tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post395746882389580440..comments2024-01-01T01:47:59.449+02:00Comments on Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Review of Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish PeopleYaacovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12835192312242961481noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-86648892161543257612012-04-26T12:02:44.082+03:002012-04-26T12:02:44.082+03:00The whole notion that Yiddish is a single monolith...The whole notion that Yiddish is a single monolithic language... In fact, a Yiddish expert will be able to quite precisely define one's geographic source from one's specific Yiddish dialect...<br /><br />IOW, the Yiddish that was spoken in Holland, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia was/is NOT the same Yiddish...<br /><br />Each separate Yiddish dialect evolved by picking up local words and importing other words (including picked up ones) from neighboring Yiddish dialects...Shtrudelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16551674184873541298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-52348547390693537992012-04-26T12:00:23.856+03:002012-04-26T12:00:23.856+03:00The whole notion that Yiddish is a single monolith...The whole notion that Yiddish is a single monolithic language... In fact, a Yiddish expert will be able to quite precisely define one's geographic source from one's specific Yiddish dialect...<br /><br />IOW, the Yiddish that was spoken in Holland, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia was/is NOT the same Yiddish...<br /><br />Each separate Yiddish dialect evolved by picking up local words and importing other words (including picked up ones) from neighboring Yiddish dialects...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-48456526927690465482010-10-11T20:54:29.105+02:002010-10-11T20:54:29.105+02:00Bailey Hill Bookshop,
The fact that the book is t...Bailey Hill Bookshop,<br /><br />The fact that the book is taken seriously (as you document in your comment) is exactly the problem that I was trying to address. I am really afraid that sober, nonpolemical reviews like Yaacov's, especially when they appear in the popular press, actually help give the book stature, even when they are, in the language of scholarship, quite negative. It is almost like debating with Holocaust deniers -- just getting on the stage with them gives them a victory.<br /><br />The fact is that a serial crackpot like Sand would never be taken seriously if he was not writing about the Jews and the fact that he *is* taken seriously shows that one of the most important factors in the old, hallucinatory antisemitism -- its irrationality -- has made a roaring comeback in the most respectable and liberal circles in Europe and, to a degree, the United States. <br /><br />This is the point that we need to hammer home. Presenting only the scholarly arguments against Sand misses the most important thing going on here, which is the acceptance of Sand's book among serious intellectuals and political thinkers. Of course, it is essential to critique Sand's theses in detail in order to convince people that he is a crackpot, but the goal should not be just to refute his arguments but to show that they are on the same plane with other kinds crackpottery and to draw attention to the appalling fact that they are being taken seriously.<br /><br />David E. SigetiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-22196928698782859212010-10-11T18:20:22.741+02:002010-10-11T18:20:22.741+02:00I don't think this will come as any surprise a...I don't think this will come as any surprise and it has probably already been commented on but this book got major coverage in the British press, particularly the BBC, where Sands got a major interview on the Andrew Marr Start the Week Radio program. This program is seen as a serious program and Sands was taken seriously. This book came out in hardback the same time as MP Dennis MacShane's, Globalizing Hatred, his report by the The All Party Parlimentary Committee on Anti Semitism was published. Needless to say MacShane got no coverage and I doubt most people in Britain even realized there as an all party Committee on Anti Semitism. <br /><br />All very depressing and yet another serious indictment of the BBC.Bailey Hill Bookshophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10941857486194837834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-80120659886561121892010-10-10T22:05:38.792+02:002010-10-10T22:05:38.792+02:00Bryan
how deplorably unacademic of you
