Jewish Diaspora Reconsidered: Worksop at Durham University

Since the birth of political Zionism, accounts of Jewish diaspora have risked falling into a simple binary: either the endorsement of a sovereign Jewish state or the rejection of this vision and embrace of diasporic life. This workshop will assemble original perspectives on exilic life that complicate the opposition of sovereign statehood to ethnic and national dispersion. We shall thus consider Jewish history as a site of competing diasporist ideologies that adhere to diverging political visions. Such divergences emanate, among others, from the juxtaposition of a Eurocentric perspective on Jewish exile to Arab-Jewish memory cultures and other non-Western standpoints. Similarly, the endorsement of Jewish life in the diaspora will be shown to adhere to conflicting political ideologies. These include the longstanding belief that Jewish national sovereignty must be bound with the arrival of the messiah, but also critiques of the State of Israel that take it to permeate a messianic national credo instead of centring civil life on political secularism. Another challenge to common political appropriations of Jewish diaspora rests on visions for Jewish collectivism that detach political engagement from national sovereignty altogether.

Organisers:  Dr Yael Almog (Durham) and Professor Sue Vice (Sheffield)

Thursday 01 December 2022 

Friday 02 December 2022