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The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora is a comprehensive collection of scholarship that reflects the multifaceted nature of diaspora studies. Persecuted and exiled throughout their history, Jews have also continuously migrated to places offering better opportunities, yet the Jewish people have been defined by their permanent lack of belonging. This Oxford Handbook explores the complicated nature of diasporic Jewish life as something both destructive and creative. The contributors explore subjects as diverse as biblical and medieval representations of diaspora, the various diaspora communities that emerged across the globe, the contradictory relationship the diaspora bears to Israel, and how the diaspora is celebrated and debated within modern Jewish thought.
List of contents
- Contributors
- Introduction, Hasia R. Diner
- PART I: DIASPORA AND CANONICAL WORKS
- 1. Exile and Diaspora in the Bible, Adele Berlin
- 2. Diaspora in Rabbinic Sources, Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
- 3. Diaspora in Jewish Liturgy, Ruth Langer
- 4. The Doctrine of Exile in Kabbalah, Sharon Flatto
- 5. The Jewish Diaspora in Christian Thinking, Joshua Garroway
- SECTION TWO: THE DIASPORA AND JEWISH THOUGHT
- 6. Distinctiveness and Diaspora in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Thought, Michah Gottlieb
- 7. Diaspora in Modern Jewish Thought, Noam Pianko
- 8. Zionism and the Negation of the Diaspora, David Engel
- 9. The Intellectual Defense of the Diaspora, David Weinberg
- 10. The Territorial Ideology of the Diaspora, 1903-1957, Gur Alroey
- SECTION THREE: Four Diaspora Centers
- 11. Babylonia: A Diaspora Center, Geoffrey Herman
- 12. Spain: A Diaspora Center, Jane Gerber
- 13. Jews in The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: An Embedded Diaspora, Magda Teter
- 14. A New World Babylonia: The United States of America, Deborah Dash Moore
- SECTION FOUR: JEWISH DIASPORAS ACROSS TIME AND SPACE
- 15. The Mediterranean Jewish Diaspora of Late Antiquity, Ross S. Kraemer
- 16. Emergence of the Medieval Northern European Diaspora, Robert Chazan
- 17. Jews and Diaspora in the Medieval Islamic Middle East, Eve Krakowski
- 18. The Ashkenazic Diaspora of Early Modern Central Europe, Joshua Teplitsky
- 19. The Western Sephardic Diaspora, Miriam Bodian
- 20. The Mediterranean Sephardim between the 15th and 20th Centuries, Jonathan Ray
- 21. The Eastern European Jewish Diaspora, Tobias Brinkmann
- 22. German Jews Beyond Germany, Marion Kaplan
- 23. Holocaust Survivor Diasporas, Laura Jockusch and Avinoam J. Patt
- 24. The Modern Diasporas of the Jews from the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Daniel Schroeter
- 25. Israel and the Diaspora to 1967, Ronald Zweig
- 26. The Jewish Israeli Diaspora, Steven J. Gold
- 27. Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora, David Shneer
- SECTION FIVE: THEMES ACROSS DIASPORAS
- 28. International Jewish Aid, Lisa Moses Leff
- 29. Global Jewish Organizations, David Slucki
- 30. Philanthropy and the Jewish Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Zohar Segev
- 31. Reporting the Diaspora: The Global Jewish Press, Yaron Tsur
- 32. Speaking Across the Diaspora: Jewish Languages Beyond Borders, Benjamin Hary
- 33. Liturgical Music in the Jewish Diaspora, Mark Kligman
- 34. Jewish Food in the Diaspora, Ari Ariel
About the author
Hasia R. Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Professor of American Jewish History at New York University. She is the author of numerous books on Jewish history, as well women's history, the history of immigration to the United States, and food history. She directs the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at NYU.
Summary
For as long as historians have contemplated the Jewish past, they have engaged with the idea of diaspora. Dedicated to the study of transnational peoples and the linkages these people forged among themselves over the course of their wanderings and in the multiple places to which they went, the term “diaspora” reflects the increasing interest in migrations, trauma, globalism, and community formations.
The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora acts as a comprehensive collection of scholarship that reflects the multifaceted nature of diaspora studies. Persecuted and exiled throughout their history, the Jewish people have also left familiar places to find better opportunities in new ones. But their history has consistently been defined by their permanent lack of belonging. This Oxford Handbook explores the complicated nature of diasporic Jewish life as something both destructive and generative. Contributors explore subjects as diverse as biblical and medieval representations of diaspora, the various diaspora communities that emerged across the globe, the contradictory relationship the diaspora bears to Israel, and how the diaspora is celebrated and debated within modern Jewish thought. What these essays share is a commitment to untangling the legacy of the diaspora on Jewish life and culture.
This volume portrays the Jewish diaspora not as a simple, unified front, but as a population characterized by conflicting impulses and ideas. The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora captures the complexity of the Jewish diaspora by acknowledging the tensions inherent in a group of people defined by trauma and exile as well as by voluntary migrations to places with greater opportunity.
