Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

MYTHISTORY 105
he was the chief architect of all history studies in the Hebrew educational
systems. 79
Dinur, who was born in the Ukraine, attended a yeshivah in Vilnius,
and studied history in Germany, began his distinctive historiographic project
before his appointment as a lecturer at the Hebrew University in the 1930s.
Already in 1918, three years before his emigration to British-ruled Palestine,
he had published in Kiev the book Toldot Yisrael (History of Israel), the first
volume of his life's work as a scholar: a compilation of sources and documents
through which could be delineated a continuous, organic narrative of the
history of the Jews. 80 This project would culminate later in Yisrael BaGolah
(Israel in Exile), the instructive series of volumes intended to cover the totality
of Jewish history. 81 The many varied documents were organized and presented
in a chronological and thematic order. Most were accompanied by succinct
interpretations, guiding the Hebrew readers in the organic reading of history.
This compilation could in some ways be regarded as the culmination
of Graetz's pioneering enterprise. Whereas the work of the German-Jewish
historian was a nonconformist challenge to the predominant views held by
educated people of Jewish background in Germany, and even throughout
Europe, Dinur's compilation—like Salo Baron's, which appeared at almost the
same time—was quickly accepted as the proper, standard historiography of the
Jewish past. For Hebrew readers in Palestine, it became the dominant narrative,
and any deviation from it, insofar as any appeared, would be viewed as
peculiar or even hostile. From then on, the national-historical truth would be
presented not only in the writings of a handful of subjective historians, but in
scientific, objective, and systematic documentation.
As noted, Dinur devoted the first volume of the History of Israel to the
biblical period. After joining the Hebrew University he revised it, expanded
it, and began to publish it under the title The History of Israel: Israel in Its
Land. 82 For all the differences between the 1918 edition and the first volume
of the expanded edition of 1938, their method of creating positivist credibility
for the history was identical. Dinur divided the Old Testament into sections
and organized his book as a system of quotations from the biblical stories,
79 See the above-mentioned article by Uri Ram, "Zionist Historiography and the
Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben-Zion Dinur" Dinur also instituted
the national award known as the Israel Prize, and was awarded it twice.
80 Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), History of Israel, Kiev: Society of Distributors of
Education in Israel (in Hebrew).
81 Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), Israel in Exile, Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1926 (in Hebrew)
82 Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), The History of Israel: Israel in Its Land, Tel Aviv: Dvir,
1938 (in Hebrew).