Israel Shahak – Jewish History, Jewish Religion

Israel Shahak is an Israeli Jew whose family lived in a Jewish ghetto in Poland for generations. Prof. Shahak survived the Holocaust and elected to settle in Israel where he lived out his life. Prof. Shahak, together with historian Ilan Pappe ("The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine") and prof. Shlomo Sand ("The Invention of the Jewish People") are smart, progressive, well-educated members of Israeli academia who understand that the present course of Israeli politics is untenable.

Jewish History, Jewish Religion demonstrates how the secular state of Israel has been and is being shaped by religious orthodoxy. The last sentence of Shahak's book reads: "Although the struggle against antisemitism (and of all other forms of racism) should never cease, the struggle against Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism, which must include a critique of classical Judaism, is now of equal or greater importance."