Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Weaver, Alain Epp

Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture. By Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 188 pp. $55.00 (textbook binding). $18.50 (paper).

"Diaspora," along with the closely related term, "exile," has recently hecome an influential critical concept not only in certain political theologies but also in postcolonial theory. Among theorists of postcolonialism for whom the notion of diaspora holds critical promise, one thinks of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakruvorty Spivak. On the theological side, one thinks of the biblical theologies of Walter Brueggemann and, more recently, Daniel Smith-Christopher; the "resident alien" theology of Stanley Hanerwas and William Willimon; and the late John Howard Yoder's appropriation of Jeremiah's call to God's people in exile to seek the peace of the city of their exile (Jer. 29:7). In their most recent collaboration, Powers of Diaspora, brothers Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin make a welcome contribution to the growing literature on diaspora, one that should be of interest not only to political theorists but also to theologians.

Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and his brother, Jonathan, an independent scholar, team up in this volume to make "an argument/or diaspora," while also avoiding "at least some of the risks inherent in promoting 'diaspora' as a new catchword in the global theorization of diversity" (pp. 6-7). The Boyarins provide a compelling apology for diaspora, while also winningly, succinctly, and critically engaging a wide variety postcolonialist and post-structuralist thinkers such as Bhablia, Hall, Spivak, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the nature of diaspora, exile, marginality, and alterity.

Powers of Diaspora begins with a programmatic introduction by Jonathan, one that takes issue with the tendency of some theorists of diaspora to ignore the diasporic history of Jewish communities over the centuries. Without can-fill examination of the lived experience of Jewish communities in diaspora, the Hoyarins argue, contemporary proponents of diaspora as a political model who treat diaspora as a new category risk that theories of diaspora will devolve either into "a mode of heroically alienated questing individualism" on the one hand or "the reiteration of a unitary notion of premodern tradition" on the other (p. 27). From the programmatic introduction the Boyarins turn to case studies providing thick descriptions of Jewish diasporic experience. Daniel builds on his work in Unheroic Conduct, exploring how the Rabbis of the Talmud and other Jewish literature of the diaspora subverted dominant understandings of masculinity. Jonathan in turn examines the Kiryas Joel case of 1994 heard before the U.S. Supreme Court which dealt with the constitutionality of providing a separate educational system for children with disabilities from a Hasidic Jewish community in NewYork.

In Powers of Diaspora, the Boyarins juxtapose the "diasporic genius of Jewishness, that genius that consists in the exercise and preservation of cultural power separate from the coercive power of the state" (p. vii) with nationstatist logics obsessed with securing ethnic homogeneity within permanent geographic boundaries (p. 9). At the same time, however, they caution against an uncritical valorization of diaspora, noting the ways in which diasporic identity is often maintained "through exclusion and oppression of internal others (especially women) and external others" (p. 7). Theologians concerned about articulating the calling of a church dispersed into the world to proclaim God's reign should pay close attention to the ways the Boyarins investigate not only the promises but also the pitfalls of diasporic politics.

ALAIN EPP WEAVER

University of Chicago Divinity School

Chicago, Illinois