Introduction: Diaspora’s Destiny
CHAPTER 1
We’ll Rot till We Stink
CHAPTER 2
Defenders of Diaspora
CHAPTER 3
The Secularization of Particularism
CHAPTER 4
A Tale of Two Rabbis
CHAPTER 5
The Lost Jews, the Last Jews
CHAPTER 6
Anti-Anti-Semitism
CHAPTER 7
The End of Exile History?
Personal Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. The author and editor of more than twenty books, he is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Harper's, and the Atlantic. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Mr. Wolfe quotes Christopher Hitchens’s remark that ‘Israeli Jews
are a part of the Diaspora, not a group that has escaped
from it.’ Jews have found ways of living in exile, even
thriving in it, but nothing forces them to live in exile from their
ideals. Alan Wolfe’s book is an expression of allegiance to those
ideals and the people who have wrestled with them—keeping them
alive wherever they may live.”
—New York Times
“It’s good for the Jews that Wolfe has tackled this subject. He has
long been one of America’s best nonfiction book reviewers and
deploys that talent again and again in At Home in Exile.”
—New York Times Book Review
“[Wolfe’s] thoughtful argument gradually and powerfully supports
his position that a symbiotic relationship between Israelis and
Jews living elsewhere (mostly in the U.S.) is good for both.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Wolfe, a secular Jew who teaches at Boston College, has made an
important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Jewish
life. At Home in Exile is one of the most important secular Jewish
books of the year.”
—The Jewish Advocate
“[Wolfe’s] book is a nothing short of a call to arms.”
—Jewish Journal
“Has the Diaspora been good for the Jews? Alan Wolfe, with the
deftness and erudition of a born academic contrarian, answers with
a resounding yes. He makes a powerful case that the Jewish people
would never have become a protean cultural force had they been
confined to one biblical enclave throughout their history: Jews
have been enriched by other cultures as well as having enriched
them, in spite (and sometimes because) of the persecutions endured.
The epigraph for this provocative book might be, ‘If we forget
thee, oh New York, let our right hands lose their cunning.’”
—Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason
“For the last two thousand years, the Jewish people have lived
almost entirely in the Diaspora. Zionism is about 130 years old,
and the State of Israel just sixty-six, but between them they
overwhelmingly dominate the modern Jewish agenda. In this
wide-ranging and meticulously researched book, the author serves up
a feisty defense of Diaspora living and its crucial importance for
Jewish continuity.”
—Dr. David J. Goldberg, OBE, rabbi emeritus of the Liberal Jewish
Synagogue, London
“Alan Wolfe’s meditation on the Jews and their diaspora(s) is
simultaneously erudite, thoughtful, and frequently quite moving.
One can disagree on occasion, but this is most often because of
Wolfe’s generosity to his subjects and his willingness to assume
the best about the motives of those with whom he disagrees. A minor
flaw—if it can be called that—in a major work. The book earns my
admiration as a scholar and my gratitude as a Jew.”
—Eric Alterman, columnist for The Nation and author of Why We’re
Liberals
“In this energetic examination of contemporary Jewish debates, the
distinguished political thinker Alan Wolfe gives us a sharp and
insightful analysis that is original, critical, and refreshingly
straightforward.”
—Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth
College
“Arguing for a radical reconsideration of exile as a potentially
empowering political condition, Wolfe makes a provocative and
moving case for a Jewish universalism that recognizes the virtues
of minority status. He reminds us of the richness of Jewish
political debates in the past around Zionism, in the process
joining and furthering much-needed discussion. Gracefully and
compellingly written, At Home in Exile will surely raise hackles,
but it deserves sober consideration.”
—Deborah Dash Moore, general editor of City of Promises: A History
of Jews in New York
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