All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official and popular culture, and yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive and influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century CE, and the assertion of both cultural and racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine and the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. Here, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times--when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.--From publisher description.

"The reality of diaspora has shaped Jewish history, its demography, its economic relationships, and the politics which that impacted the lives of Jews with each other and with the non-Jews among whom they lived. Jews have moved around the globe since the beginning of their history, maintaining relationships with their former Jewish neighbors, who had chosen other destinations and at the same time forging relationships in their new homes with Jews from widely different places of origin"--

Argues that antisemitism in England has always been either disregarded, underestimated, or misunderstood. England has seen four forms of antisemitism during its history: a radical antisemitism, which ended with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290; a literary antisemitism; a quotidian antisemitism of insult and partial exclusion that has existed since the mid-17th century; and an emergent, antisemitic anti-Zionism. Various forms and motifs of antisemitism were invented in England (e.g. expulsion) and others were adapted and extended - e.g. it was in England that the blood libel arose in its canonic medieval form, and where its first literary representation appeared, written by Thomas of Monmouth. Dwells on antisemitic motifs in English literature, from the 13th century ballad "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter" to Tom Paulin's poem "Killed in Crossfire" (2001). Since the 17th century, the antisemitism has been weak and mainly verbal; antisemitic zealots have been few in number and marginal in their influence. Nonetheless, it existed and was widespread amongst the populace. Modern political antisemitism emerged in the 1860s and continued into the 20th century, when the Jews came to be perceived as a challenge to British security. Dwells on the English antisemitic mentality, as well as on antisemitic anti-Zionism. Discerns two forms of the latter: secular anti-Zionism, supported by the left and post-left; and confessional anti-Zionism, either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian conservative.

The idea for this book came to Larry Tye as he traveled overseas as a reporter for the Boston Globe. In each city he visited he was intrigued by a reawakening of practice and spirit of the long repressed Jewish community. And the more communities he saw close-up, the clearer it became to him that the Jewish world was being reshaped and revitalized in ways that were not reflected in what he was reading about the disappearing diaspora and the vanishing Jews of America. The result is Home Lands, an narrative that tells the story of the new Jewish diaspora. Tye picked seven Jewish communities from Boston to Buenos Aires and Dusseldorf to Dnepropetrovsk deep in the Ukraine, and in each he zeroes in on a single family or congregation whose tale reflects the wider community's history and current situation. He met each community's leaders, talked with their scores of young people and old, and went with them to High Holiday services and Sabbath celebrations. The first impression that emerges from his travels is each city's uniqueness. Far more striking than the differences, however, is the unity. Jews all over the world still have enough customs and rituals in common for outsiders to see them as part of the same people, and for them to define themselves that way. It is that new comfort level, that sense of finally feel comfortable in the lands where they are living, that is at the heart of this engrossing book. Readers' eyes will be opened to how Germany, just a generation after the genocide, has the world's fastest-growing Jewish population; how the Jews of Buenos Aires have carved a place for themselves in a land that also gave refuge to Nazi henchmen like Adolph Eichman, and how Ireland is home to a tight-knit Jewish community that, remarkably, has produced Jewish Lord Mayors in Belfast, Cork and, twice from the same family, in Dublin. In Boston, Tye tells the story of his own family, whose roots run deep in the city's Jewish community. Home Lands is a book that is deeply personal even as it sheds light on the larger Jewish experience.

Tudor Parfitt examines a myth which is based on one of the world's oldest mysteries - what happened to the lost tribes of Israel? Christians and Jews alike have attached great importance to the legendary fate of these tribes which has had a remarkable impact on their ideologies throughout history. Each tribe of Israel claimed descent from one of the twelve sons of Jacob and the land of Israel was eventually divided up between them. Following a schism which formed after the death of Solomon, ten of the tribes set up an independent northern kingdom, whilst those of Judah and Levi set up a separate southern kingdom. In 721BC the ten northern tribes were ethnically cleansed by the Assyrians and the Bible states they were placed: 'in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the city of Medes.' The Bible also foretold that one day they would be reunited with the southern tribes in the final redemption of the people of Israel. Their subsequent history became a tapestry of legend and hearsay. The belief persisted that they had been 'lost' in some remote part of the world and there were countless suggestions and claims as to where. At a lecture Parfitt gave some years ago in Cape Town he was approached by a group of Africans who claimed to be members of the Lemba tribe from a mysterious lost city of Sena, and of Jewish descent. The final chapter will attempt to reveal, using a combination of linguistics and genetics, what did become of these lost tribes.

