Shlomo Sand

Israeli historian and professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, known for critiquing Zionist historiography and the myths of Jewish ethnic continuity

Shlomo Sand
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Born	10 September 1946 Linz, Austria
Died
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Occupation	Historian, author, professor emeritus
Known for	Critique of Zionist historiography; The Invention of the Jewish People
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Shlomo Sand (born 10 September 1946) is an Israeli historian and professor emeritus of contemporary history at Tel Aviv University. He is best known for his controversial books challenging traditional Zionist narratives of Jewish history, arguing that both the "Jewish people" and the concept of the "Land of Israel" as an ancestral national homeland are modern inventions shaped by 19th- and 20th-century nationalism rather than ancient ethnic or religious continuity. Sand's work has sparked intense debate in Israel and internationally, positioning him as a leading critic of ethno-nationalist historiography and the ideological foundations of Zionism.

Born in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, to Holocaust-survivor parents, Sand grew up in Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He later pursued advanced studies in France before returning to teach at Tel Aviv University. His scholarship draws on post-nationalist historical methods to deconstruct myths of origin, exile, and return, emphasising conversion, cultural pluralism, and the constructed nature of modern national identities.

Early life and academic career

Sand was born on 10 September 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had survived the Holocaust. The family immigrated to Israel when he was a child. He served in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1967 and 1973 wars before pursuing higher education.

Sand earned his doctorate at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He joined the faculty of Tel Aviv Universityin 1988, rising to full professor in 2002 and becoming professor emeritus in 2014. His early work focused on Georges Sorel and French intellectual history, but he later turned to Jewish and Israeli history, motivated by a desire to confront what he saw as Zionist distortions of the past.

Political views and activism

Sand identifies as a non-Zionist or post-Zionist historian. He has argued that Zionism transformed a religious diaspora identity into an ethno-territorial nationalism, leading to the displacement of Palestinians and ongoing conflict. He supports a single democratic state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all inhabitants and has criticised Israel's occupation policies and the "ethnocratic" character of the Jewish state.

Major works

The Invention of the Jewish People (2008)

In his best-known book, originally published in Hebrew as Matai ve'eich humtsa ha'am hayehudi? (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?), Sand challenges the idea of Jews as a single, ancient ethnic nation exiled from Judea and later returning. He argues that Jewish identity was formed through widespread conversions across the ancient and medieval world, including the Khazars in the Caucasus, Berbers in North Africa, and other groups. There was no mass exile after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple; most Jews in the diaspora descended from local converts rather than a "wandering people."

Sand writes:

The Jews were never a foreign 'ethnos' of invaders from afar but rather an autochthonous population whose ancestors, for the most part, converted to Judaism before the arrival of Christianity or Islam.

In a 2009 interview, Sand explained his motivation:

I remember being shocked the first time I heard that the Exile from Egypt was not true. Hearing that David and Solomon's kingdoms didn't exist. It shocked me so much that I decided… when I have time, I will need to focus on Jewish history.

He rejects the notion of a shared secular Jewish culture or common origin, arguing that religion—not ethnicity—bound Jews historically. The book became a bestseller in Israel and provoked fierce controversy, with accusations of undermining Jewish identity and the legitimacy of Israel.

Sand's edition of Ernest Renan – On the Nation and the Jewish People (2010)

In 2010 Shlomo Sand edited and introduced the Verso edition of Ernest Renan – On the Nation and the Jewish People. The volume contains Sand’s substantial essay “The Unclassifiable Renan” (also serving as preface) together with two classic lectures by Ernest Renan: the famous 1882 Sorbonne address “What Is a Nation?” and the 1883 lecture “Judaism as Race and Religion”. Sand presents Renan as a complex, contradictory thinker whose work cannot be reduced to simplistic labels. He situates Renan in the context of 19th-century French intellectual history and shows how his ideas on nationalism prefigure those of 20th-century theorists such as Raymond Aron and Ernest Gellner. Sand argues that Renan’s rejection of ethnic, racial, or religious definitions of the nation remains highly relevant to contemporary debates on identity, Zionism, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Sand does not characterise Renan as either a “Judeophile” or an “anti-Semite”. Instead he stresses Renan’s nuanced position: Renan viewed the Jews historically as a religious community rather than a biological “race” or “pure ethnos”, while still employing the racial vocabulary common to his era. Sand uses Renan’s texts to undermine essentialist notions of Jewish peoplehood and to critique the ethnic-territorial claims of modern Zionism.

Key quotations from Sand’s introduction include:

Renan is unclassifiable… He cannot be fitted into the usual categories of progressive or reactionary, philo-Semite or anti-Semite.

On Renan’s famous definition of the nation:

Renan’s nation is a “daily plebiscite”, a spiritual principle based on shared memory and the desire to live together, not on race, language, religion or geography.

In the second lecture, Renan explicitly argues against viewing Jews as a racial group:

The Jews cannot be considered a “pure ethnos”… Judaism is a religion, not a race.

No other authors contribute original essays to the volume; it consists solely of Sand’s introduction and Renan’s two lectures. There is no mention of “Steinschreiber” (or any similar name) anywhere in Sand’s text or the book’s contents. The edition thus serves Sand’s broader project of deconstructing nationalist myths by recovering Renan’s anti-essentialist conception of nationhood and applying it critically to Zionist historiography.

