New Book: Baron, Obligation in Exile

Baron, Ilan Zvi. Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2015.

 

Combining political theory and sociological interviews spanning four countries, Israel, the USA, Canada and the UK, Ilan Zvi Baron explores the Jewish Diaspora/Israel relationship and suggests that instead of looking at Diaspora Jews’ relationship with Israel as a matter of loyalty, it is one of obligation.

Baron develops an outline for a theory of transnational political obligation and, in the process, provides an alternative way to understand and explore the Diaspora/Israel relationship than one mired in partisan debates about whether or not being a good Jew means supporting Israel. He concludes by arguing that critique of Israel is not just about Israeli policy, but about what it means to be a Diaspora Jew.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

• Introduction
• 1. the Limits of Political Obligation
• 2. Power and Obligation
• 3.Between Zion and Diaspora: Internationalisms, Transnationalisms, Obligation and Security
• 4. From Eating Hummus to the Sublime
• 5. Obligation and Critique
• Conclusion: Obligation in Exile, Critique and the Future of the Jewish Diaspora

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

 

New Article: Loeffler, The Invisibility of American Jewish Politics

Loeffler, James. “Nationalism without a Nation?: On the Invisibility of American Jewish Politics.” Jewish Quarterly Review 105.3 (2015): 367-98.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2015.0019

 

Abstract
In this article, I launch a wholesale reexamination of the under-studied subject of American Jewish nationalism. With the focus on the road to Israeli statehood, scholars have ignored the complex, contradictory patterns of nationalist identification that marked American Zionist politics in the first half of the twentieth century. I explore this thesis through a re-reading of two key historical episodes: the American Jewish Congress movement of 1914–1920 and the American Jewish Conference, 1943–1949. In the process, I discuss the relationship between liberalism and nationalism in American Jewish political thought; the political conflicts between Jewish nationalism and anti-nationalism; and the nomenclature of Jewish nationhood in the United States. Ultimately, I conclude that the consensus position of American Jewish support for Israel after 1948 emerged only after statist Zionism had been separated from a more capacious form of American Jewish nationalism that existed before 1948. This helps us understand the origins and rise to significance of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), with implications for the current moment of American Jewish politics.