Next Year in the Diaspora

JBooks is running a lot of interesting content lately, and I thought you might be interested, in general…

In particular, I thought you might want to read this review of this book, New Jews:The End of the Diaspora. 

Full disclosure: I’ve not read it (yet), but it sounds interesting.  Like something we might want to tussle over here at Faithhacker.

(Speaking of which, do we need a Jewcy Bookclub?  We could do a weekly or monthly discussion online, in a chatroom or something… just a thought )

But to get back to my point!

From the sound of the review… this book suggests that the diaspora is at the center of Jewish life and culture.  Not Israel.  Wow.

From the review:

New Jews is a thoughtful, persuasive case for why the Diaspora matters. That may sound obvious: the “Diaspora,” after all, is where the majority of the world’s Jews live. But as the authors explain, Jews have a tendency to see their world like the old Saul Steinberg cartoon from the New Yorker, with Israel at the center, and a dozen or so less-important islands floating around it. Tilting that map toward “Diaspora” is the mission behind New Jews, which makes the provocative case that the Jewish future lies outside of Israel.

And from the Amazon page:

"New Jews makes the provocative argument that the Israel-Diaspora dichotomy no longer exists. In a series of engaging ethnographies of Jewish communities in America, Russia and Israel, Aviv and Shneer reveal a new generation of Jews embarked on a renaissance liberated from old ideologies and committed to creating homes where they live. A celebration of pluralism, this sure-to-be controversial book finds Jewish unity not in slogans but in the common search for new identities."

For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the Promised Land, the center of the Jewish universe and the place of final destination. In New Jews, Caryn Aviv and David Shneer provocatively argue that there is a new generation of Jews who don't consider themselves to be eternally wandering, forever outsiders within their communities and seeking to one day find their homeland. Instead, these New Jews are at home, whether it be in Buenos Aires, San Francisco or Berlin, and are rooted within communities of their own choosing. Aviv and Shneer argue that Jews have come to the end of their diaspora; wandering no more, today's Jews are settled.

Hmmmmm….  I haven’t read it, and I’m not saying I agree.  But hmmmmmm….