Exile, Statelessness, and Migration explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century―in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib's starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being ?eternally half-other,? led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one's ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? Benhabib isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century.

"The aftermath of World War II was a period of massive Jewish migration. More than a million Jews came to settle in the new state of Israel; hundreds of thousands moved to North America, Australia, and France, while tens of thousands resettled themselves elsewhere in Europe and the world. Emigration was, in turn, paralled by large-scale movement among second-generation Jews from the great urban centers to the suburbs. Until recently it has seemed as though the Jewish people had, in the words of the Bible, reached a situation of rest and landed inheritance. However, there is considerable evidence that Jews are still moving: from the former Soviet Union, to and from Israel, and within nations where they have been long resident. Still Moving examines the causes and character of contemporary migration in Israel and throughout the Diaspora.The contributors to this volume adopt a cross-cultural comparative approach. Part 1 establishes the context of the new migration globally with specific concentration on its effects on the institutions of Israeli democracy. Part 2 surveys immigration to Israel in the 1990s with particular emphasis on the wave of Russian emigres since the fall of the Soviet Union. Internal migration from rural to urban centers is also explored. Migration to the Diaspora is covered in part 3. The Jewish identity of Soviet Jews is compared to their American and Canadian counterparts. Economic performance and problems of multigenerational families among emigres are also treated, as are the controversies surrounding politically motivated emigration from Israel. Part 4 focuses on the changing nature of the Diaspora and its relations with Israel. Beyond its grounding in Jewish culture and history, Still Moving frames questions that are central to understanding contemporary migration in general: Does immigration accelerate or retard the abilities of host countries to restructure economically? How does greater ethnic diversity affect the social and cultural life of cities? What factors help immigrants integrate into the wider community? Does immigration contribute to the creation of a marginalized underclass? Still Moving will be essential reading for historians, sociologists, Jewish studies specialists, and policy analysts" --

Gruen (history and classics, Berkeley) explores four centuries of Jewish life within the dominant classical civilization, from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. He begins with an investigation of "the conspicuous absence of a philosophy of Diaspora" and attempts very capably to identify the traces of the concept among Jews ... More under Roman rule. He looks at the cultures of the Jews living in Rome, Asia, and Alexandria, finding very vibrant communities in all three places. In exploring Jewish views of the Diaspora, Gruen offers up two chapters on Diaspora humor, one about the way biblical tales were retold and the lessons they could convey and the other about creating fanciful yet didactic stories. Then the author looks at the evidence about the Jewish image of the Greeks and Romans, a subject usually investigated from the opposite viewpoint. This leads into his final chapter on the Jewish view of the homeland during the period, a view not much different from today's. Gruen admits that his work is far from exhaustive, but it is certainly substantial, fascinating, and scholarly

"Defying the binary and Eurocentric view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ella Shohat's work, as a whole, dares to engage the deeper historical and cultural questions swirling around colonialism, Orientalism, and nationalism. Spanning several decades, Shohat's work has introduced conceptual frameworks that have fundamentally challenged the conventional understandings of Arabs and Jews, Palestine, Zionism, and the Middle East. Collected now in a single volume, this book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time"--

"Defying the binary and Eurocentric view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ella Shohat's work, as a whole, dares to engage the deeper historical and cultural questions swirling around colonialism, Orientalism, and nationalism. Spanning several decades, Shohat's work has introduced conceptual frameworks that have fundamentally challenged the conventional understandings of Arabs and Jews, Palestine, Zionism, and the Middle East. Collected now in a single volume, this book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time"--

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern world For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of—and indeed reactions to—the central event of that history: emancipation. In this book, David Sorkin seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel. Emancipation, Sorkin shows, was not a one-time or linear event that began with the Enlightenment or French Revolution and culminated with Jews' acquisition of rights in Central Europe in 1867–71 or Russia in 1917. Rather, emancipation was and is a complex, multidirectional, and ambiguous process characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies. For example, American Jews mobilized twice for emancipation: in the nineteenth century for political rights, and in the twentieth for lost civil rights. Similarly, Israel itself has struggled from the start to institute equality among its heterogeneous citizens. By telling the story of this foundational but neglected event, Jewish Emancipation reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium.

