The Necessity of Exile, Shaul Magid
The Necessity of Exile, Shaul Magid
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The Necessity of Exile
Essays from a Distance

Author: Shaul Magid

Narrator: Shaul Magid

Unabridged: 7 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ayin Press

Published: 09/13/2024


Synopsis

A timely, progressive collection of essays on the Jewish relationship to Zionism and exile.

What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to these questions, and the future of Jewish life will depend on how we respond to them in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition.

On many levels, Zionism was conceived as an attempt to “end the exile” of the Jewish people, both politically and theologically. In a series of incisive essays, Magid challenges us to consider the price of diminishing or even erasing the exilic character of Jewish life. A thought-provoking work of political imagination, The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel|Palestine, antisemitism, diaspora, and a broken world in need of repair.

Ayin Press is proud to partner with JBI Library to make many of our books available in accessible formats such as Large Print, Braille, and Audio for free to anyone who is blind, has low vision, has a physical disability that makes it hard to use standard print, or has a reading disability. Please reach out to JBI Library at JBIlibrary.org or 212-545-8025 to learn more.

Reviews

Goodreads review by krn ਕਰਨ on September 01, 2024

These essays were written, by the author's own admission, from a distance. My reaction is from a greater distance still. Inexplicable, really. Why would the timely meditations of an American Haredi Jew cast such a spell on on a British Sikh of Punjabi origin? Because of that word: exile And its coro......more

Goodreads review by Miriam on July 05, 2024

I cannot express how important this book has been to my thinking as a disaporic Jew. I highly recommend reading this chapter by chapter with others; I bookclubbed it like that so we got to read it slowly and dissect/process it. There were some chapters in here that I’ve talked about again and again......more

Goodreads review by Leib on March 04, 2025

Book Review (1591 words; 5m47s to read) Shaul Magid The Necessity of Exile 4/5 stars "Too many words loses information" ******* The number one value of this book is that it is an overview of a lot of thought from different Jewish non/anti Zionists. You have loopy Jewish academics on one hand (Judith "they......more

Goodreads review by David on April 13, 2024

The Necessity of Exile is the work of a rabbi who spent much of his life in Israel. It is a Jewish book for Jews grieving — not October 7th, not the growing and very real antisemitism of Trump's America — but the realization, deep down, that something they have long loved is a cruel and bitter fanta......more