The Invention of the Land of Israel (2012)

In this follow-up, Sand examines how the concept of Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) as a national homeland was invented in the modern era. He shows that the Bible does not refer to a unified "Land of Israel" as collective Jewish property; the Promised Land was a conditional divine loan, not eternal territorial ownership. Traditional rabbinical Judaism viewed the land spiritually and rejected premature mass return or nationalism.

Sand argues that Zionism, influenced by European nationalism and Christian Zionism, transformed religious symbols into a secular nationalist ideology to justify colonisation. Biblical narratives were reinterpreted to support territorial claims, while the actual historical connection of most Jews to the land was minimal or symbolic.

Key quotes include:

The 'Land of Israel' of Zionist and Israeli authors bears no resemblance to the Holy Land of my true forefathers… whose origins and lives were embedded within the Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe.

It is entirely illegitimate to identify the Jewish links with the ancestral land of Israel… with the desire to gather all Jews into a modern territorial state situated on the ancient Holy Land.

The Promised Land is neither a one-time grant nor an irrevocable gift. It remains a loan, never to be regarded as territorial property.

Sand concludes that these invented myths have perpetuated conflict and that genuine peace requires dismantling ethno-territorial claims in favour of equal civic rights.

How I Stopped Being a Jew (2013)

In this autobiographical and polemical work, Sand reflects on his personal rejection of Jewish identity as defined by Zionism and the Israeli state. He argues that being Jewish today often means supporting an exclusionary ethno-state rather than a universalist or religious tradition. Sand declares himself a "non-Jew" in the Israeli context while affirming his cultural and historical ties to Jewish traditions.

The Anatomy of Zionism (2025)

In recent interviews, Sand dissects Zionism as a colonial-settler ideology that continues to shape Israeli policy. He traces its roots to 19th-century European nationalism and critiques its ongoing role in occupation, settlement expansion, and the denial of Palestinian rights. The book extends his earlier arguments, calling for a post-Zionist reimagining of Israel as a state for all its citizens.

Shlomo Sand on "anti-Semite"/"antisemite", "Jew hate" and "Judeophobia"

In his published works and interviews Shlomo Sand uses the terms "anti-Semite", "antiSemitism" (often without hyphen) and "Judeophobe"/"Judeophobia" interchangeably to describe hostility toward Jews framed in racial, ethnic or essentialist terms. He does not offer a formal academic definition of "anti-Semite" or "antisemite", nor does he use "Jew hate". In The Invention of the Land of Israel (2012) Sand writes:

…after the emergence (alongside traditional anti-Jewish hostility) of a new antiSemitism that cast Jews as members of a foreign and contaminating race…

He later links Israeli policies to the revival of hostility:

…halt actions and practices that awaken Judeophobia from its slumber…

In the 2025 interview on The Anatomy of Zionism he equates the attitudes of Christian Zionists (philo-Semites) with those of Judeophobes:

Throughout history both anti-Semites and philo-Semites have grossly overestimated intra-Jewish solidarity… Despite their great admiration for the Jews, the Christian Zionists’ overarching conceptions… did not differ fundamentally from the attitudes of Judeophobes.

Sand consistently treats Judeophobia and modern anti-Semitism as products of 19th–20th-century nationalism rather than timeless religious prejudice.

Legacy and reception

Sand's work has been praised by some as a courageous deconstruction of nationalist myths and criticised by others as historically flawed or politically motivated. His books have sold widely and influenced debates on Israeli identity, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the nature of Jewish peoplehood.

Publications

Shlomo Sand has authored or edited more than a dozen books, primarily in French and Hebrew, with several translated into English. The following list is in chronological order of original publication:

• 1984: L'Illusion du politique, Paris: La Découverte.
• 1985: Georges Sorel en son temps (edited with Jacques Julliard), Paris: Seuil.
• 2000: Intellectuals, Truth and Power: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Tel Aviv: Am Oved (in Hebrew).
• 2004: Le XXe siècle à l'écran, Paris: Seuil (also published in Hebrew and Spanish).
• 2004: Historians, Time and Imagination, Tel Aviv: Am Oved (in Hebrew).
• 2004: Cinema and Memory (co-edited with Haim Bresheeth and Moshe Zimmerman), Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center (in Hebrew).
• 2008: The Invention of the Jewish People' (original Hebrew title: Matai ve'eich humtsa ha'am hayehudi?; English translation Verso, 2009) – full PDF.
• 2010: Ernest Renan – On the Nation and the Jewish People (edited and introduced by Shlomo Sand), London: Verso (also in French and Hebrew).
• 2011: The Words and the Land: Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist Myth, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) (also in French).
• 2012: The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland – full PDF.
• 2013: How I Stopped Being a Jew, London: Verso.
• 2017: Twilight of History, London: Verso (also in Hebrew and French).
• 2023: A Brief Global History of the Left, Cambridge: Polity.
• 2024: Israel-Palestine: Federation or Apartheid? (forthcoming/related editions).
• 2025: The Anatomy of Zionism (recent interviews and forthcoming book).
• 2026: Judeophobia: A History (forthcoming).

External links

• The Invention of the Land of Israel (PDF)
• The Invention of the Jewish People
• Interview with Shlomo Sand (2009)
• The Anatomy of Zionism: Interview with Shlomo Sand (2025)