Spiritual Homelands: The Cultural Experience of Exile, Place and Displacement among Jews and Others, eds. Asher D. Biemann, Richard I. Cohen, and Sarah E. Wobick-Segev (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019) (original) (raw)
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Forms of Exile in Jewish Literture and Thought Twentieth Century Central Europe and MIgration to America, 2021
An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-64469-406-0. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.
Studia Liturgica, 2020
Memory is not only a biological capability but also a social practice of constructing the past, which is carried out by social communities (e.g., the nation state, the family, and the church). Since the 1980s, memory studies has intertwined the concept of cultural memory with national narratives of the past that are to legitimize the connection between state, territory, and people. In the present time of growing migratory movements, memory studies has abandoned this “methodological nationalism” and turned its attention towards dynamic constructions of cultural memory. Indeed, memories cross national and cultural borderlines in various ways. The cultural memory of the Jewish people, ever since its beginning, has been defined by mobility. As the exile and forty years of wandering in the wilderness preceded the Conquest of Canaan and the building of the temple, the cultural memory of the Jewish people has always been based on the principle of extraterritoriality. The caesura of the Hol...
Since ancient times, diaspora has been intrinsically connected to Judaism. Whereas modernization and emancipation at the end of the nineteenth century had promised to end the principal rootlessness of Europe's Jewish population, the rise of Nazism once again set them back into a diasporic and extraterritorial state. According to Marianne Hirsch, descendants of exiled Holocaust survivors unwillingly inherit their parents' continued dislocation. As the homeland of their ancestors has 'ceased to exist', they are destined to remain forever exiled from the 'space of identity', even if they choose to return to the former homeland of their parents. According to Hirsch, the expression of this ongoing diaspora gives rise to a special narrative genre that is governed by photographic aesthetics. The authors' imaginative completion of their parents' experiences in the work of postmemory imitates the capacity of photography to simultaneously make present and 'signal absence and loss'. This article will differentiate Hirsch's approach to artistic representations of diaspora in the aftermath of the Holocaust. By outlining different conceptual-izations of diaspora, I will show that in addition to the aesthetics of photography the postmemory of homelessness can also be expressed by means of nostalgic aesthetics and transcultural aesthetics. The article exemplifies all three of these types of aesthetics by investigating works by the contemporary
At Home in Exile: Aspects of the Jewish Diaspora
Special Issue: Interferences in architecture and urban planning. Architectural teaching and research, 2013
Discussing the Jewish space requires a comprehensive approach on its traditional typologies: religious space and for purification, space dedicated to study, and space for community gatherings. Simultaneously reflecting these coordinates and overlapping their physical attributes with their formal limitations, spiritual valences, and possible contextual meanings, the Jewish space might be an absolute community space. In spite of the vicissitudes of History and social and political persecution, generally, Jewish architecture used to mime and retrieve specific elements from the adoptive nations and features of the prominent styles of the period. The gradual emancipation and liberation of Jews from the " traditional " ghetto, by the mid nineteenth century, allowed the "opening" of Jewish quarters, the flourishing of Jewish life (especially cultural), and, above all, the development of an architecture as an expression of this newly achieved social condition. Jewish communities contributed, often essentially, to the rising of the urban life quality, and, generally, to the prosperity of the cities that gave them this chance. Hence, the two valences of Jewish architecture: one identitary, and the other programmatic. Meanwhile, the synagogue has always provided the " centrality " of life for all the Diaspora communities. During the last century, the community centre has pursued this role, too. Under these circumstances, which would still be the meaning of the " Diaspora " ? How might we define the " exile " , the " home " , and the " homeland " ?
Diaspora, postmemory and the transcultural turn in contemporary Jewish writing
Since ancient times, diaspora has been intrinsically connected to Judaism. Whereas modernization and emancipation at the end of the nineteenth century had promised to end the principal rootlessness of Europe's Jewish population, the rise of Nazism once again set them back into a diasporic and extraterritorial state. According to Marianne Hirsch, descendants of exiled Holocaust survivors unwillingly inherit their parents' continued dislocation. As the homeland of their ancestors has 'ceased to exist', they are destined to remain forever exiled from the 'space of identity', even if they choose to return to the former homeland of their parents. According to Hirsch, the expression of this ongoing diaspora gives rise to a special narrative genre that is governed by photographic aesthetics. The authors' imaginative completion of their parents' experiences in the work of postmemory imitates the capacity of photography to simultaneously make present and 'signal absence and loss'. This article will differentiate Hirsch's approach to artistic representations of diaspora in the aftermath of the Holocaust. By outlining different conceptual-izations of diaspora, I will show that in addition to the aesthetics of photography the postmemory of homelessness can also be expressed by means of nostalgic aesthetics and transcultural aesthetics. The article exemplifies all three of these types of aesthetics by investigating works by the contemporary
Judaica Librarianship, 2022
Kanon im Exil is an interdisciplinary biographical study of the reading canon and writings of five German-Jewish authors who emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Caroline Jessen's eloquent and creative work, an abridged version of her dissertation, brings together literary and exile studies, social and cultural history, history of the book, and the history of ideas. It is embedded in the specific political context of a newly formed society in Palestine/Israel, which chose Hebrew as its unifying language and embarked on new national literary expressions and cultural narratives. Immigrants to Palestine found themselves in a very different situation in comparison to those in other prominent places of German-Jewish emigration in the 1930s-mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom-where the newcomers entered established societies and negotiated their space there. The lives of the five people profiled in this book offer an impression of the tensions and conflict areas they encountered. Jessen argues that the conscious and unconscious discourse with the German literary canon that each of these writers grappled with is an invaluable tool for the study of contemporary discourses as an expression of cultural memory.
Of Homelands and Promised Lands: a meditation on exile
I want to take a tour through the ways that language, culture and religious practice has shaped and is shaped by the dialectic between a redeemed promised land and the open-ended uncertainties of exile. I hope that this can help deepen our appreciation of the complexities and opportunities of contemporary Jewish life both in the Diaspora and in the Land of Israel.
Diaspora, Exile, and Displacement: Literary and Theoretical Perspectives
Violent upheavals of the twentieth century -imperialism, the two world wars, struggles for national independence, decolonization, and the Cold War --have made exile and dislocation the great preoccupations of literary works, autobiography, and theoretical writings. Globalization, driven by unprecedented trade and new technologies of communication, information, and travel, has accelerated the movement of people, commodities, ideas, and cultures across the world. Diaspora is thus treated here not as a singular but rather historically varied and heterogeneous phenomenon. The transnational mobility of people may be the result of forced or voluntary migration, self-exile or expulsion. Refugees, people in transit, are the product of war, ideological heterodoxy and persecution, ethnic conflict, and natural calamity.