Professor Stephen Howe of Bristol University reviewed Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People in the Independent. The review itself says nothing of particular interest, and any discussion of the origins of the demographic origins of modern Jews people that doesn’t reference the genetic evidence is doomed to be worthless.
But here’s the unintentionally ironic part:
The blogosphere has been buzzing with wild charges and vulgar abuse against Sand’s book – most repeatedly, predictably and depressingly, calling it anti-Semitic. Almost none of those assailants, naturally, has any discernible expertise in any of the fields Sand touches on.
In fact, much of the criticism I’ve seen (plus my own), is either by people who do have some demonstrated expertise in the area, or who link to/cite those who do. (For that matter, I haven’t seen anyone call Sand anti-Semitic, but many have correctly pointed out that his theory that most Ashkenazic Jews descended from Khazars finds virtually no support among geneticists or linguists, but is quite popular with anti-Semites around the world, who have been basically the only ones keeping the “controversy” alive.)
But what of Prof. Howe? From his website:
My main focus has been on British imperial history, including the role of imperial questions in domestic British politics; but my writing also involves a strong comparative element, which embraces a growing interest in ideas about American ‘empire’ today. Much of my recent and current work engages with the very concept of colonialism and associated terms, including reflection on and probing of the limits, the uses and indeed the abuses of the concept itself. Much, too, addresses broad theoretical and comparative questions about anti- and post-colonialism. I’m currently completing three interrelated books: on the intellectual consequences of decolonisation, on anticolonial intellectuals, and on representations and legacies of late-colonial violence.
Not only does this statement of his scholarly interests not betray any “discernable expertise” on Jewish history, but Howe’s list of over two hundred publications contains not a single one with the words “Jew” or “Jewish” in the title.
Sure, he and Sand may have a common interest in colonialism and “post-colonialism.” But the controversy over Sand’s book is not over post-colonial theory, writ large, or Sand’s theory of nationalism, but over Sand’s specific historical claims about the purported “invention” of the concept of Jewish nationhood by 19th-century European Zionist intellectuals who purportedly had little genetic or other connection with either the ancient Judeans or other Jewish communities around the world.
In other words, Howe is likely more ignorant about the actual subject matter at hand than many of the bloggers he excoriates (many of whom have at least a layperson’s interest in Jewish history), and there is certainly nothing in his review that suggests otherwise.
UPDATE: One reasonable interpretation of Howe’s review is that Sand’s book is useless academically, because it either consists of rehashed, well-known information, or of rampant speculation (“in intellectual and historical terms, Sand is rehashing some old arguments and even setting up straw men for too-easy demolition”). But the book is nevertheless valuable because it serves an anti-Zionist agenda (Howe’s lack of expertise on the matter doesn’t stop him from concluding, dubiously, that “Zionism and the Israeli state’s most basic founding assumptions depend heavily (though, as [Sand's] concedes, never exclusively) on the ethno-nationalist pseudo-history he attacks.”) Yet another triump for “truthiness” in academic discourse? Put another way, replacing whatever combination of myth and fact that is accepted among the lay public in Israel with Sand’s equally (at least) dubious version of myth and fact wouldn’t advance the quest for truth, and is a shameful ambition for an academic, but it might serve someone’s political interests if he prefers Sand’s politics to mainstream Israeli politics.
NowMDJD says:
Hey!! This is what I said in the comments of the last post you wrote regarding this book. That’s the bottom line. Questions about the biological origin of one national group from other, or from older, national groups now can be settled definitively, thorough genetic testing. Any other kind of evidence is, at this point, unconvincing and tendentious.
But, in the final analysis, biological origin is not what defines a national group. A “people” is self-defined. Or, perhaps, defined by their enemies, who force them to define themselves in self-defense. Are Americans a “people? Are the Swiss, with their several languages? My guess is that there is more genetic heterogeneity among Americans than among Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, who define themselves as three peoples. And there is more genetic heterogeneity among Americans than among the various Nordic nations.
November 27, 2009, 4:23 pmCJColucci says:
I take it from reading your two posts on the subject that you think Shlomo Sand wrote a bad book. You may be right. The topic doesn’t greatly interest me, but a post about why it is a bad book would advance human knowledge somewhat. Instead, you write two posts with no apparent goal but to take potshots at people who seem to agree with you that it is a bad book. The holidays can be tough on all of us, I suppose.