"Embracing Exile is a comprehensive history of Jewish responses to and conceptions of their exiles/diasporas. Jews have, since their beginnings, been a wandering people. According to their origin story, they wandered from Ur of Chaldees to Canaan to Egypt and then back to Canaan. From there, they were exiled to Babylon, where they built their longest-lived home, one that survived until the twentieth century. Over the span of centuries, they resettled in Persia, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States, often flourishing. Thanks to these experiences, Diaspora became "natural" to Jews, and though they may have hoped for a return to their Promised Land at the End of Days, they made sense of their many homes, defending Diaspora as the realm where Jewish life could grow and Jews fulfill their covenantal obligations in the company of their God. The texts and expressions the volume documents in Defending Diaspora include biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions. The book offers revised readings of the book of Esther and other biblical texts, a survey of Talmudic treatments of exile, an in-depth analysis of the thought of the Maharal of Prague, analyses of works by Philip Roth, and other modern authors, and much more. The book shows that lament has not been the most common Jewish response to diaspora and that Zionism is not the natural outcome of either Jewish ideology or history"-- Provided by publisher.

In Scattered Among the Peoples, historian Allan Levine presents a vivid and distinctly human perspective on how the Jewish people survived eight hundred years of persecution and forced migration, building and rebuilding their lives and communities. Structured as a chronological series of twelve moment-in-time portraits, focusing on individuals and their interaction with their families and society, the narrative carries readers through the economic, political, social and intellectual climates of some of the world's most famous and fascinating cosmopolitan centers. From the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, to the emigration of Soviet Jews from Russia following the Six Day War in Israel in 1967, Levine's masterful account describes expulsions and scandals, false messiahs and the first ghetto, assassinations, blood libels, the learning and wealth that sprung up in distant cities, and some devastating reversals of fortune. Above all, this compelling saga chronicles the lives of a vibrant cast of characters-well-known historical figures, as well as many who have been forgotten. The successes and the failures of so many-as teachers, rabbis, merchants, writers, soldiers, and physicians-add a colorful and accessible dimension to this sprawling history of the Diaspora. Scattered Among the Peoples is an impressive and immensely readable book, one that is an important contribution to the literature of Jewish history.

The unique duality of Jewish existence, wherein a major Jewish centre in the Land of Israel flourished alongside a large and prosperous diaspora, was one of the outstanding features of Second Temple and post-Temple Jewish life. As in modern times, ongoing Jewish dispersion raised questions that went to the heart of Jewish self-identity, and declarations of allegiance to the ancestral homeland were frequently accompanied by seemingly contrary expressions of 'local-patriotism' on the part of Jewish diaspora communities. The destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 CE, and the subsequent failure under Bar-Kokhba to revive political independence (135 CE) forced Jews in Judaea as well as in the diaspora to re-evaluate the nature of the bonds that linked Jews throughout the world to 'The Land', and at the same time effected a re-examination of the authority structure that claimed priority for the communal leaders still functioning in Jewish Palestine. The chapters of this book, first delivered in Oxford as the Third Jacobs Lectures in Rabbinic Thought in January 1994, address a broad spectrum of questions relating to the centre-diaspora reality of Jewish life in Late Antiquity.

Exile is an investigative memoir where faith, history, and anthropology meet. The breadth of countries covered--combined with historical analysis, personal anecdotes, and interviews--is not only certain to delight the senses, but also foster a greater understanding of the Jewish experience.

Book by Neusner, Jacob

Traversing farflung Jewish communities in South Africa, Australia, Texas, Brazil, China, New Zealand, Quebec, and elsewhere, this collection explores the compelling notion of "frontier" in the Jewish experience as a historical/geographical reality and a conceptual framework. Articulating the tension between the center/periphery model and the frontier model. Jewries at the Frontier shows how the dynamic confrontation between and among cultures and peoples brings marginalized experiences to the center and provides a new, multivocal account of Jewish history.