“The Necessity of Exile” with Shaul Magid

Seating is first come, first served and requires advanced registration.

Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to the questions: What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? In each generation, we see that the future of Jewish life depends on how we respond in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment using religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition. The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel|Palestine, antisemitism, diaspora, and a broken world in need of repair.  

A signing will follow, with books available for purchase. 

Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard University, and Rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue. He works on Jewish thought and culture from the sixteenth century to the present, focusing on the Jewish mystical and philosophical tradition. His three latest books are The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Commentary to the Gospels (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Piety and Rebellion: Essays in Hasidism (Academic Studies Press, 2019); and Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021). He writes regularly for Religion Dispatches, +972 Magazine, and other topical journals. He is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Society for the Study of Religion. 

This program is made possible in part by support from the Battery Park City Authority.