Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

130 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
associated with expulsion, and this literary-theological memory helped shape
subsequent Jewish religious sensibilities. 1
However, a close examination of the historical event that apparently
engendered the "second exile" in the year 70 CE, and an analysis of the
Hebrew term golah (exile) and its connotation in late Hebrew, indicate that
the national historical consciousness was a patchwork of disparate events
and traditional elements. Only in this way could it function as an effective
myth that provided modern Jews with a pathway to ethnic identity. The
ultra-paradigm of deportation was essential for the construction of a longterm
memory wherein an imaginary, exiled people-race could be described
as the direct descendants of the former "people of the Bible." As we shall see,
the myth of uprooting and exile was fostered by the Christian tradition, from
which it flowed into Jewish tradition and grew to be the truth engraved in
history, both the general and the national.
THE "PEOPLE" EXILED IN 70 CE
It must first of all be emphasized that the Romans never deported entire
peoples. We might add that neither did the Assyrians and Babylonians move
entire populations from the countries they conquered. It did not pay to uproot
the people of the land, the cultivators of produce, the taxpayers. But even the
efficient policy of deportation practiced by the Assyrian, and later the Babylonian,
empire—in which whole sections of local administrative and cultural
elites were deported—was not followed by the Roman Empire. Here and there
in the western Mediterranean countries, local farming communities were
displaced to make room for the settling of Roman soldiers, but this exceptional
policy was not applied in the Near East. Roman rulers could be utterly ruthless
in suppressing rebellious subject populations: they executed fighters, took
captives and sold them into slavery, and sometimes exiled kings and princes.
But they definitely did not deport whole populations in the countries they
conquered in the East, nor did they have the means to do so—none of the
trucks, trains or great ships available in the modern world. 2
Flavius Josephus, the historian of the Zealot revolt in the year 66 CE, is
1 On the concept of exile see Arnold M. Eisen, "Exile," in Contemporary Jewish
Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs, A. A. Cohen
and P. Mendes-Flohr (eds.), New York: Free Press, 1988, 219-25; and also the book by A.
M. Eisen, Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986,
2 Exiling was generally from the center outwards. See Gordon P. Kelly, A History of
Exile in the Roman Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.