Amazon.com Review
Throughout Western history, resilience has been among the most distinguishing characteristic of Jewish communities. Larry Tye's
Home Lands: Portrait of the New Jewish Diaspora attempts to shed new light on this timeless quality. Tye, a reporter at
The Boston Globe, argues that the traditional dream of the Diaspora, as summarized by the final line of the Passover Sede--"Next year in Jerusalem!"--has changed. Today, he says, Jews "are forever rooted in Israel, but no longer need to live there." The Diaspora no longer wait in hope of returning to the Holy Land; instead they are grounded in the permanent homes they have made and the cultures they have created throughout the world. And the relationships among these communities, he argues, are just as important as the relationship that each one has to Israel.
Home Lands tours seven centers of Jewish life, including Dublin, Dusseldorf, and Atlanta. In each case, Tye tells the story of a Jewish community in counterpoint to the story of one representative family. Together, these stories add a deeply personal dimension to
Home Lands' political argument. The book's final chapter, about the Jews of Israel, fulfills Tye's promise to describe "a new encounter of equals, to replace the old one where Israel was seen as the center of the Jewish solar system with Diaspora communities orbiting as distant planets."
--Michael Joseph Gross
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The new Jewish diaspora of a "heterogeneous people who thrive in secular societies" is here to stay, asserts Boston Globe journalist Tye (The Father of Spin). As these diverse Jewish communities have become not merely way stations but enduring homes, they have begun to remake Judaism itself. Tye tells this intriguing story through sketches of people and of life in seven cities. In Dsseldorf, he finds an Orthodox rabbi invoking a more pluralistic Judaism to educate Russian refugees. In Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, a fervent Lubavitcher Hasidic rabbi has energized a dormant community. In Buenos Aires, a Jewish polity fragmented by economic setbacks and anti-Semitic attacks has begun to revive with new models of worship and organization. In Paris, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews have forged ties that could serve as a model for their fractious brethren in Israel. Tye's chapter on Dublin, where the Jewish community is dying, may at first seem anomalous, but, he argues, their determination to reestablish their "Gaelic brand of Judaism" elsewhere is a testament to the ability of Jews to survive wherever they may be. His two American chapters focus on Boston, where the Jewish community has fused learning, spirituality and social justice, and Atlanta, where rival denominations work with considerable amity. Yet Tye's optimism might have been better contextualized by a broader survey. Though the author understandably had to winnow his examples from many compelling possibilities, readers may wonder about Jewish communities in such places as Melbourne, Montreal and Johannesburg. While not a breakout book, Tye's presentation of a new diaspora may intrigue a broad Jewish audience. Agent, Jill Kneerim.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