to think t...Bryan<br /><br />how deplorably unacademic of you<br />to think that personal experience in real life may be of any value whatsoever<br /><br />When I read some 40 years ago Salcia Landmann book on Yiddish I found it as familiar or unfamiliar as my grandmother's Platt (Niederdeutsch) which was the lingua franca when the Hanse of Lübeck, Rostock etc was powerful. As they are said to have traded all the way to Novgorod, maybe they brought some slavic back. Also in areas of Northern Germany the slavs lived till after the year 1000 or so, quite likely that they left some of their language behind. <br /><br />I don't believe that languages of old travelled only one way, there must have been lots of "Pidgins" around during the times when there was not one all-dominating empire - we can't assume that today's dominance of English is the norm. <br />Still in the 70s real US backpackers told me that Latin was the one language that helped you all through the world because a catholic priest could be found almost anywhere and they said for Africa it would be Greek because any small village shop owner would be Greek. Today we take it for granted that English will do.<br /><br />Come to think of it, nobody ever told me that Hebrew might be useful - somehow doesn't synch with Jewish world domination ...<br /><br />SilkeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-38535076803154729552010-10-10T18:53:58.202+02:002010-10-10T18:53:58.202+02:00Anonymous 3:52 hit it on the head. I walked into a...Anonymous 3:52 hit it on the head. I walked into an introductory Yiddish class with two semesters of college German and no knowledge whatsoever of either Yiddish or any Slavic language and I could basically follow what was going on.<br /><br />Yiddish uses a couple of Slavic word endings, but the syntax and the majority of the lexicon is Germanic. Any idiot with even a basic knowledge of both could tell you that.Bryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099017972456573744noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-40343159046910282682010-10-10T15:52:41.131+02:002010-10-10T15:52:41.131+02:00Sand who is not a linguist wrote also that the str...Sand who is not a linguist wrote also that the structure of Yiddish is mainly of Slavic origin, which is absolute nonsense. Yiddish is of Mittelhochdeutsch origin and Jews migrated from what is today Germany and France to Poland en masse.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-87403914756219623732010-10-10T15:17:11.518+02:002010-10-10T15:17:11.518+02:00I went through the book and I share Yaakov's f...I went through the book and I share Yaakov's frustration. It would take three volumes to just expose Sand's factual errors. <br />He clealry lacks the basics. He has no idea what a comprehensive view of Jewish history entails. He has omitted big chunks of it - interestingly, the very chunks that would have disproved his thesis. <br />He departs from a very simplistic conception of ancient Jewish history and it is this "Jewish-history-for-first-graders that he set out to debunk.<br />I also noticed he worked without a historical Atlas and as a result has often interpreted historians' statements in terms of modern geopolitics. He relied on translations of translations of translations to which he added his own personal twist yet doesn't possess the basic language tools that would have enabled him to check what the original source actually said and meant (I am thinking of Ibn Khaldun).<br /><br />I think that all in all as far as reviews go the French have done a better job than English speakers. "How Shlomo Sand has reinvented the Jewish people" usually announces the angle.<br /><br />There have been reviews with a Freudian/Oedipian slant as well.<br /><br />Although French critics are too professional to mention his lack ofr fluency in French - the language of his expertise - many do mention that it shouldn't be mentioned.<br />But he doesn't care. He is rich and his critics are jealous.<br /><br />Indeed, the sales' figures given here are probably for the 2010 paperback English THIRD edition. As of February 2010, he had sold 40 500 first edition copies before the book went paperback. Also at that time, the "Invention of the Jewish people" was being translated into 16 languages.Sylvianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-74097352596941744682010-10-10T13:11:41.501+02:002010-10-10T13:11:41.501+02:00I suspect that the whole thing was a parody from t...I suspect that the whole thing was a parody from the get-go, even if, as seems almost indisputable, the whole exercise is informed by what Freud might have labeled Sand's "Golda Complex" (or fixation, or, perhaps, fetish---the shoes, no doubt playing a dominant role here).<br /><br />(To be sure, who would have dreamed that a Bolshevik might have a sense of humor.)<br /><br />A shame, though, that one has to waste one's precious time on this tripe.Barry Meislinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04795125774426217113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-82627745119767559182010-10-10T11:48:34.364+02:002010-10-10T11:48:34.364+02:00David
