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 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.
Author
The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies Director of Graduate Studies, Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program My teaching focuses primarily on Kabbala, Hasidism, religious fundamentalism, Israel/Palestine, and modern and American Jewish thought and culture. Areas of interest and research include sixteenth century Kabbala, Hasidism, American Judaism, comparative religion, and contemporary conceptions of Jewish religiosity. I am the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (SUNY Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008) which was awarded the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for best book in religion in the textual studies category, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013) and Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). I am the series editor for “Post-Rabbinic Judaisms” for Academic Studies Press. I am also a regular contributor to Tikkun Magazine, Zeek Magazine, Open Zion, and Religion Dispatches.
