The notion of the Jewish People – exiled from their homeland, wandering across continents and seas, settling in far-flung destinations for 2,000 years, and finally returning to their homeland – is being challenged.

In a new book titled When and How the Jewish People Was Invented, Tel Aviv historian Prof. Shlomo Sand proposes that the Jews of Spain could not have been descendants of the exiled Israelites. Instead, he claims they are of Berber origin, stemming from the realm of the fabled Dahia al Kahina, the fearless seventh-century warrior queen of the Berbers. She was a Jewish woman who succeeded not only in resisting the Muslim invasion of North Africa but also in convincing a good part of the Berber population to convert to Judaism.

But lest anyone think that Sand is being anti-Sephardi in claiming that Sephardim are not true descendants of the Israelites, his theory extends to Ashkenazim as well. They, too, he contends, are not descendants of the Israelites, but refugees from the kingdom of the Khazars, who also converted to Judaism in the eighth century.

As well, he contends that the Jews of Yemen are of pagan descent, remnants of the Himyar kingdom who converted in the fourth century.

According to Sand, the bulk of today’s Jewish population, both in the Diaspora and in Israel, have no ancestral connection either to the Jewish People or to the Land of Israel.

The professor’s theory contains more holes in it than Swiss cheese. Essentially, he is saying that Jews could not possibly have travelled and settled the world as they did, but that Judaism somehow could. He also conveniently dismisses the fact that the Jewish religion neither missionizes nor proselytizes as being a relatively recent development.

But the fact of the matter is that the notion of a Jewish race has never been our claim. The Jews are essentially a group that began in the Middle East and travelled extensively from there. That they collected and incorporated a rather rich and colourful mix of the worlds’ cultural heritage – and that along the way, people of the world joined them, as they continue to do today – is obvious. It’s also true that many Jews opted out of Judaism, something that also continues to be true.

To say that Jewish people today bear little direct relation to the Jews who were exiled from their land after the Temple’s destruction is simply wrong.

Through DNA technology, we have been able to show that there is a definite genetic similarity, and hence lineage, between Jews of otherwise varying origins, and almost all of these can be traced back to the Middle East. The genetic connection of Kohanim, for instance, has been well documented.

In any case, God relates to individual humans not on the basis of race, but on the basis of faith. And Judaism has never been a nation/race, but rather a faith-based religion.