Free Downloads A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud As Diaspora (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)
A word conventionally imbued with melancholy meanings, "diaspora" has been used variously to describe the cataclysmic historical event of displacement, the subsequent geographical scattering of peoples, or the conditions of alienation abroad and yearning for an ancestral home. But as Daniel Boyarin writes, diaspora may be more constructively construed as a form of cultural hybridity or a mode of analysis. In A Traveling Homeland, he makes the case that a shared homeland or past and traumatic dissociation are not necessary conditions for diaspora and that Jews carry their homeland with them in diaspora, in the form of textual, interpretive communities built around talmudic study.For Boyarin, the Babylonian Talmud is a diasporist manifesto, a text that produces and defines the practices that constitute Jewish diasporic identity. Boyarin examines the ways the Babylonian Talmud imagines its own community and sense of homeland, and he shows how talmudic commentaries from the medieval and early modern periods also produce a doubled cultural identity. He links the ongoing productivity of this bifocal cultural vision to the nature of the book: as the physical text moved between different times and places, the methods of its study developed through contact with surrounding cultures. Ultimately, A Traveling Homeland envisions talmudic study as the center of a shared Jewish identity and a distinctive feature of the Jewish diaspora that defines it as a thing apart from other cultural migrations.
Series: Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (June 18, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812247248
ISBN-13: 978-0812247244
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #105,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Sacred Writings > Talmud #11 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Assyria, Babylonia & Sumer #16 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Mesopotamia
This book presents an interesting discussion of the diaspora as not being away from a physical homeland. The Talmud is presented as a physical and spiritual substitute for Israel. The discussion of Talmud being the tie to Judaism is controversial, but it makes one think of alternative points of view that conflict with traditional thinking.
If you want to read the Talmud, you need a well-versed teacher. Its many wanderings off the topic make it difficult to follow. It may seem disorganized to the reader trained in Greek-style logic, even though, in fact, it follows its own version of Greek logic. Boyarin, however, is brilliant, and his characterization of the Talmud as a "homeland" for those without a safe home anywhere is totally apt.
Boyarin makes a good point with regard to the place of Talmud in Jewish Life and Practice. However, Boyarin's style is cumbersome and the neologisms are unwelcome. He could have said what he wanted to get across with regard to Talmud in an essay written in straight Anglo Saxon prose rather than the academic drivel. Just imagine in the sixties protesters crying out "Liberation" instead of "Freedom" while protesting.
Book is in excellent condition, hard-back, no markings.
Deep and thought provoking.
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