice" he confessed connects him not only with Marx (a Christian of Jewish descent) but also to Sand who mentions his own outrage at the "excessive injustices of the here-and-now" (p.26-27) and who asks: "Was it mere chance that the domains of revolution, protest and reform attracted so many individuals whose origins go back to Jewish past?" (p.73). Similar to Nahum Goldmann who called non-conformism the Jewish core trait, Sand stresses that Jews "became nonconformists par excellence in modern times" (p.74). And nevertheless he claims "that there is no Jewish cultural baggage that is not religious" (p.47) - a highly questionable assertion at least as long as Sand does not define what "religious" means.

This is a WONDERFUL book for Jews who are confused about why they are confused.

Very depressing, but worth reading every page especially the part where American gunners are mowing down cilvilians in Dresden as they flee across fields trying to escape. Our boys never did anything like that, right? Eisenhower was a much of a butcher as Churchill. Oh God! The history never taught in our schools.

One may quibble with a point here and there, but Professor Sand has something important to say. I've long wondered what it means to be a secular Jew. As a secularist myself, the term "secular Jew" strikes me as an insult to those who embrace Jewish monotheism, particularly those who died for their faith. (I think of my own anti-Zionist orthodox grandfather, who would be perplexed by the phrase "atheist Jew.") It's a way to have one's cake and eat it too, which raises suspicions. Very often it amounts to a source of pseudo-ethnic superiority, not to mention a vicarious racist Israeli chauvinism in people who have no interest in living in Israel but who applaud the oppression of Arabs. It's irreligious religion and thus incoherent. I welcome Sand's discussion and hope it will provoke much self-examination.

This is a nice piece of writing by Shlomo Sand. I appreciate Sand's exposure of something that the establishment media doesn't touch. This is the jewish view towards non-jews, which is very strongly influenced by the Old Testament and more than the Old Testament, the Talmud. Let's face it. The Jewish view of non-jews is a hateful one and this explains Israel's policies towards non-Jews, particularly palestinians. I admire Dr. Sand for rejecting the hateful mindset of jewish supremacism and ethnocentrism for a more universal, humanistic outlook that seeks to love all people, regardless of race, religion, or nationality.This is a solid book by Dr. Sand. I commend him for his decision to renounce his Jewish identity and join the rest of humanity.

I haven't finished reading the book, but it is interestingly written.

A Pioneering,"out-of-the box" long essay on a subject that deserves even further research and comprehensive thought.