Yaacov's review is by inter-academic st...David<br /><br />Yaacov's review is by inter-academic standards probably devastating but your point is a valid one, because I see a conundrum there.<br /><br />The headline about the invention may reach my kind of people i.e. the masses but unless somebody says nutter and thereby creates a scandal "we" will not hear about it and very few of us had any training to read between the lines.<br /><br />On the other hand I seem to notice that public discourse is becoming more and more "outspoken" and I am undecided whether I want academia to follow suit.<br /><br />and if academics would write in a way directly understandable by "us" their colleagues would probably go after them accusing them of oversimplification.<br /><br />i.e. I see lots of Catch 22s but something has to be done, medical doctors have learned a language "we" can understand without losing their "aura"...<br /><br />But in general academics in English are a lot easier for me to understand than German ones, so they must be doing something right.<br /><br />SilkeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-38024482236415412642010-10-10T09:18:20.028+02:002010-10-10T09:18:20.028+02:00Yaacov,
I am afraid that most of the criticisms o...Yaacov,<br /><br />I am afraid that most of the criticisms of Sand that I have read seem to be somewhat off the mark. Yours is better than most but I still feel that it does not really get across the point that the man is a serial crackpot. I know that, as a scholar, you feel that it is devastating to point out how sloppy (or nonexistent) his scholarship is but, to most people, what is most important is his ideas and we need to say plainly and openly that they are crackpottery. (Full disclosure: I have not read the book, which is why I have not written about it myself.)<br /><br />So tell me, is there anything wrong with pointing out that the man is a serial crackpot, in just that language? Even if there are a few academic fools who claim that Yiddish is a Slavic language that gradually became a Germanic language -- complete with German grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics -- I think that the idea can be safely dismissed as laughable. His complete dismissal of the modern genetic evidence is classical behavior for a crank. And his claim that the Romans were incapable of moving large numbers of people across their empire because they did not have modern motorized transportation is historical crackpottery, as is his claim that there was no sense of Jewish peoplehood when the ancient and medieval literature, of both the Jews and the other peoples around them, is full of references to it. Yes, you pointed out that he clearly had not read the sources but that does not mean much to the general public. What does mean something is that his ideas are lunatically wrong.<br /><br />The question at the beginning of the previous paragraph was not rhetorical -- I really would like to know if there is something wrong with my characterization of Sand's work. You have done the heavy lifting here (by reading the book and writing an essay about it) and I have not and I really do not want to come across as hypercritical. I just want to figure out how we can expose Sand and his acolytes for the cranks they are.<br /><br />David E. SigetiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-69290426347067528942010-10-10T06:59:13.195+02:002010-10-10T06:59:13.195+02:00Well actually I disagree with the idea that there ...Well actually I disagree with the idea that there is an anti-Israeli Zeitgeist. I think most people don't really care one way or the other but the people who really really care are very vocal so like the empty drum they make the most noise...<br /><br />DannyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-37622941244810926792010-10-10T00:42:39.003+02:002010-10-10T00:42:39.003+02:00Propagating the Khazar myth was the worst thing th...Propagating the Khazar myth was the worst thing that Koestler ever did. What is worse that it makes no since even without the genetic evidence. The historical record clearly shows that Jews entered Poland from the West not the East. The first Jews to settle in Poland were from France and the Holy Roman Empire, not the Russian steppe. <br /><br /> Still, the Khazar myth makes for some good political lies so it remains.Lee Ratnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08139895689217213860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-7090234406655095272010-10-09T22:27:53.888+02:002010-10-09T22:27:53.888+02:00in 1976 school kids on "my" island still...in 1976 school kids on "my" island still had to learn Homer by heart <br /><br />it seems to me that that is strong proof that the Greeks have invented themselves at the time when they came up with "Eleftheria y Thanatos" (Freedom or Death)<br /><br />SilkeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4008006782907969381.post-59545197940555834422010-10-09T21:53:03.708+02:002010-10-09T21:53:03.708+02:00The Khazar myth dies hard despite strong genetic e...The Khazar myth dies hard despite strong genetic evidence proving its impossibility. This topic alone is enough to relegate Sand's book to the remainders pile.<br /><br />http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2003-08/1060503167Abtalyonnoreply@blogger.com