“The Necessity of Exile” by Shaul Magid: An Ayin Press Book Launch
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- čas přidán 11. 12. 2023
- Celebrate the launch of Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile: Essays From a Distance, a new book of essays from “America’s most insightful writer on the relationship between Zionism and Judaism” (Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism). This Ayin Press book launch was hosted by Congregation Beth Elohim at the Center for New Jewish Culture, and featured Shaul Magid in conversation with Peter Beinart.
Co-hosted by Jewish Currents, Community Bookstore and the Center for New Jewish Culture
Order the book here: ayinpress.org/the-necessity-o...
- About The Necessity of 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, rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment making use of 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.
- About the speakers -
Shaul Magid is professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue. Author of numerous books, his most recent prior work is Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021). He is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Society for the Study of Religion, and lives in Thetford, Vermont.
Peter Beinart teaches national reporting and opinion writing at the Newmark J-School and political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, a MSNBC political commentator, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a nonfiction author and former Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, 2012); The Icarus Syndrome (HarperCollins, 2010); and The Good Fight (HarperCollins, 2006).
- About the hosts -
Ayin Press is an independent nonprofit publishing house and production studio rooted in Jewish culture and emanating outward. Ayin was founded on a deep belief in the power of culture and creativity to heal, transform, and uplift the world we share and build together. Both online and in print, we seek to celebrate artists and thinkers at the margins and explore the growing edges of collective consciousness through a diverse range of mediums and genres. We are committed to amplifying a polyphony of voices from within and beyond the Jewish world. ayinpress.org/
The Center for New Jewish Culture is a place for vital, boundary-pushing conversation about what it means to be Jewish. It is a sanctuary for cultural experimentation and ambition, with an emphasis on art, text, food, ritual and new ideas. The Center bridges past and future in its own space in a century-old former synagogue, and it searches for a Jewish way of being that speaks to us now. www.newjewishculture.org/
Jewish Currents, founded in 1946, is an award-winning magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left. jewishcurrents.org/
Incredible talk. Thank you Shaul and Peter 🍉
00:00 I n t r o
10:49 START
55:00 in a meaningful sense, the Biblical narrative of our ancestors coming from elsewhere!and becoming the true "rightful" inhabitants… Well… It's the same narrative.
If a group wants to pride itself on its separateness and alienation from its host, it should not be surprised if the host has an adverse reaction.
Sorry to disagree with Shaul Magid, נ"י, there was a longing for Zion, without Herzl's brand of "political-Liberal Zionism", for instance in 1881 the Yemenite Jews came to Ottoman Eretz Yisroel and the "Perushim" Lithuanian Jews of the "Old Yishuv" arrived there in 1808/9 - neither had read or even heard of Herzl!
Elsewhere Shaul Magid נ"י, discusses Rabbi Kahane, הי"ד, which, unfortunately he does not talk about here! Rabbi Kahane, הי"ד. was the original post-Zionist/anti-Zionist/counter-Zionist! And, nary a mention in this discussion.
Jews pray for Zion and their return for Millenia.
mmm i'm not sold on your argument. the yemenite jews and the litvak perushim you mention are certainly instances of jewish immigration to eretz yisroel, but neither of those, singly or together, demonstrates to me that there was a concerted effort to organize aliyah en masse at any point prior to herzl - am i mistaken/are there examples of mass aliyah that i just haven't read about? / my understanding was that the critiques advanced by the satmar and munkaczer rebbes, while certainly not accepted unanimously, had relatively wide purchase among frume yidn in central & eastern europe up til the rise of nazism and the shoah (the satmar rebbe even maintained his anti-zionism to the end of his life, past the israeli capture of jerusalem in june 67, which, seemingly miraculous, managed to endear even many long-time anti-Zionists among the orthodox to the State, though perhaps with some continuing ambivalence re: the state's secularism); whereas secular or centrist anti-Zionism could be found among Jews in, say, Germany or the U.S. who favored (continued) assimilation, and left anti-Zionisms predominated among Bundists, Communists, and anarchists, all of whom rejected nationalism on principle (and Jewish nationalism with it).
so did you read Magid's book on Kahane? i suppose you're right, it's curious he didn't come up in this talk, but i don't think that was out of mendacity or will to deceive or something, the conversation just seemed to focus on the travails of liberal zionism. anyways, if you haven't read it, go for it! i only got through like the first half, looking forward to finishing it.
Promo_SM 🤔
as soon as a dude mentions the Jewish-Roman Wars, you KNOW he's about to bust out the "actually we're indigneous" shtick. hasbara is painfully predictable.
Watched 20 minutes and already have fundamental objections like"
- Describing Israel as a necessity - supremacist settler colonialism is NOT a necessity
- Hinting that just as the US is a reality despite its "original sin" Israel too should be accepted as a reality. Should we have accepted White South Africa using the same argument or that American slave owners should have carried on holding on to their slaves? Of course not.
- Saying Israel is a Jewish homeland but also the homeland of another people - NOT in the same way. The "other people" were living there. The homelands of the settler colonists were elsewhere.
Oppression, suppression & Identity fraud-under an appropriated Semitic God…
"Should we have accepted White South Africa?" - with the benefit of hindsight, the answer you give to this is interesting.
@@Peter-ov6xh your comment is ambiguous. Would help if you made it plain and simple. Your comment implies that your answer to that question is "yes". That's a bit disturbing.