The Necessity of Exile
Essays from a Distance
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Publisher Description
A timely, progressive collection of essays on the Jewish relationship to Zionism and exile.
What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to these questions, and the future of Jewish life will depend on how we respond to them in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition.
On many levels, Zionism was conceived as an attempt to “end the exile” of the Jewish people, both politically and theologically. In a series of incisive essays, Magid challenges us to consider the price of diminishing or even erasing the exilic character of Jewish life. A thought-provoking work of political imagination, The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel|Palestine, antisemitism, diaspora, and a broken world in need of repair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Magid (Meir Kahane), a distinguished fellow of Jewish studies at Dartmouth, examines modern notions of Jewish "exile" in this unflinching analysis of "significant problems of the Jewish national project... both in the diaspora and in Israel." According to the author, "exile" is a spiritual and religious concept rather than a geographic reality (it "results because our Jewish ideal is unrealized anywhere in the world," in the words of late theologian and rabbi Eugene Borowitz), and the birth of a Zionist nation-state provides a false solution, driving a "proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism." Instead, Magid proposes a "counter-Zionism" that views the state's founding ideology as one that's "both done its work and created damage," and imagines a state that "protects... the rights, cultures, languages, and religions of all constituencies equally." In the process, he takes aim at "liberal Zionism," its "increasingly fantastical" belief in a two-state solution, and its practice of deploying "liberal language... to support an illiberal reality" (for example, framing a scaling-back of the occupation of the West Bank as "a dramatic shrinking of the immoral footprint of the occupation"). Magid's willingness to broach inconvenient truths is enriched by his deep knowledge of debates around Israeli politics and history. The result is a must-read for those concerned about Israel's future.