November 27, 2009, 4:29 pmO-G says:
I found this, “buried” in the middle of his review, curious:
On the one hand, he admits most of the book’s factual claims are unfounded. On the other, he seems to think the “ferocity” of attacks on the book struck some sort of nerve and perhaps revealed a “larger truth?”
Even Howe tells us, offhandedly, that the book’s controversial factual assertions are either demonstrably false, or very far from proven. Why then take the author’s political views seriously- unless, of course, like Howe you already share them?
Sand should’ve just written a book called “this is my opinion” and spared us the falsehoods. He might’ve even sounded a little more credible.
And Howe’s interest in writing this review isn’t related to his own historical interests- a professional review would’ve started and ended with skewering Sand’s irresponsible “history.” To Howe this is irrelevant or at least unimportant. He wrote the “review” only to say that Sand doesn’t go far enough, and should have called Israel a racist state of haters.
November 27, 2009, 4:39 pmIdo says:
CJ, Bernstein has already written , at length, about why this is a bad book. Check out this earlier post A little less snarkiness, and a litte more attention would do you good.
November 27, 2009, 4:44 pmyankee says:
Can you explain the difference between this and calling Sand anti-Semitic?
November 27, 2009, 4:49 pmDavid Bernstein says:
In fact, Howe also says at the beginning of the review that he shares Sand’s (anti-Zionist) views.
Colucci: The subject of this post is not Sand’s book, but an arrogant academic who deigns to criticize mere “non-expert” bloggers, who in fact likely have more relevant expertise than he has.
The fact that someone promotes crank ideas that aren’t inherently anti-Semitic but are generally associated with and used by anti-Semites doesn’t mean that the particular promoter is an anti-Semite. It may just mean that he’s a crank, with crankish motivations of his own.
November 27, 2009, 5:03 pmLeo Marvin says:
It’s the difference between believing something and being associated with anyone else who believes it. Conflating what DB said with calling Sand anti-Semitic would be a form of guilt by association, the association being the mere sharing of an opinion, albeit a harebrained and controversial one. Our discourse already suffers from too much spurious guilt by association. We don’t need any more.
November 27, 2009, 7:36 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Totally agree. I’ve said before that I find these historical debates rather irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if few Jews are descended from ancient Judeans, or even if most Palestinians’ ancestors didn’t live in Israel Palestine until rather recently, that wouldn’t in any way change the fact that Israeli Jews believe themselves to believe a national entity, as do Palestinian Arabs, and act on that basis. Either group’s national “rights” must be based on their modern national identity, not their ancient ancestry.
November 27, 2009, 7:51 pmKevin Brook says:
David Bernstein makes good points. As he highlighted, Howe asserts that most of Sand’s online critics lack “any discernible expertise in any of the fields Sand touches on.” My participation in those blogosphere discussions goes against Howe’s assertion. I am a recognized expert on the Khazars and Jewish genetics and have been published on these topics by scholarly journals, encyclopedias, and book publishers. You can see most of my research for yourself in my book “The Jews of Khazaria, Second Edition”.
As for Howe, he has edited and written books for the same publisher as Sand’s book, Verso. Specifically, his book “Afrocentrism” got published by Verso in 1998, and he was the editor of “Lines of Dissent” that Verso published in 1988. Verso is an avowedly pro-Socialist publishing house. So Prof Howe is not one to talk about how “responses are so utterly predictable according to the critic’s political views” within his somewhat friendly review of a book published by his comrades at Verso – a review where he outright said “Sand’s political purpose is (in my view) an admirable one”.
November 28, 2009, 1:06 amBill Poser says:
Also missing from these discussions is that fact that a large minority of Jewish Israelis are not Ashkenazim. The founders of the Yishuv may have been Ashkenazim, but the many Middle Eastern Jews, including those who never went into exile, are just as much Israelis and ought to figure just as much into arguments over rights to the land.
November 28, 2009, 3:15 amCJColucci says:
CJ, Bernstein has already written , at length, about why this is a bad book. Check out this earlier post A little less snarkiness, and a litte more attention would do you good.
You mean that post from more than eight months ago? That DB didn’t see fit to mention now? That makes the current posts even more pointless? Not to say snarky?
November 28, 2009, 10:50 pmneurodoc says:
You tell us you are not greatly interested in the topic yet you keep coming back again and again to share comments like these?! Perhaps the holidays were tough on you, but what excuse is that for inflicting yourself on the rest of us?
November 29, 2009, 2:47 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Prof. Howe Responds says:
[...] week, I criticized a review by Prof. Stephen Howe of Shlomo Sand’s book, The Invention of the Jewish People. Given [...]
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