Diaspora, considered as a context for insights into Jewish identity, brings together a lively, interdisciplinary group of scholars in this innovative volume. Readers needn’t expect, however, to find easy agreement on what those insights are. The concept ‘diaspora’ itself has proved controversial;
galut, the traditional Hebrew expression for the Jews’ perennial condition, is better translated as ‘exile.’ The very distinction between diaspora and exile, although difficult to analyze, is important enough to form the basis of several essays in this fine collection.
‘Identity’ is an even more elusive concept. The contributors to
Diasporas and Exiles explore Jewish identity—or, more accurately, Jewish identities—from the mutually illuminating perspectives of anthropology, art history, comparative literature, cultural studies, German history, philosophy, political theory, and sociology. These contributors bring exciting new emphases to Jewish and cultural studies, as well as the emerging field of diaspora studies.
Diasporas and Exiles mirrors the richness of experience and the attendant virtual impossibility of definition that constitute the challenge of understanding Jewish identity.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Diaspora and Homeland
2. Coming to Terms with Exile
3. A Politics and Poetics of Diaspora: Heine’s ‘Hebraische Medodien’
4. Dancing at Two Weddings:
Mazel between Exile and Diaspora
5. Portraiture and Assimilation in Vienna: The Case of Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat
6. A Different Road to Modernity: Jewish Identity in the Arab World
7. Remaking Jewish Identity in France
8. ‘This is Not What I Want’: Holocaust Testimony, Postmemory, and Jewish Identity
9. The Ideology of Affliction: Reconsidering the Adversity Thesis
10. Jewish Identity Writ Small: The Everyday Experience of
Baalot Teshuvah
11. Contesting Identities in Jewish Philanthropy
List of Contributors
Index
Contributors: Murray Baumgarten, Bluma Goldstein, Eric S. Gruen, Daniel J. Schroeter, Catherine M. Soussloff, Kerri Steinberg, Bernard Susser, Louise Tallen, Irwin Wall, Howard Wettstein, Diane L. Wolf
About the author
Howard Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Author of Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?, and Other Essays (1991), and of the forthcoming The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (2003), he is an editor of the philosophical annual, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.
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