“The Necessity of Exile”

In my column last March, “How to be Jewish in the Diaspora,” I made mention of Rabbi Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, whose book, “The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance” (2023), argues that Jews living in the diaspora outside Israel should celebrate the land and the life in which they find themselves. At the time that I was working on that column, I had only recently heard of Magid and had not read his newest book; I had learned a bit about Magid’s ideas from Marc Tracy, author of a Jan. 15, 2024 article in “The New York Times,” “Is Israel Part of What It Means to be Jewish? Now, the Answer Varies.”

By happy coincidence, my daughter Karen sent me a copy of “The Necessity of Exile” as a Hanukkah gift. Within two weeks of receiving it, I had read each of the essays that comprised its nine chapters. While every one of the challenging essays deserves careful and expansive commentary, I will limit myself to Chapter Nine, an essay which bears the title of the book itself, “The Necessity of Exile;” this essay carries the subtitle, “Reading Exile Back into Jewish History.”

Magid begins the final chapter of his book by quoting words from Arnold Eisen’s 2014 essay, “Zionism, American Jewry, and the ‘Negation of Diaspora:’” “Virtually all Zionist theorists and activists have agreed in one way of another…that galut (exile) and golah (a word connoting both exile and diaspora in Zionist usage) must be opposed, condemned, denied legitimacy…”

Magid elaborates upon Eisen’s statement: “A common assumption among Zionists is that the nationalist movement’s success rests on this notion of Jewish life in the diaspora as dangerous (either physically or spiritually) and somehow inferior to Jewish life in the land of Israel…

“The idea is summed up in a phrase that became a tenet of Zionist ideology and culture: shlilat ha-gola (or shlilat ha-galut, meaning “the negation of the diaspora” (or “the negation of exile”)….” From the standpoint of a number of Zionists, Jews who do not live in Israel are not truly Jewish!!

Throughout the bulk of Chapter Nine, Magid examines the thinking of four Zionists who, in one way or another, affirm both the diaspora and the experience of exile that is associated with it: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), the Lubavich Rebbe; the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (1887-1979); the Nobel Prize winning author, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991); Rabbi Samuel Tameris (1869-1931), well-known Lithuanian pacifist. What unites all four of these Zionists, despite their profound differences, is their rejection of the notions of negating the diaspora coupled with the negation of the experience of exile.

From the perspective of all four of these thinkers, the diaspora is to be understood as a positive, creative form of exile – not something to be merely tolerated; rather, the places outside Israel, where most Jews in our world – though a very slim majority – happen to live, should be cherished and celebrated for the opportunities they offer for vibrant Jewish life.

One of the greatest early Zionist thinkers, Ahad Ha-Am (1856-1927), died well before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Nevertheless, he had a vision of how the Jews of the land of Israel and the eventual State of Israel and the Jews of the diaspora might live with each other in a healthy, creative, and mutually supportive way. Ahad Ha-Am saw the Jewish community in the land of Israel as a potential merkaz ruchani, a Hebrew-speaking cultural center that would enrich and nourish Jewish life throughout the world. At the same time, Jews in the diaspora would contribute culturally, politically, and economically to life in the cultural center. To echo Ahad aHa-Am’s Ha-Am’s analogy, a---a wheel cannot be a wheel without a hub, but a wheel is also not a wheel when it lacks a rim.

Though I confess that I still consider myself a liberal Zionist, I utterly reject those forms of Zionism which embrace the notion of shlilat ha-golah, the negation of the diaspora. On the contrary, I affirm my identity as an American diaspora Jew. Depending upon the time of year, the balance between my American and Jewish identities shifts predictably – though at times unpredictably.

Thus, on July 4 and Thanksgiving Day, my identity as an American supersedes my identity as a Jew, while on Yom Kippur and Seder night, it is my sense of being a Jew that most deeply enriches me. I believe that my need as a diaspora Jew to constantly negotiate among my multiple identities makes me a better American, a better Jew, and – yes – a better person.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.