JEWS FROM AFAR: FORGOTTEN DIASPORA AND SINGULAR IDENTITIES

Edith Bruder, Editor

Julien Darmon, Translator

(Albin Michel, 446 pages, 2020)

The history of the Jewish people has been, for the most part, centered around the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and, to a lesser extent, Mizrahi Jews of Eastern Europe, the Iberian peninsula, and the Mediterranean. Much less has been written about the Jewish diasporas of Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, or Sub-Saharan Africa. Jews such as those in the mountains of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan, who still speak Aramaic, and those in India and China have, throughout the centuries, existed both geographically and symbolically on the periphery of Jewish history and culture. As a result, these lesser-known diasporas have been excluded from standard accounts of Jewish historiography.

In this pioneering volume, Edith Bruder, the author of the noteworthy work The Black Jews of Africa, has brought together an array of specialists in history, anthropology, religious studies, and oriental languages whose contributions illuminate the diverse ways Judaism has been—and still is—practiced around the world. Each contributor succinctly yet substantially describes the universes of these eclectic ethnocultural communities—some that no longer exist, others that have survived in relative obscurity to this day, as well as those still emerging in the twenty-first century, as is the case, for example, in Cameroun and Kenya.

Across the many different historical contexts, cultural and geographical environments, and racial and ethnic identities, the thread that runs through these Jewish communities is their strong will to be identified as Jewish. In the close to fifty diasporic communities discussed here, we discover how one can be both Jewish and Iranian; how the ancient Jewish community of Kochi on the Indian continent celebrates Simhat Torah with a unique local flair; how Madagascar ended up with three “indigenous” Jewish communities; and why the Igbo of Nigeria consider themselves as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The very existence and durability of these diasporas lead us to question the usual view of what constitutes Jewish identity—and perhaps diasporic identity in general—whether it be values, collective memory, origin stories, religious practices, interpretation of the sacred texts, language, or, more recently, genealogy.

This ambitious collection exemplifies the benefits of the interdisciplinary approach. The multivoiced research distilled in these pages takes us on a fascinating journey across space and time, constructing a more complete picture of the Jewish diaspora, past and present. Jews from Afar is a timely and vital contribution to the field of Jewish studies that will satiate the curiosity of a broad readership, laypeople and scholars alike.

Edith Bruder is a research associate in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and in the French National Center for Scientific Research. She wrote The Black Jews of Africa: History, Religion, Identity (Oxford University Press, 2012). She co-edited two books published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Africana Jewish Journeys (2019) and African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism (2012).

Julien Darmon is an editor at Editions Albin Michel. He has taught at the Center for Jewish Studies at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) and INALCO (National Institute of Oriental Languages). He teaches Talmud and Jewish thought, notably at the Yeshiva of Students in Paris and at the Center Fleg. A specialist in rabbinic literature and comparative religions, he has published many books, including, L’esprit de la Kabbale (Albin Michel, 2017). He translated into French Jonathan Sacks’s Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (Albin Michel, 2018) and The Song of Songs with the commentaries of Meïr Leibusch Malbim (Verdier, 2012).