Ambiguities of Exile

How do notions of "exile” and “diaspora" diverge, converge, blend into each other and unsettle each other in Jewish thought and the imagination? How did Jewish writing begin to reflect on ambiguities of exile, home and return already in ancient contexts, and how did such reflections evolve through references to biblical and other classical texts in early modern and modern times? This experimental workshop seeks to bring sources from antiquity to the present moment into conversation with each other to explore these questions from fresh angles.

PROGRAMME

MONDAY 2 December 2024

10:30 Coffee and Welcome

11:00 Session 1

• Paul Joyce (KCL)
  ‘Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them (albeit in small measure) in the countries where they have gone’: Reflections on Ambiguities of Exile in the light of Ezekiel 11:16
• Rebekah Van Sant (Oxford)
  Turning Diaspora into Exile: Wilderness as Exile and Diaspora in the Book of Isaiah
• Sarah Wisialowski (Oxford)
  Utopias of Exile: Reading Nehemiah as Recovery
• Joan Taylor (KCL)
  Jesus in Exile: The Diaspora in Egypt and Galilee at the beginning of the First Century

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Session 2

• Julian Weiss (KCL)
  A Diasporic Josephus: Samuel Shulam's Hebrew version of Against Apion (Constantinople 1566)
• Andrea Schatz (KCL)
  How to Write History in Exile? On Abraham Zacut’s Sefer Yuḥasin
• Nathan MacDonald (Cambridge)
  Mapping the Tribal Territories

15:30 Coffee break

16:00 Session 3

• Yael Almog (Durham)
  Calamity and Hope in Dissident Israeli Literature
• Heather Munro (KCL)
  Exile Until Moshiach: Non-Zionism In and Out of the Land

Response by Hindy Najman (Oxford) & Roundtable discussion

17:45 Reception

Workshop convenors:
Rebekah Van Sant (University of Oxford) and Andrea Schatz (King’s College London).

The venue is accessible.