Evolving Diaspora: Exile and the Jewish Diaspora Before and After the Jewish State with Shaul Magid

There was never a time when Jews did not live in Diaspora, even as the term was invented by the Greeks to describe Jewish dispersion after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. And yet each phase of the Jewish Diaspora was not the same. Coterminous, and yet still distinct from, the concept of exile, Jews lived in many locales that they called “home” that they remained deeply invested in, even as they retained an imaginary vision of returning to a “homeland” in the land of Israel. How, if at all, has the establishment of the state of Israel changed that? In this talk, we will explore the contours of the ever-moving targets of Diaspora, exile, homeland, and the future of the Jews in what may be the beginning of a new phase of Jewish Diaspora.

Shaul Magid is professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth and Visiting Professor of Modern Judaism and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. He is also a Kogod Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. His latest book is The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance.