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The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance
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 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.
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 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.
295 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 14, 2023
108 people are currently reading
836 people want to read
About the author
Shaul Magid
37 books29 followersThe Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies
Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program
My teaching focuses primarily on Kabbala, Hasidism, religious fundamentalism, Israel/Palestine, and modern and American Jewish thought and culture. Areas of interest and research include sixteenth century Kabbala, Hasidism, American Judaism, comparative religion, and contemporary conceptions of Jewish religiosity. I am the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (SUNY Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008) which was awarded the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for best book in religion in the textual studies category, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013) and Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). I am the series editor for “Post-Rabbinic Judaisms” for Academic Studies Press. I am also a regular contributor to Tikkun Magazine, Zeek Magazine, Open Zion, and Religion Dispatches.
Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program
My teaching focuses primarily on Kabbala, Hasidism, religious fundamentalism, Israel/Palestine, and modern and American Jewish thought and culture. Areas of interest and research include sixteenth century Kabbala, Hasidism, American Judaism, comparative religion, and contemporary conceptions of Jewish religiosity. I am the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (SUNY Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008) which was awarded the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for best book in religion in the textual studies category, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013) and Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). I am the series editor for “Post-Rabbinic Judaisms” for Academic Studies Press. I am also a regular contributor to Tikkun Magazine, Zeek Magazine, Open Zion, and Religion Dispatches.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
May 7, 2024
These essays from Shaul Magid are really inside baseball. The overall thrust is an argument that the American Jewish community should move beyond Zionism properly defined as the cornerstone of the collective identity.
After an introduction, Magid starts with a quick history lesson. Namely, before 1948 and 1967, the American Jewish community defined itself in several different ways; and, this all changed after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Six-Day War in 1967 alongside collective processing of the trauma of the Holocaust. According to Magid, Zionism properly understood has since become the cornerstone of American Jewish identity even more so than the traditional practices that defined the religion historically.
This is all well and good and probably more or less the case. From there Magid makes a pivot arguing that Zionism, originally a secular and a largely leftist nationalist movement, has served its function and exhausted itself ideologically as it has tracked rightward and further rightward including an embrace from the Israeli religious right. This is probably the most interesting part of the book and probably worth chewing on a little bit whether you agree or not. The ascent from a small movement to a predominant position is undeniable, as is the track rightward considering the old Israeli left has left the scene; whether there is still more gas in the tank is another matter altogether.
As a successor movement in America, and this is where he will lose many, Magid argues in favor of a renewed spiritual religious foundation. The specific positions that he spends the most time going over are too insider baseball to rehearse here, suffice it to say they go back to the old theological foundations. It seems to me at least, and I may be terribly outdated in this regard, another alternative is plain old assimilation and coexistence alongside the branches of American Christianity and other faiths; that path may not be overly exciting or in vogue but it seems to me one that has served several generations of Americans well and could continue to do so in the future.
After an introduction, Magid starts with a quick history lesson. Namely, before 1948 and 1967, the American Jewish community defined itself in several different ways; and, this all changed after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Six-Day War in 1967 alongside collective processing of the trauma of the Holocaust. According to Magid, Zionism properly understood has since become the cornerstone of American Jewish identity even more so than the traditional practices that defined the religion historically.
This is all well and good and probably more or less the case. From there Magid makes a pivot arguing that Zionism, originally a secular and a largely leftist nationalist movement, has served its function and exhausted itself ideologically as it has tracked rightward and further rightward including an embrace from the Israeli religious right. This is probably the most interesting part of the book and probably worth chewing on a little bit whether you agree or not. The ascent from a small movement to a predominant position is undeniable, as is the track rightward considering the old Israeli left has left the scene; whether there is still more gas in the tank is another matter altogether.
As a successor movement in America, and this is where he will lose many, Magid argues in favor of a renewed spiritual religious foundation. The specific positions that he spends the most time going over are too insider baseball to rehearse here, suffice it to say they go back to the old theological foundations. It seems to me at least, and I may be terribly outdated in this regard, another alternative is plain old assimilation and coexistence alongside the branches of American Christianity and other faiths; that path may not be overly exciting or in vogue but it seems to me one that has served several generations of Americans well and could continue to do so in the future.
May 18, 2024
The timing of publication for this book is kismet. I saw it advertised in an email for this year’s New York Jewish Book Festival and immediately added it to my to-read list. While this reads as an academic work, there are certainly portions more digestible to lay-people. The book provides useful summaries on the history of Zionism, its supporters and its critics, and makes a strong case for Counter-Zionism that I hope reaches more Jews in the American Diaspora (Exile). Furthermore, I hope some of these chapters enable more Jews (at least those who are currently comfortable and safe in exile) to reflect on the beauty of exile, as it seems that most of the mainstream Jewish education for secular Jews has been spent lamenting exile. This was a particularly enjoyable read for an aspiring Yiddishist and provides useful knowledge for those who were raised to know and care more about Israel than their actual recent ancestry/culture in exile. It is also a good read for those juggling care, concern, and criticism for Israel/Palestine. Many of us are looking for a map forward and I appreciate this blueprint.
Some thoughts that I will post to Goodreads instead of discussing directly with the author or a comparably-informed scholar:
-I appreciated the author’s critique of Jews Don’t Count, which I did not read and feel validated in that decision. I would be curious to know the author’s thoughts on People Love Dead Jews, which similarly comments on the recent rise in antisemitism.
-Zionism was born of Ashkenazi Jewish thought and trauma, but is known today by every Jewish person of every background. I would be interested in an essay dedicated to the impact of Zionism on non-Ashkenazi Jews, particularly Mizrahim. What did they lose because of Zionism? What did they gain? How was Zionism shaped by the absorption of Mizrahi Jews in Israel? Who are the Mizrahi leaders in Zionist and Anti-Zionist thought? How will Counter-Zionism benefit them (beyond promoting peace in the Middle East) (perhaps regarding intra-Jewish racism/Orientalism)?
-The chapter addressing indigeneity focused primarily on religious perspectives and definitions shaping ideas of land rights. Those certainly need to be explained and critiqued to understand some of the narratives within Zionism, but this chapter lacks guidance for those who lean toward the ethnic perspectives over the religious perspectives of the Jewish ethno-religion. Modern scholarship, politics, and social justice activism do care greatly about indigeneity, and define it through the fields of anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, history and genetics, among others. We can aspire to the idea that nobody really owns land, but the modern world seems to want to argue otherwise. Defining indigeneity matters for Native Americans, for Aboriginal Australians. Does it matter for the Jewish people and Palestinians? Does it matter for the Yazidis, Amazighs, and Zoroastrians? What if the ethnic group in question has experienced an unparalleled exile, spatially and temporally? I would like to understand how these points have influenced Zionism from its birth until the modern day, and how these questions fit into Counter-Zionism moving forward.
Some thoughts that I will post to Goodreads instead of discussing directly with the author or a comparably-informed scholar:
-I appreciated the author’s critique of Jews Don’t Count, which I did not read and feel validated in that decision. I would be curious to know the author’s thoughts on People Love Dead Jews, which similarly comments on the recent rise in antisemitism.
-Zionism was born of Ashkenazi Jewish thought and trauma, but is known today by every Jewish person of every background. I would be interested in an essay dedicated to the impact of Zionism on non-Ashkenazi Jews, particularly Mizrahim. What did they lose because of Zionism? What did they gain? How was Zionism shaped by the absorption of Mizrahi Jews in Israel? Who are the Mizrahi leaders in Zionist and Anti-Zionist thought? How will Counter-Zionism benefit them (beyond promoting peace in the Middle East) (perhaps regarding intra-Jewish racism/Orientalism)?
-The chapter addressing indigeneity focused primarily on religious perspectives and definitions shaping ideas of land rights. Those certainly need to be explained and critiqued to understand some of the narratives within Zionism, but this chapter lacks guidance for those who lean toward the ethnic perspectives over the religious perspectives of the Jewish ethno-religion. Modern scholarship, politics, and social justice activism do care greatly about indigeneity, and define it through the fields of anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, history and genetics, among others. We can aspire to the idea that nobody really owns land, but the modern world seems to want to argue otherwise. Defining indigeneity matters for Native Americans, for Aboriginal Australians. Does it matter for the Jewish people and Palestinians? Does it matter for the Yazidis, Amazighs, and Zoroastrians? What if the ethnic group in question has experienced an unparalleled exile, spatially and temporally? I would like to understand how these points have influenced Zionism from its birth until the modern day, and how these questions fit into Counter-Zionism moving forward.
July 23, 2025
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 a British Sikh of Punjabi origin?
Because of that word: exile
And its corollary: diaspora
First, a story.
From the vast trove of Sikh lore, my favourite tale is about the unique blessing offered by one of the gurus. Impressed by the gracious hospitality shown by a tiny village community, the guru blesses them to get uprooted.
Ujarh jao, he says.
Get uprooted.
The Punjabi word ujarh connotes dislocation, devastation, loss of ground. More curse than blessing.
The villagers are aghast. They protest. Meekly, insistently. The guru relents and adds, by way of explanation, that such grace and humility are treasures meant to be shared widely. Not restricted to a discrete location. The villagers must venture into the world, taking their virtues to all corners.
Exile is constitutive of faith practice.
More than 400 years later, one hears loud calls in the Sikh diaspora for a separate homeland. A place of safety and self-expression for the Sikhs. Where they wouldn't have to suffer insults and assassination attempts simply for adopting the Sikh lifestyle.
Self-cancelling, surely? A homeland to end exile would end the very faith practice it purports to safeguard. Look at Israel, goes my inner monologue. Heed its cautionary lessons. But how to say this out loud? How, indeed, to even speak of Israel without instantly attracting the charge of antisemitism?
Professor Magid takes up the issue in the discussion of anti-antisemitism. Without draining the contents of the essay here, let me just say it's enormously instructive to simply follow the lucid and accessible arguments. If I might be permitted to evoke the image of a yeshiva student learning at the feet of a charismatic rabbi, there are moments in The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance that feel commensurably intense.
Beyond the personal resonance, there are, of course, much more topical concerns. Magid is unflinchingly critical of Israel's domestic policies when it comes to Palestinians, and of those who are quick to brand 'antisemitic' any such criticism. I found his thoughts on David Baddiel's Jews Don't Count especially vindicating. (Full disclosure: my Goodreads review of said book isn't very complimentary either.)
Because of that word: exile
And its corollary: diaspora
First, a story.
From the vast trove of Sikh lore, my favourite tale is about the unique blessing offered by one of the gurus. Impressed by the gracious hospitality shown by a tiny village community, the guru blesses them to get uprooted.
Ujarh jao, he says.
Get uprooted.
The Punjabi word ujarh connotes dislocation, devastation, loss of ground. More curse than blessing.
The villagers are aghast. They protest. Meekly, insistently. The guru relents and adds, by way of explanation, that such grace and humility are treasures meant to be shared widely. Not restricted to a discrete location. The villagers must venture into the world, taking their virtues to all corners.
Exile is constitutive of faith practice.
More than 400 years later, one hears loud calls in the Sikh diaspora for a separate homeland. A place of safety and self-expression for the Sikhs. Where they wouldn't have to suffer insults and assassination attempts simply for adopting the Sikh lifestyle.
Self-cancelling, surely? A homeland to end exile would end the very faith practice it purports to safeguard. Look at Israel, goes my inner monologue. Heed its cautionary lessons. But how to say this out loud? How, indeed, to even speak of Israel without instantly attracting the charge of antisemitism?
Professor Magid takes up the issue in the discussion of anti-antisemitism. Without draining the contents of the essay here, let me just say it's enormously instructive to simply follow the lucid and accessible arguments. If I might be permitted to evoke the image of a yeshiva student learning at the feet of a charismatic rabbi, there are moments in The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance that feel commensurably intense.
Beyond the personal resonance, there are, of course, much more topical concerns. Magid is unflinchingly critical of Israel's domestic policies when it comes to Palestinians, and of those who are quick to brand 'antisemitic' any such criticism. I found his thoughts on David Baddiel's Jews Don't Count especially vindicating. (Full disclosure: my Goodreads review of said book isn't very complimentary either.)
January 24, 2024
This book will make a die-hard Zionist uncomfortable. It's not that it is anti-Israel (it is not, though the author is critical of Israel and what he sees as its "ethnonationalist" character) or anti-Zionist (Magid presents a concept he calls "counter-Zionism". )The author also declares his support for the rights of the Jewish people to have a homeland in Eretz Yisrael. It presents views and ideas that stand in opposition to mainstream attitudes towards Zionism and Israel. Magid takes a look at living in exile not as a deficit but as an opportunity for the Jewish people.
If you care about Israel, Zionism, and Jewish tomorrow and aren't afraid of being challenged, I encourage you to read this book.
If you care about Israel, Zionism, and Jewish tomorrow and aren't afraid of being challenged, I encourage you to read this book.
December 28, 2024
Essential reading for Diaspora Jews and anyone invested in building home where you are and living in a just, liberated world. Plus written by an incredible professor I've been honored to learn from!
June 24, 2025
This took me ages to finish because a lot of it is written in pretty dry academic prose. But I appreciated how methodical Magid was in laying out his brilliant thesis: that the violence inflicted by ethnostate-based Zionism is incompatible with religious Judaism, particularly the long tradition of Jewish ethics.
What really made this great though is that he doesn’t just critique, but offers an alternative by expressing support - and a religious justification - for a one-state solution.
What really made this great though is that he doesn’t just critique, but offers an alternative by expressing support - and a religious justification - for a one-state solution.
September 12, 2024
Things I liked:
• Some criticisms of Zionism and arguments supporting exile were interesting to think about.
• The author draws on his lived experience.
Things I didn’t like:
• This book was US-centric and unrealistically optimistic - to put it lightly.
• I’ve never read the word ‘chauvinistic’ this many times in one book.
• The religious chapters at the end were word soup.
It’s clear that the author and I have very different conceptions of Zionism. That difference is a big reason why I disagree with most of his arguments.
• Some criticisms of Zionism and arguments supporting exile were interesting to think about.
• The author draws on his lived experience.
Things I didn’t like:
• This book was US-centric and unrealistically optimistic - to put it lightly.
• I’ve never read the word ‘chauvinistic’ this many times in one book.
• The religious chapters at the end were word soup.
It’s clear that the author and I have very different conceptions of Zionism. That difference is a big reason why I disagree with most of his arguments.
July 5, 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 over the past few months (other chapters, especially in the latter half, were less interesting to me but I don’t think it takes away from the book’s importance)
December 29, 2023
this was super interesting and i really enjoyed reading it. i learned a lot and a lot is swirling around in my head- i’ll definitely want to re-read most of it again. however, i didn’t love the last two chapters - they were much more religiously oriented which was less interesting to me.
March 5, 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"Butler) and loopy Jewish rabbis on the other (Teitelbaum, Satmar) that have separate experiences but mutual conclusions.
And in between are a lot of interesting thinkers (all with citations) that see reasons for Jews to stay right where they are. (MM Schneerson (p.280), for example, saw the United States as "a place where Jews could complete the necessary work of purification before Moshiach.")
There are a lot of interesting philosophical questions about what is Judaism.
Is it related to land?
Or is ethical monotheism place independent?
Does the diaspora maintain strong practice and settlement of Israel vitiate the same practice? (Some in the diaspora will assimilate, and others will be extra on guard to avoid assimilation. Not the same dynamic as in Eretz Israel.)
Diaspora Jews are just as Jewish as Israeli Jews, and probably a lot wealthier with fewer headaches. Can Jewish sovereignty be justified on a cost benefit basis given that nationalism is actually more expensive than exile (golah) when you run the numbers?
I thought I would give this type of literature a second try, because the first book that I read of this type ("No State Solution," by Daniel Boyarin) was about as reasonably intelligible as the Sokal hoax paper.
This book does have the advantage of superior readability.
On the other hand: Imagine my surprise when I picked this book up and saw that it was endorsed by.... Daniel Boyarin. Also, Magid cited Hannah Arendt as a source--among many other "interesting" types.
With the Daniel Boyarin book in my mental register: It really is a lot of old wine in new bottles here.
In many cases, we have academics (who tend to live nowhere on this planet) and Rabbis with corresponding training (also not so useful for living anywhere on this planet) compete see just how far from reality each can diverge / how many words can be used to say nothing in particular. (How else can you deal with the sentence (p.209): "In the case of Kook, secular principles were absorbed into a dialectical cosmology founded on a highly romanticized Kabbalistic metaphysics." )
It looks like this author grew up in a secular family, and he became a Baal Teshuva and then went to Israel and lived as a "Haredi hippie" (p.68) in one of their anti Zionist communities for about 4 to 5 years and one marriage and then he became tired of that.
Later he became a Zionist, a citizen of Israel, an IDF soldier ("second tier," one that never saw combat). And finally, a post Zionist/counter Zionist.
All things considered, this is an excellent exposition of critiques of Zionism / cases for non Zionism, but through Jewish eyes. (99.9% of people who call themselves anti-Zionists don't have this level of discourse, but instead use that designation as a fig leaf for anti-Semitism.)
Of the book:
-9 chapters plus a two-page "Outro"/20 page Intro
-297 pages of prose over 9 chapters + intro is about 30 pages each.
-104 sources (22 journal articles, ≈7 magazine articles, 1 lecture).
-≈0.33 sources per page. Not well sourced.
-No index
*******
MAJOR POINT ONE is that this book does not need to be read in order, because it is actually a bunch of freestanding essays (of relative degrees of quality) stapled together as a book.
I will just abstract one each, the best and the worst to review, so as to not to get too Talmudic (defined here as "writing an expansion that is actually many times longer than the source text"-- the Talmud is about 34 times longer than the Five Books of Moses).
MAJOR POINT TWO is that I can tell that this guy has done a lot of Gemara, because:
1. His level of hair splitting is positively...... Talmudic.
Example: In Chapter 7, he asks the question "Are the Jews an oppressed people today?" And then he separates anti-Semitism from oppression based on whether or not anti-Semitism has an effect on the ability of Jewish people to live their lives freely while being identifiably Jewish. (p.165: "In short, oppression is hatred coupled with power.")
But then he pulls (what he must know) is a switcheroo by defining the Israeli Jews as "oppressors" and Palestinians as "oppressed," even though nobody in Israel is saying that Arabs cannot live as Muslims / Arabs; only that they can't set up a state whose manifest function is to destroy Jewish people.
Or, could he mean that anyone who lives as a subject people is "oppressed," by definition?
Of course, he (again) cites Hannah Arendt.
And predictably, Maggid trots out the old canard that "racism is only true if somebody has power over somebody else, and people who are powerless cannot be racist."
2. Reality just does not exist for this guy. (The same way it does not for people who sit in the Beth Midrash for decades on end, avoiding any productive work. And who could tell you anything about any of the Six Orders of The Talmud, but couldn't tell you anything so mundane as the price of a gallon of gas or how to write a CV to seek employment.)
So, he talks about Aviva Cantor and Meir Kahane who insist that America is no exception to ostensible Jewish oppression.
It's almost like the author doesn't notice that 70% of Jews marry non-Jewish people, or that Jews have the first or second highest income of any ethnic group.
The author draws some bizarre symmetry between Jewish reticence to make a fetish of oppression for 20 centuries to militant blacks who do not hesitate to speak of their oppression (p.171).
People (*other* than black people) who live in the world that we wake up in every day realize that part of functioning in present times is to have some sense of closure toward events of the past - - no matter how horrific.
How much do we even believe (the multiply cited) Aviva Cantor? Immigration to Israel is the only solution to "resolve such oppression," but that's exactly where she does not live! (p. 172)
There's also commentary about Jews obligation "to conform to Christian America's perception of them" (p. 175).
I don't know what that could mean, because Americans don't have any religiously rooted perception of Jewish people because they have NO idea about the practice of Judaism. (You ask 100 people EACH in a trailer park/ black ghetto / middle class white bread neighborhood "What is Mincha?" and see if it takes more than one hand to count how many people have any semblance of an answer.)
A few more howlers in this chapter.
1. Frantz Fanon is a "groundbreaking theorist" (p.191).
2. (p.189) According to Deborah Lipstadt, "Philosemites are anti-semites who like Jews."
3. (p. 198) "Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews qua Jews." (Not quite sure how that is an upgrade on "Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews." But time I guess anything can seem profound if you just use the word "qua" enough times over 46 pages.)
*******
The chapter on Jews, un-Jews, and anti-Jews is quite good actually.
Magid shows how people on the opposite side of the Zionist / anti-Zionist camps actually show similar epistemic foundations. (And this is a running theme throughout his book: opposite camps are really on opposite sides of the same circle.)
1. (p. 110) "Stalin said that Jews are not a nation because they lack the two essential attributes of nations: language and territory. And many Zionists agreed with those claims!"
2. (p. 111) Theodore Herzl once, advocated mass conversion to Christianity as the only solution to the Jewish question in European politics.
3. (p. 105) Some Zionist thinkers imagined that it is a replacement for Judaism; returning to the land of Israel was meant to make the Jewish religion superfluous. Mikhail Yosef Berdyczewski thought that he was "the last Jew and the first Hebrew."
Quotes:
(p. 152) Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values. (Attributed to Golda Meir).
Vocabulary:
alterity
golah≠galut
Zionist ≠diaspora nationalist
autochthony
Second order thoughts:
Too much talking and thinking has actually made this situation a lot worse-You have a bunch of professional chatterers speculating about so many counterfactual possibilities, that nobody can agree on a single course of action.
I think that Israel should probably take some lessons from China (which has conquered huge swathes of territory with MINIMAL DISCUSSION.)
China started out as 890K mi² and are now 3.7mln mi²-- an acquisition of 2.8mln mi² in 23 centuries. (About 1200 mi² per year. About 34.6 mi on one edge of territory. About 10 times the square mileage of Detroit. Every / single/year.)
Gaza and the West Bank are 2,314 mi² COMBINED--2 years worth of territorial acquisition at Chinese rates.
And this argument has been going on, in fits and starts for about 77 years at this point about whether certain parts are disputed/occupied/respect international law (blah blah blah).
To think: If somebody had started working on the incorporation of the disputed territories from 1948, that would have been exactly 30 square miles per year. (A piece of territory 5.5 mi on one edge.)
If this incorporation had been started in 1967, that would have been about 39.9 mi² per year.(6.3 mi² on one edge per year. )
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"Butler) and loopy Jewish rabbis on the other (Teitelbaum, Satmar) that have separate experiences but mutual conclusions.
And in between are a lot of interesting thinkers (all with citations) that see reasons for Jews to stay right where they are. (MM Schneerson (p.280), for example, saw the United States as "a place where Jews could complete the necessary work of purification before Moshiach.")
There are a lot of interesting philosophical questions about what is Judaism.
Is it related to land?
Or is ethical monotheism place independent?
Does the diaspora maintain strong practice and settlement of Israel vitiate the same practice? (Some in the diaspora will assimilate, and others will be extra on guard to avoid assimilation. Not the same dynamic as in Eretz Israel.)
Diaspora Jews are just as Jewish as Israeli Jews, and probably a lot wealthier with fewer headaches. Can Jewish sovereignty be justified on a cost benefit basis given that nationalism is actually more expensive than exile (golah) when you run the numbers?
I thought I would give this type of literature a second try, because the first book that I read of this type ("No State Solution," by Daniel Boyarin) was about as reasonably intelligible as the Sokal hoax paper.
This book does have the advantage of superior readability.
On the other hand: Imagine my surprise when I picked this book up and saw that it was endorsed by.... Daniel Boyarin. Also, Magid cited Hannah Arendt as a source--among many other "interesting" types.
With the Daniel Boyarin book in my mental register: It really is a lot of old wine in new bottles here.
In many cases, we have academics (who tend to live nowhere on this planet) and Rabbis with corresponding training (also not so useful for living anywhere on this planet) compete see just how far from reality each can diverge / how many words can be used to say nothing in particular. (How else can you deal with the sentence (p.209): "In the case of Kook, secular principles were absorbed into a dialectical cosmology founded on a highly romanticized Kabbalistic metaphysics." )
It looks like this author grew up in a secular family, and he became a Baal Teshuva and then went to Israel and lived as a "Haredi hippie" (p.68) in one of their anti Zionist communities for about 4 to 5 years and one marriage and then he became tired of that.
Later he became a Zionist, a citizen of Israel, an IDF soldier ("second tier," one that never saw combat). And finally, a post Zionist/counter Zionist.
All things considered, this is an excellent exposition of critiques of Zionism / cases for non Zionism, but through Jewish eyes. (99.9% of people who call themselves anti-Zionists don't have this level of discourse, but instead use that designation as a fig leaf for anti-Semitism.)
Of the book:
-9 chapters plus a two-page "Outro"/20 page Intro
-297 pages of prose over 9 chapters + intro is about 30 pages each.
-104 sources (22 journal articles, ≈7 magazine articles, 1 lecture).
-≈0.33 sources per page. Not well sourced.
-No index
*******
MAJOR POINT ONE is that this book does not need to be read in order, because it is actually a bunch of freestanding essays (of relative degrees of quality) stapled together as a book.
I will just abstract one each, the best and the worst to review, so as to not to get too Talmudic (defined here as "writing an expansion that is actually many times longer than the source text"-- the Talmud is about 34 times longer than the Five Books of Moses).
MAJOR POINT TWO is that I can tell that this guy has done a lot of Gemara, because:
1. His level of hair splitting is positively...... Talmudic.
Example: In Chapter 7, he asks the question "Are the Jews an oppressed people today?" And then he separates anti-Semitism from oppression based on whether or not anti-Semitism has an effect on the ability of Jewish people to live their lives freely while being identifiably Jewish. (p.165: "In short, oppression is hatred coupled with power.")
But then he pulls (what he must know) is a switcheroo by defining the Israeli Jews as "oppressors" and Palestinians as "oppressed," even though nobody in Israel is saying that Arabs cannot live as Muslims / Arabs; only that they can't set up a state whose manifest function is to destroy Jewish people.
Or, could he mean that anyone who lives as a subject people is "oppressed," by definition?
Of course, he (again) cites Hannah Arendt.
And predictably, Maggid trots out the old canard that "racism is only true if somebody has power over somebody else, and people who are powerless cannot be racist."
2. Reality just does not exist for this guy. (The same way it does not for people who sit in the Beth Midrash for decades on end, avoiding any productive work. And who could tell you anything about any of the Six Orders of The Talmud, but couldn't tell you anything so mundane as the price of a gallon of gas or how to write a CV to seek employment.)
So, he talks about Aviva Cantor and Meir Kahane who insist that America is no exception to ostensible Jewish oppression.
It's almost like the author doesn't notice that 70% of Jews marry non-Jewish people, or that Jews have the first or second highest income of any ethnic group.
The author draws some bizarre symmetry between Jewish reticence to make a fetish of oppression for 20 centuries to militant blacks who do not hesitate to speak of their oppression (p.171).
People (*other* than black people) who live in the world that we wake up in every day realize that part of functioning in present times is to have some sense of closure toward events of the past - - no matter how horrific.
How much do we even believe (the multiply cited) Aviva Cantor? Immigration to Israel is the only solution to "resolve such oppression," but that's exactly where she does not live! (p. 172)
There's also commentary about Jews obligation "to conform to Christian America's perception of them" (p. 175).
I don't know what that could mean, because Americans don't have any religiously rooted perception of Jewish people because they have NO idea about the practice of Judaism. (You ask 100 people EACH in a trailer park/ black ghetto / middle class white bread neighborhood "What is Mincha?" and see if it takes more than one hand to count how many people have any semblance of an answer.)
A few more howlers in this chapter.
1. Frantz Fanon is a "groundbreaking theorist" (p.191).
2. (p.189) According to Deborah Lipstadt, "Philosemites are anti-semites who like Jews."
3. (p. 198) "Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews qua Jews." (Not quite sure how that is an upgrade on "Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews." But time I guess anything can seem profound if you just use the word "qua" enough times over 46 pages.)
*******
The chapter on Jews, un-Jews, and anti-Jews is quite good actually.
Magid shows how people on the opposite side of the Zionist / anti-Zionist camps actually show similar epistemic foundations. (And this is a running theme throughout his book: opposite camps are really on opposite sides of the same circle.)
1. (p. 110) "Stalin said that Jews are not a nation because they lack the two essential attributes of nations: language and territory. And many Zionists agreed with those claims!"
2. (p. 111) Theodore Herzl once, advocated mass conversion to Christianity as the only solution to the Jewish question in European politics.
3. (p. 105) Some Zionist thinkers imagined that it is a replacement for Judaism; returning to the land of Israel was meant to make the Jewish religion superfluous. Mikhail Yosef Berdyczewski thought that he was "the last Jew and the first Hebrew."
Quotes:
(p. 152) Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values. (Attributed to Golda Meir).
Vocabulary:
alterity
golah≠galut
Zionist ≠diaspora nationalist
autochthony
Second order thoughts:
Too much talking and thinking has actually made this situation a lot worse-You have a bunch of professional chatterers speculating about so many counterfactual possibilities, that nobody can agree on a single course of action.
I think that Israel should probably take some lessons from China (which has conquered huge swathes of territory with MINIMAL DISCUSSION.)
China started out as 890K mi² and are now 3.7mln mi²-- an acquisition of 2.8mln mi² in 23 centuries. (About 1200 mi² per year. About 34.6 mi on one edge of territory. About 10 times the square mileage of Detroit. Every / single/year.)
Gaza and the West Bank are 2,314 mi² COMBINED--2 years worth of territorial acquisition at Chinese rates.
And this argument has been going on, in fits and starts for about 77 years at this point about whether certain parts are disputed/occupied/respect international law (blah blah blah).
To think: If somebody had started working on the incorporation of the disputed territories from 1948, that would have been exactly 30 square miles per year. (A piece of territory 5.5 mi on one edge.)
If this incorporation had been started in 1967, that would have been about 39.9 mi² per year.(6.3 mi² on one edge per year. )
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 fantasy, its ugliness and evil an indigestible truth that insults every liberal value they believe in.
Magid writes that this extends to diaspora Jews, particularly American Jews raised with not necessarily the reality of democracy and equality, but with a deep belief in those ideas.
Last year these uneasy American Zionists watched as their Israeli cousins massed in the hundreds of thousands in Tel Aviv and elsewhere to save Israel's — not really a democracy — from fascists, racists, religious fanatics and genocidal monsters. Of course, absent from Israel's so-called "democracy movement" was any pursuit of democracy for Palestinians on either side of the Green Line.
In parallel with the shifting values of liberal Jews, Magid notes how liberal America (at least parts of it) has also begun to jettison our own colonial-setter ideology:
Facing up to one's own country's settler-colonial history is not so easy. When Representative Lydia Velazquez introduced a resolution calling for annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, it received only six co-sponsors — all people of color — and GovTrack estimated it had a 0% chance of adoption. So if America is one step ahead of Israel in facing up to its racist, genocidal history, that step can only be measured in millimeters.
But Zionism's main problem is that it appeared too late in world history. Ethnonationalism fell into disrepute after World War II for obvious reasons. Not simply an anachronism, Zionism like its ugly siblings Christian nationalism and Hindutva, is fundamentally racist, exclusionary, and undemocratic. A nation built on the supremacy of one ethnicity is bad enough, but when you throw in god and messianism, it quickly becomes both a moral and political disaster.
For those deeply invested in Zionism and its accompanying settler-colonialism, all criticisms are strongly deflected as nothing but antisemitism. Much in common with antisemites themselves, attempts to distinguish Zionism from Judaism are likewise rejected by Zionists, who claim that a Zionist state is the home of all Jewish people, and that (as antisemites could only dream) all Jewish people ought to leave their homelands and move to Israel.
The Zionist conflation of nationalism and religion only reinforces the antisemitic view that all Jews are racist ethnonationalists, and this is largely responsible for the predictable spikes in antisemitic expression whenever Israel's aggression towards Palestinians becomes most severe. Similarly, the IHRA definition of antisemitism is designed to conflate Judaism and Zionism, a multi-tool to be used as both cudgel and legalism to muzzle Israel's critics.
Unfortunately there is some truth to the conflation, as Judaism itself has been all-too-willingly put to work in the service of Zionism. It was once verboten to speak of an Israel that had not been divinely reconstituted. Orthodox Jews originally reviled Zionism and even today the Satmar, perhaps the largest sect of Haredim, still reject it. There is also a long history of anti-Zionism among liberal Jews, who before 1948 issued countless — prescient — warnings of the disaster that Ben Gurion’s expansionist vision would unleash on both Jews and Palestinians.
But after the 1967 war, many Jews began to think that all that winning must have been divinely ordained. Today there are few congregations that don’t host Zionist Federation events or have youth or congregational programs centered around Israel, lending weight to the view that antisemites hold that there is little distinction between Judaism and Zionism.
Rabbi (Rav) Abraham Isaac Kook predated the formation of the state of Israel, but he broke with Jewish Orthodoxy (literally) by claiming that creating a Zionist state was the first step of a messianic redemption of not only Jews but of the entire human race. After 1967 Kook's son Zvi Yehuda Kook took it up a notch and created the Gush Emunim movement, upon which Israel’s violent settler movement is founded.
All this blending of Zionism and Judaism was bound to create a philosophical and theological muddle. Zionism was supposed to redeem Jews (particularity) and even the whole world (universality). But wasn't that the purpose of Judaism?
As a rabbi, Magid dives into the question, looking at the historicity of some of these ideas within Judaism. He examines how the particular and the universal have always been in tension with one another in Judaism:
Magid sorts through various writers on particularity and universality, taking on Chaim Gans's A Political Theory for the Jewish People (2016). He considers Gans' notion of universality and particularity and quickly dismisses the weak argument for Zionism's "particularity." But he also demolishes Gans's insistence on a universal form of Zionism. And Magid does the same with Emmanuel Lévinas:
As esoteric as all this is, Magid is on to something. Zionism could have moved in a humanistic direction — but chose not to. In the end Zionism simply devolved into a naked power grab, devoid of any humanistic or universalist pretense.
No one in Israel can live in such a society without recognizing it — even as it is almost impossible to imagine a different identity:
Magid writes of his ultimate reckoning with Zionism's supremacist ideology in a chapter called "From My Tragic Love Affair with Zionism." This reckoning, like that of many Israelis, was simply the product of paying attention to all the injustices around him, coming from the state he loved, and some of which he perpetrated himself:
Sharing an American identity, Magid also makes the inevitable associations with our own, and international, history:
But once you have seen what cannot be un-seen, there’s no going back; there can only be alienation from what has shown itself to be an illusion. Magid’s experience is precisely like that of liberal Jews who — today, Spring of 2024 — have seen what cannot be unseen and cannot use the same vocabulary as beloved friends and family.
Magid’s thought project was to look beyond Zionism. He draws heavily from Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, הרב שג"ר [HaRav] Shagar, a postmodernist Torah scholar and intellectual who originally followed Abraham Isaac Kook. Though never progressive in a political sense, Shagar had a lot of influence within both religious Zionist and even liberal Zionist circles. Kook’s teachings were not broad enough for Shagar to reconcile with the reality he lived. Zionism’s political and religious limitations were increasingly clear and Shagar began to conceive of a next step in a redemption of the land that superseded cruel domination with a multicultural democracy. Shagar’s writings also emphasize the return to the cultural and religious wealth of a bygone age of Hasidism that became a repository for many of the Jewish values that Zionism has dismissed.
In a chapter called “Exile in the Land” Magid invokes Shagar and others, turning toward Jewish identity and the moral values that existed in exile and diaspora for hundreds of years after biblical Israel’s short 125-year run. For Magid the state is superfluous. He reminds us that many of the early Zionists specifically envisioned a mere Jewish homeland and some specifically warned against a state for both political and religious reasons.
Books like Magid’s are important for Jews at a time when the moral failures and crimes of Zionism have been so well documented, and they follow decades of political critique of Zionism as the anachronism and abomination that it is.
Neither peace in the Middle East nor Judaism can survive Zionism. A different Israel is possible and an authentic Judaism freed of racist nationalism is also possible. A growing number of Jews know it and are working to repair the world that Zionism risks destroying.
Magid writes that this extends to diaspora Jews, particularly American Jews raised with not necessarily the reality of democracy and equality, but with a deep belief in those ideas.
Last year these uneasy American Zionists watched as their Israeli cousins massed in the hundreds of thousands in Tel Aviv and elsewhere to save Israel's — not really a democracy — from fascists, racists, religious fanatics and genocidal monsters. Of course, absent from Israel's so-called "democracy movement" was any pursuit of democracy for Palestinians on either side of the Green Line.
In parallel with the shifting values of liberal Jews, Magid notes how liberal America (at least parts of it) has also begun to jettison our own colonial-setter ideology:
Facing up to one's own country's settler-colonial history is not so easy. When Representative Lydia Velazquez introduced a resolution calling for annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, it received only six co-sponsors — all people of color — and GovTrack estimated it had a 0% chance of adoption. So if America is one step ahead of Israel in facing up to its racist, genocidal history, that step can only be measured in millimeters.
But Zionism's main problem is that it appeared too late in world history. Ethnonationalism fell into disrepute after World War II for obvious reasons. Not simply an anachronism, Zionism like its ugly siblings Christian nationalism and Hindutva, is fundamentally racist, exclusionary, and undemocratic. A nation built on the supremacy of one ethnicity is bad enough, but when you throw in god and messianism, it quickly becomes both a moral and political disaster.
For those deeply invested in Zionism and its accompanying settler-colonialism, all criticisms are strongly deflected as nothing but antisemitism. Much in common with antisemites themselves, attempts to distinguish Zionism from Judaism are likewise rejected by Zionists, who claim that a Zionist state is the home of all Jewish people, and that (as antisemites could only dream) all Jewish people ought to leave their homelands and move to Israel.
The Zionist conflation of nationalism and religion only reinforces the antisemitic view that all Jews are racist ethnonationalists, and this is largely responsible for the predictable spikes in antisemitic expression whenever Israel's aggression towards Palestinians becomes most severe. Similarly, the IHRA definition of antisemitism is designed to conflate Judaism and Zionism, a multi-tool to be used as both cudgel and legalism to muzzle Israel's critics.
Unfortunately there is some truth to the conflation, as Judaism itself has been all-too-willingly put to work in the service of Zionism. It was once verboten to speak of an Israel that had not been divinely reconstituted. Orthodox Jews originally reviled Zionism and even today the Satmar, perhaps the largest sect of Haredim, still reject it. There is also a long history of anti-Zionism among liberal Jews, who before 1948 issued countless — prescient — warnings of the disaster that Ben Gurion’s expansionist vision would unleash on both Jews and Palestinians.
But after the 1967 war, many Jews began to think that all that winning must have been divinely ordained. Today there are few congregations that don’t host Zionist Federation events or have youth or congregational programs centered around Israel, lending weight to the view that antisemites hold that there is little distinction between Judaism and Zionism.
Rabbi (Rav) Abraham Isaac Kook predated the formation of the state of Israel, but he broke with Jewish Orthodoxy (literally) by claiming that creating a Zionist state was the first step of a messianic redemption of not only Jews but of the entire human race. After 1967 Kook's son Zvi Yehuda Kook took it up a notch and created the Gush Emunim movement, upon which Israel’s violent settler movement is founded.
All this blending of Zionism and Judaism was bound to create a philosophical and theological muddle. Zionism was supposed to redeem Jews (particularity) and even the whole world (universality). But wasn't that the purpose of Judaism?
As a rabbi, Magid dives into the question, looking at the historicity of some of these ideas within Judaism. He examines how the particular and the universal have always been in tension with one another in Judaism:
Magid sorts through various writers on particularity and universality, taking on Chaim Gans's A Political Theory for the Jewish People (2016). He considers Gans' notion of universality and particularity and quickly dismisses the weak argument for Zionism's "particularity." But he also demolishes Gans's insistence on a universal form of Zionism. And Magid does the same with Emmanuel Lévinas:
As esoteric as all this is, Magid is on to something. Zionism could have moved in a humanistic direction — but chose not to. In the end Zionism simply devolved into a naked power grab, devoid of any humanistic or universalist pretense.
No one in Israel can live in such a society without recognizing it — even as it is almost impossible to imagine a different identity:
Magid writes of his ultimate reckoning with Zionism's supremacist ideology in a chapter called "From My Tragic Love Affair with Zionism." This reckoning, like that of many Israelis, was simply the product of paying attention to all the injustices around him, coming from the state he loved, and some of which he perpetrated himself:
Sharing an American identity, Magid also makes the inevitable associations with our own, and international, history:
But once you have seen what cannot be un-seen, there’s no going back; there can only be alienation from what has shown itself to be an illusion. Magid’s experience is precisely like that of liberal Jews who — today, Spring of 2024 — have seen what cannot be unseen and cannot use the same vocabulary as beloved friends and family.
Magid’s thought project was to look beyond Zionism. He draws heavily from Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, הרב שג"ר [HaRav] Shagar, a postmodernist Torah scholar and intellectual who originally followed Abraham Isaac Kook. Though never progressive in a political sense, Shagar had a lot of influence within both religious Zionist and even liberal Zionist circles. Kook’s teachings were not broad enough for Shagar to reconcile with the reality he lived. Zionism’s political and religious limitations were increasingly clear and Shagar began to conceive of a next step in a redemption of the land that superseded cruel domination with a multicultural democracy. Shagar’s writings also emphasize the return to the cultural and religious wealth of a bygone age of Hasidism that became a repository for many of the Jewish values that Zionism has dismissed.
In a chapter called “Exile in the Land” Magid invokes Shagar and others, turning toward Jewish identity and the moral values that existed in exile and diaspora for hundreds of years after biblical Israel’s short 125-year run. For Magid the state is superfluous. He reminds us that many of the early Zionists specifically envisioned a mere Jewish homeland and some specifically warned against a state for both political and religious reasons.
Books like Magid’s are important for Jews at a time when the moral failures and crimes of Zionism have been so well documented, and they follow decades of political critique of Zionism as the anachronism and abomination that it is.
Neither peace in the Middle East nor Judaism can survive Zionism. A different Israel is possible and an authentic Judaism freed of racist nationalism is also possible. A growing number of Jews know it and are working to repair the world that Zionism risks destroying.
December 13, 2025
This is pretty much an academic book but one that a lot of diasporists and Yiddish fans will find interesting. As with any collection of essays, some held my attention more than others, but overall this gave me a lot to think about and some tools to use when someone acts like aliyah is the ultimate goal for everyone.
April 25, 2024
Even when I disagreed with the author, which was relatively often, I learned things and was impressed by the quality of his thinking and often by his generosity when engaging thinkers with whom he disagreed.
38 My goal is not to adjudicate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but to question whether Zionism is still a relevant ideology for liberal Jews who want to support Israel -- that is, liberal Jews who remain wed to Israel as an important part of their Jewish identity but cannot support the ethnonational chauvinistic state it has become.
42 In short, what if we shelved Zionism? What if we viewed it, with all its warts and caveats, as an important historical movement in its time, but one that has outlived its purpose?
43 If liberal Zionists are now forced to support an illiberal state, why not construct a new way to affirm Jewish self-determination, a path for supporting liberalism rather than being forced to support an ideology that runs counter to our basic values?
282 While the Hasidic leaders of the twentieth century saw exile as necessary for the messianic process, Isaac Bashevis Singer, the renowned Jewish-American writer, thought exile was necessary to perpetuate a longing that produces Jewish genius -- and for Singer, Yiddish was the language of exile.
261 "I cling to Yiddish because this language expresses my hope for redemption. When all nations realize that they are in exile -- exile will cease to be." Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Yiddish, the Language of Exile"
42 Arendt
87 Jews can also become Pharaoh
138-40 contested indigeneity
144-5 prophetic notion of land & ownership
193-4 for Jews on claims of anti-semitism
195,198 violence
200 Magid says Pal. violence toward W Bank settlers is unacceptable
211-213, 215, 222-3, 230 zionism isn't wrong, just obsolete re c\present task/need for peaceful coexistence
224-5, 228 integration of exile into zionism
252-3 mystical faith allows paradox, multiple truths
261 Exile as virtue
38 My goal is not to adjudicate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but to question whether Zionism is still a relevant ideology for liberal Jews who want to support Israel -- that is, liberal Jews who remain wed to Israel as an important part of their Jewish identity but cannot support the ethnonational chauvinistic state it has become.
42 In short, what if we shelved Zionism? What if we viewed it, with all its warts and caveats, as an important historical movement in its time, but one that has outlived its purpose?
43 If liberal Zionists are now forced to support an illiberal state, why not construct a new way to affirm Jewish self-determination, a path for supporting liberalism rather than being forced to support an ideology that runs counter to our basic values?
282 While the Hasidic leaders of the twentieth century saw exile as necessary for the messianic process, Isaac Bashevis Singer, the renowned Jewish-American writer, thought exile was necessary to perpetuate a longing that produces Jewish genius -- and for Singer, Yiddish was the language of exile.
261 "I cling to Yiddish because this language expresses my hope for redemption. When all nations realize that they are in exile -- exile will cease to be." Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Yiddish, the Language of Exile"
42 Arendt
87 Jews can also become Pharaoh
138-40 contested indigeneity
144-5 prophetic notion of land & ownership
193-4 for Jews on claims of anti-semitism
195,198 violence
200 Magid says Pal. violence toward W Bank settlers is unacceptable
211-213, 215, 222-3, 230 zionism isn't wrong, just obsolete re c\present task/need for peaceful coexistence
224-5, 228 integration of exile into zionism
252-3 mystical faith allows paradox, multiple truths
261 Exile as virtue
February 16, 2024
A deeply thought-provoking meditation on the Jewish diaspora, the history of Zionism, and why we should reject a Jewish ethnostate. Some of Magid's framing confused me - for example, his insistence that rejecting a Jewish state / advocating for a secular binational state doesn't mean rejecting "Israel" (which didn't make sense to me, as most people perceive "Israel" to refer to the Jewish state. This reminded me of my frustration with the way that "cultural Zionists" reject Jewish statehood but still refer to themselves using the word Zionist despite the fact that no-state Zionism arguably can't really exist post-48, at least not as a useful construct given current realities). Anyway though, overall, I really enjoyed this read and especially learned a lot in the earlier sections on thinkers like Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. Shaul Magid is such an important voice and I think that this book has the potential to sway many in the Jewish community towards rejecting Zionism.
February 20, 2024
I think the premise of this book is profoundly interesting and possibly even liberating. I had heard him interviewed on "The Dig" podcast before reading this book and found his politics and ideas much more intriguing there than I did in this book. In particular, I found some of the philosophical strains he expounded upon unappealing - from esoteric takes on postmodernism to Rabbi Kook and his lineage. Nevertheless, it's an important read for people who want to understand various strains and histories of Zionism in thought and practice.
December 23, 2025
Shaul Magid writes with a clarity and gravity that resonates deeply, exploring the fallacies of so-called "liberal Zionism." If you're a Jew present in Jewish spaces today—and particularly if you were raised in a Zionist community—Magid's writing is essential to read. The book aims not to propose political solutions to the crisis wrought by Zionism, but rather to examine the concept of Zionism from all angles—the personal, the religious, the secular—proposing that thinking beyond Zionism may be the only true way to affirm Jewish self-determination in our postmodern world. The idea of existing in exile unites the essays published in this work.
The introduction sets the tone for the book, outlining Magid’s own viewpoint (see the quote below) while introducing the themes that will reappear in the nine essays to follow. The chapters range broadly in approach, making this book dynamic. Chapters one, two and three are my favorites for Magid's urgency and relatability, also the way he tells his own story of understanding Zionism. The final two essays (chapters eight and nine) differ in tone, presenting scholarly explorations into the work and theorization of several religious figures who approached Zionism from unique perspectives, suggesting their own counter-Zionist approaches are a central aspect of Jewish culture and religion. While interesting, these chapters at the end of the book did seem to move away from discussing the future-oriented "counter-Zionist vision" the previous chapters revolved around.
Magid's writing, while academic in tone, is delightfully easy to follow. I'm accustomed to marking up scholarly essays to better understand their arguments, and I was amused to discover I would often make margin notes about what seemed crucial information only to read on and find Magid himself outlining the concept clearly in the following sentences. Magid cites a range of sources, from scholarly texts emerging from Jewish Studies, essays from Rabbis and religious leaders (Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Rav Shagar, Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares, Rav Kook, etc), theorists like Judith Butler and Mark Rifkin, and others. The footnotes are not incredibly dense, but useful nonetheless.
Magid writes openly about his own experiences with Israel and Zionism, many of which demonstrate feelings shared across generations of Jewish people. However, unlike many in our community, Magid is able to admit what he writes on page 72, "I no longer cared what [Zionism] aspired to be because I could no longer bear what it was." This quote, and many others, struck me deeply, reflecting my own experiences and demonstrating that it should be possible for others to think in this way.
If the book falls short, it would be in its failure to address the actual acts of violence enacted by the ethnostate itself against the Palestinian people. Some of the brief overviews of historical events, often used for context, appear to absolve the state of Israel of agency or fault, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Readers should be aware that Magid's bias is occasionally apparent in this way in some of the early chapters. I do think a reader educated on Palestinian history can see that the representations may suffer from overexposure to Israeli narratives. As the book is decidedly not a historical work, this should be taken seriously as representative of a chronic lack of attention to Palestinian history within Jewish circles, but not as a detraction from the theoretical exploration of the "counter-Zionism" Magid discusses. Magid acknowledges the lack of inclusion of Palestinian perspectives on page 20, a good-faith effort to clarify his own positionality, and he does reference to Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish throughout (especially critical given Magid's guiding concept of exile also backs one of Said's most-cited works).
I would highly reccomend this book to anyone, but specifcally to Jewish people who feel any level of disconnect with their Jewish, political, or personal values and the narratives of liberal Zionism that flood many of our communities today. Non-Jews may learn from the text too, perhaps to better understand the deeply-rooted Jewish traditions of anti-Zionism, non-Zionism, and counter-Zionism. For some, Magid's perspective may not be radical enough. But as a theoretical investigation into the possibility of returning to Jewish tradition to refuse the ideology of Zionism, reconceptualizing our relationship to the land of Israel instead of the ethnonationalist State of Israel, and calling on Jews to embrace exile as "a constitutive dimension of collective flourishing that affirms Jewish life in the present." Magid's book is immensely successful.
"I do not believe those earlier humanistic strains of Zionism can be recuperated, or, as I'll argue in this book, that liberalism and Zionism can be seen as compatible in any easy way... In my view the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonationalist chauvisnism... This book is therefore, in some sense, anti-Zionist--or more precisely, as I suggest below, counter-Zionist." Magid, pages 17 and 18
The introduction sets the tone for the book, outlining Magid’s own viewpoint (see the quote below) while introducing the themes that will reappear in the nine essays to follow. The chapters range broadly in approach, making this book dynamic. Chapters one, two and three are my favorites for Magid's urgency and relatability, also the way he tells his own story of understanding Zionism. The final two essays (chapters eight and nine) differ in tone, presenting scholarly explorations into the work and theorization of several religious figures who approached Zionism from unique perspectives, suggesting their own counter-Zionist approaches are a central aspect of Jewish culture and religion. While interesting, these chapters at the end of the book did seem to move away from discussing the future-oriented "counter-Zionist vision" the previous chapters revolved around.
Magid's writing, while academic in tone, is delightfully easy to follow. I'm accustomed to marking up scholarly essays to better understand their arguments, and I was amused to discover I would often make margin notes about what seemed crucial information only to read on and find Magid himself outlining the concept clearly in the following sentences. Magid cites a range of sources, from scholarly texts emerging from Jewish Studies, essays from Rabbis and religious leaders (Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Rav Shagar, Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares, Rav Kook, etc), theorists like Judith Butler and Mark Rifkin, and others. The footnotes are not incredibly dense, but useful nonetheless.
Magid writes openly about his own experiences with Israel and Zionism, many of which demonstrate feelings shared across generations of Jewish people. However, unlike many in our community, Magid is able to admit what he writes on page 72, "I no longer cared what [Zionism] aspired to be because I could no longer bear what it was." This quote, and many others, struck me deeply, reflecting my own experiences and demonstrating that it should be possible for others to think in this way.
If the book falls short, it would be in its failure to address the actual acts of violence enacted by the ethnostate itself against the Palestinian people. Some of the brief overviews of historical events, often used for context, appear to absolve the state of Israel of agency or fault, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Readers should be aware that Magid's bias is occasionally apparent in this way in some of the early chapters. I do think a reader educated on Palestinian history can see that the representations may suffer from overexposure to Israeli narratives. As the book is decidedly not a historical work, this should be taken seriously as representative of a chronic lack of attention to Palestinian history within Jewish circles, but not as a detraction from the theoretical exploration of the "counter-Zionism" Magid discusses. Magid acknowledges the lack of inclusion of Palestinian perspectives on page 20, a good-faith effort to clarify his own positionality, and he does reference to Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish throughout (especially critical given Magid's guiding concept of exile also backs one of Said's most-cited works).
I would highly reccomend this book to anyone, but specifcally to Jewish people who feel any level of disconnect with their Jewish, political, or personal values and the narratives of liberal Zionism that flood many of our communities today. Non-Jews may learn from the text too, perhaps to better understand the deeply-rooted Jewish traditions of anti-Zionism, non-Zionism, and counter-Zionism. For some, Magid's perspective may not be radical enough. But as a theoretical investigation into the possibility of returning to Jewish tradition to refuse the ideology of Zionism, reconceptualizing our relationship to the land of Israel instead of the ethnonationalist State of Israel, and calling on Jews to embrace exile as "a constitutive dimension of collective flourishing that affirms Jewish life in the present." Magid's book is immensely successful.
"I do not believe those earlier humanistic strains of Zionism can be recuperated, or, as I'll argue in this book, that liberalism and Zionism can be seen as compatible in any easy way... In my view the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonationalist chauvisnism... This book is therefore, in some sense, anti-Zionist--or more precisely, as I suggest below, counter-Zionist." Magid, pages 17 and 18
April 14, 2024
necessary and correct. masterful and smooth and illustrative. thank you sadie for the rec!
some selected quotes:
"the problem is not what kind of Zionism, but Zionism itself...Counter-Zionism proposes that we allow Zionism to become a matter of history, an ideology that has had its time, a Jewish politics that has both done its work and created damage (as all ideologies do). Ultimately, counter-Zionism invites us to rethink a path toward Jewish flourishing that affirms the productivity of exile—both inside and outside Israel—and also adopts a position of 'not yet' regarding 'the first flowering of our redemption'...counter-Zionism promotes a society that would one day affirm that the others who share this holy land have as much a right to it as we Jews do."
"The contribution of Judaism for Tamares rests on two foundations: first, its innate ability to join religion and ethics; and second, its positionality of living in exile and thus outside the political realm that invariably leads to violence."
"Jewish ethics was never abstract but rather concrete; Jewish rituals were never symbolic but always rooted in a history that revealed Divine interaction with the world."
"It is the prophetic ethos mixed with the experience of exile and marginalization from power that enables Judaism to fulfill its destiny as the exemplar of civilization."
[ethical sensibility: do what is good and right in the eyes of hashem, justice and righteousness AND religious sensibility: the yearnings of the human soul for the infinite (ein sof), by various means, and to establish faith towards those ends]
very much enjoyed the elaborations of the beliefs schneerson, teitelbaum, singer, etc ESPECIALLY the first as chabadnikim tamid omrim li lashev et hashomron
some selected quotes:
"the problem is not what kind of Zionism, but Zionism itself...Counter-Zionism proposes that we allow Zionism to become a matter of history, an ideology that has had its time, a Jewish politics that has both done its work and created damage (as all ideologies do). Ultimately, counter-Zionism invites us to rethink a path toward Jewish flourishing that affirms the productivity of exile—both inside and outside Israel—and also adopts a position of 'not yet' regarding 'the first flowering of our redemption'...counter-Zionism promotes a society that would one day affirm that the others who share this holy land have as much a right to it as we Jews do."
"The contribution of Judaism for Tamares rests on two foundations: first, its innate ability to join religion and ethics; and second, its positionality of living in exile and thus outside the political realm that invariably leads to violence."
"Jewish ethics was never abstract but rather concrete; Jewish rituals were never symbolic but always rooted in a history that revealed Divine interaction with the world."
"It is the prophetic ethos mixed with the experience of exile and marginalization from power that enables Judaism to fulfill its destiny as the exemplar of civilization."
[ethical sensibility: do what is good and right in the eyes of hashem, justice and righteousness AND religious sensibility: the yearnings of the human soul for the infinite (ein sof), by various means, and to establish faith towards those ends]
very much enjoyed the elaborations of the beliefs schneerson, teitelbaum, singer, etc ESPECIALLY the first as chabadnikim tamid omrim li lashev et hashomron
December 30, 2023
i really loved this book. i have always been pro-diasporist and found a lot of beauty and connection in my yiddishkeit culture, so this book arguing against zionism from a diasporist perspective looked very interesting to me. shaul magid is a beautiful writer, i especially loved the chapter, "my tragic love affair with zionism," which was an evocative and immersive portrayal of how jewish exceptionalism and mysticism, and the land of israel itself( both its religiously imagined and physical manifestations) work together to pull jews into zionism. i also really liked his chapter, "are the jews an oppressed people today?" which explored american jews' unique, liberatory experiences in the secularized and pluralist post-civil rights era united states. as a secular jew with an admittedly negative bias against the orthodox, i found the religious stuff more challenging, but i think it's a necessary part of engaging with zionism which, as i've discovered after reading this book, is more of a religious ideology than one may think in its secular ethnonationalism. i will be coming back to this book a lot, i think. it was very cathartic to read such a straightforward and well-informed criticism of jewish self-conceptions and ideologies that came from a place of loving judaism and the jewish people.
July 7, 2024
I absolutely loved the first half, maybe the first 3/4 of this book. Critical reading for every Jewish person--in America, in the diaspora, as well as Israelis. There are so many fundamental truths in this book, truths that Zionists/ many Israelis refuse to acknowledge. But what made it so moving to me was the concept of "troubled committed." It acknowledges the position so many in the diaspora feel. Troubled, interested, curious, heartbroken, resilient, engaged, confused.... all of it. Israel has become an ethno-nation state, Magid argues, marred in its own trauma and refusing to acknowledge it is indeed the perpetrators of trauma, oppressors, colonists. For many anti-Zionists of my generation, this book will make you feel seen and heard--and make you want to throw it across the room to every person you know in the community who refuses to take off their blinders. We need new language, new terms, to grapple with this moment, and although this book was written and released right before Oct. 7, its central thesis is as apparent as ever: we need new terms, new ways to be Jewish, to be in community. Zionism is a term of the past, Magid says, one that is no longer productive or morally acceptable.
April 28, 2024
This is not an enjoyable book or even an easy book to read. Magid discusses, in a very scholarly way, whether or not Zionism is relevant today. In fact, he argues it is time to discard Zionism and come up with another project that encompasses a love of the land and the fact that Jews live everywhere. He calls this a religious Zionism. Challenging stuff, no doubt.
Magid appears to define Zionism as the actions of the Israeli government. Magid, being on the left of the political spectrum clearly struggles with the government’s apparent shift to the political right. If Israel’s government moved to the left, would Magid’s views change? Does Magid define Zionism correctly? I think not. Zionism is the Jewish dream of re-establishing a homeland in the Middle East. Tossing Zionism because of the government’s actions seems a bit outlandish and probably incorrect.
The book was written before October 7. I wonder if Magid would modify any of his views in the face of that awful day.
Magid appears to define Zionism as the actions of the Israeli government. Magid, being on the left of the political spectrum clearly struggles with the government’s apparent shift to the political right. If Israel’s government moved to the left, would Magid’s views change? Does Magid define Zionism correctly? I think not. Zionism is the Jewish dream of re-establishing a homeland in the Middle East. Tossing Zionism because of the government’s actions seems a bit outlandish and probably incorrect.
The book was written before October 7. I wonder if Magid would modify any of his views in the face of that awful day.
June 23, 2024
What I enjoyed most about this book is the wide range of opinions, thinkers, and texts that are heavily referenced and exposed — as someone who has not read on Judaism nor Zionism, this was a helpful book to start with if for no other reason than be exposed to a plurality of Jewish views and texts. It’s a good book, too with a persuasive and nuanced argument to look beyond Zionism for an ideology which is compatible with theology, the needs of Jews, and the moral preservation of Judaism. Central to Magid’s argument is looking beyond Zionism, rather than directly in opposition with, cleverly framing this as post-Zionism. This is powerful, and the exact intention behind it unclear, though the effect is disarming to those loyal to Zionism or Israel, intrigued by the book for a new perspective. The conclusion is that anti-Zionism has a plurality of Jewish voices, and that the notion of exile is core to Jewish identity and should remain so.
February 3, 2025
Such a thoughtful and thought-inspiring collection! I learned a lot from Rabbi Magid's work, and it also inspired me to question and think more deeply about some of my assumptions and prior knowledge about American Jews, Israeli Jews, Zionism, theology, and the history of Jewish thought. The first two essays alone are worth the price of the book. Some of his essays I loved, some I found "merely" helpful and thought-provoking, and the only essay that I didn't finish was the second-to-last, on Orthodox religious anti-Zionism, because I just didn't have enough background to easily follow it.
He is also an amazing speaker; go hear him if you ever have the chance! I read Rabbi Magid's book ahead of his coming as a guest scholar to my synagogue, and wow, I envy his students!
He is also an amazing speaker; go hear him if you ever have the chance! I read Rabbi Magid's book ahead of his coming as a guest scholar to my synagogue, and wow, I envy his students!
February 5, 2025
This is an interesting book and a lot is covered within its pages. I enjoyed how generously and respectfully the author approached both his subject matter and the various theorists he agreed with, disagreed with, complemented, and critiqued. This book felt intellectually honest and I appreciated that. Lots to mull over and many perspectives shared - this would be a good book to read in a group so discussion with others is possible. It’s a deeply theoretical book but there are also moments of memoir and journalism. While I of course have my own opinions about some parts, this book left a theoretical and spiritual impact on me and pushed me to see in news ways. I look forward to referencing it in the future.
December 11, 2024
The topic is interesting and important, but the treatment is wretched. The first third of the book is repeating the non-informative comments of one Judith Butler, whose pronoun of "they" Magid repeats a hundred times or more. Ms./Mr./Mx. Butler is a vicious Jew-hater, who recently wrote of her disbelief that women were raped in the October 7 massacre. Butler simply dismisses Zionism altogether.
Magid's other sources are somewhat more credible, but none are really informative. There is a good book to be written about reconciling Jewish religion with modern Zionism. This book is not it.
Magid's other sources are somewhat more credible, but none are really informative. There is a good book to be written about reconciling Jewish religion with modern Zionism. This book is not it.
August 17, 2024
The classic but also novel approach: love Jews and Jewish self-determination but recognize the indefensible nature of political Zionism as a ethno-supremacist nationalism that is inextricably tied up with the dispossession of Palestinians.
Appreciate the freshness of an anti-Zionist approach that is thoroughly grounded in both a love of Jews and a recognition of forms of valid claims that Israelis have to continue to live in the aretz - alongside, not instead of, Palestinians.
Appreciate the freshness of an anti-Zionist approach that is thoroughly grounded in both a love of Jews and a recognition of forms of valid claims that Israelis have to continue to live in the aretz - alongside, not instead of, Palestinians.
March 12, 2024
feels important, articulates many of my thoughts on zionism/antisemitism/exile much clearer than i ever could, and is spiritually grounded in a way that feels unique to this style/topic. doesn’t seem accessible to the masses tho, so feels like it’s written for people who already agree with him. but i’m one of them so i had a good time
October 7, 2025
The importance of Diasporic/Exilic Judaism asserting itself as a more ethical alternative cannot be understated. Our (Judaism’s) institutions should consider divesting their funds from the Zionist project and reinvesting in meaningful tikkun elsewhere. Education; housing; and healthcare are all suffering a lack of funds due to egregiously misplaced tzedakah.
June 2, 2024
Transformative essays on the nature of Zionism within a historic and present context. Regardless of one’s view this is an important read to understand the intersection between cultural and religious Zionism and the question of exile.
Read
June 19, 2024fascinated by everything except the last two chapters, which felt very in the weeds of various religious thinkers. loved the personal reflections of the author himself and the discussions of Judith butler and Hannah Arendt
December 3, 2024
my thoughts r provoked. HUGE fan of some chapters ("On Jews, Un-Jews, and Anti-Jews" is awesome and so resonant w/ my experiences) but felt dubious about Rav Shagar's pro-settler-slash-anti-state (postmodern? herm) contributions to the conversation. but very glad this book exists :)
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