Shlomo Sand was born in 1946 in a displaced person's camp in Austria to Jewish parents the
family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man Sand came to question his Jewish identity
even that of a secular Jew. With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal
recollection he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I
Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the chosen
people myth and its holocaust industry. Sand criticizes the fact that in the current context
what Jewish means is above all not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular
non-exclusive Israeli identity beyond the legends of Zionism.
