RD:>>There is also the argument of Shlomo Sand, that the concept of Jewry is a modern concept, that the Exile never happened, that there were mass conversions involved in the formation of the Jews in Europe (and elsewhere), and therefore that the actual ties of European Jews to ancient Judaea are spurious. Thus the founding Zionist myth is . . . a myth.
To argue for anything on any of these bases, against Zionism as well as for, defies logic.<< As I understand it, the now infamous Koestler "13th Tribe" thesis was really an attempt of a non-religious Zionist to show that the Jews of Europe largely had a European ethnogenesis, in order to counter European anti-semitism. I haven't read the book, but I have seen how its arguments and evidence have been only of selective use to serious scholars of the topic. Now the sad sick joke is that the work is attacked as anti-semitic and is cited constantly by the Zionists so as to obscure the very real scholarship that is showing that the standard accounts of the ethnogenesis of European Jewry (W. European Jews moved to C. and E. Europe to escape Christian persecution) has far too many missing parts and implausiblities. Wexler has done considerable work on showing how Ladino-speaking Sephardim are of N. African origin and how C. and E. European Ashkenazim are of basically Turko-Slavic origin. Even those who have tried to dimss his discussions haven't, as far as I can see, shown them to be implausible (whereas one very large implausibility is E. Europe getting a very large Jewish population because of the migration of a few ten thousand Jews from what is now France--before foods like potatoes, European populations in most parts didn't increase rapidly). CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
