As a US based Jewish scholar (Kraemer is a professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America), the author is part of a larger movement in current Jewish thinking that is emphasising the life- enhancing intellectual and spiritual benefits of diaspora life, past and present.
Kraemer’s meticulous scholarship traces the ways in which diaspora life was seen in a benign, positive light, even within the Bible; then in talmudic texts and in medieval writers like Judah Halevi, through the golden age of Spanish Jewry to Isaac Luria’s mystical speculations and the Maharal of Prague’s theology of exile; and on into the Chasidic movement’s reverence for the sacred nature of everyday life wherever it was being lived – “Zion” is not a geographical location, but wherever the connection to the divine is enacted.
These were eras when Jews had no political power, but despite having a liturgy replete with hopes of a literal “return to Zion” were able to manifest an extraordinary creativity and resilience, evolving a Jewish way of being in the world while living alongside (and not always separate from) their non-Jewish neighbours.
This way of telling the Jewish story is far from what the Columbia University historian Salo Baron memorably described as the “lachrymose” view of history in which Jewish continuity is a centuries-long battle against discrimination, persecution and victimhood.
Indeed it is Kraemer’s subversive thesis that the legitimacy of a fulfilling Jewish life being possible within any diaspora context was a longstanding counter-view that was “suppressed” under the pressure to accept the rabbinic narrative that exile was a divine punishment for the sins of the people.
When it comes to the modern period, Kraemer charts how the voices of the Jewish enlightenment (the Haskalah) that led to both the 19th-century Reform movement and, gradually, secular Jewish scholarship, particularly in Germany (illustrated by figures such as Franz Rosenzweig and Yehezkel Kaufman) embraced the possibility of full Jewish emancipation and self-expression throughout Europe.
A scattered Jewry, granted full civic rights, could fulfil the age-old dream of being a “light to the nations”. In this sense early Zionism at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, was considered a betrayal of the universalising mission of the Jewish people. Even after the State of Israel was established (for historically compelling reasons, and in spite of the decimation of European Jewry), Jewish scholars both secular and religious advocated for an ethical Judaism enacted within what contemporary Jewry experienced as their own homelands. The contribution of Jews in the 20th century to the arts and sciences, business and technology, the legal system, economics, and the advancement of social wellbeing – this transnational project that Jews found themselves engaged in did not depend on the ancient dream of a return to a strip of land in the Middle East.
On the contrary. As Kraemer’s timely book illustrates, the notion of Jewish “exile” may not only have outlived its usefulness, but also the models of adaptation that Jews have accomplished. Balancing fidelity to distinctive cultural traditions with an openness to the cross-fertilising potential of interaction with host communities may be a model of vital suggestiveness for a world in which refugees across the globe seek to find a new homeland while retaining their own cultural allegiances.
Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora
by David Kraemer
Oxford UP
