Embracing Exile

Jewish people have always wandered. According to their origin story, they wandered from Ur of Chaldees to Canaan, then Egypt, and then back to Canaan. From there, they were exiled to Babylon, where they lived for centuries. They also settled in Persia, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, England, and the United States, among other places. Diaspora became normal 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 they could fulfill their obligations to God. Embracing Exile analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studies of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions. It offers revised readings of the Bible's book of Esther, a survey of Talmudic treatments of exile, an in-depth analysis of the thought of the Maharal of Prague, as well as the work of Philip Roth, among other modern authors. David Kraemer shows that Diaspora Jews through the ages insisted that God joined them in their exiles and that, as citizens of the world, Jews could only live throughout the world. The result is a convincing assertion 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.