Table of Contents From the Editors 3 From the President 4 From the Executive Director 5 AJS 2013 Conference Plenary Session Plenary Lecture: From Wissenschaft des Judentums to Jewish Scholarship Today: The Issues We Have Faced and Those That Lie before Us 8 Michael Meyer Response: The Place of Jewish Studies: Discipline, Interdiscipline, and Identity Studies 10 Rachel Havrelock The Land Issue The Land vs. the land 12 Ben-Yehudah—the Belorussian Hero: Julie E. Cooper Jewish Heritage and the New Belorussian National Identity Project 46 The Land Within and Without: Magdalena Waligórska The Cycle of Israel’s Life 14 Nili Wazana A Tree Grows in Berlin 48 Leslie Morris Architecture, Landscape, and Rabbinic Place-Making 18 Land: Holy Land, Homeland, Holy Land 54 Gil Klein Anita Shapira (Home)land: Reflections on Andalusi Jewish God on Earth: Rav Kook, ’Erez. Yisra’el, and the Attachment to Place 20 Re-Enchantment of Political Zionism 56 Ross Brann Yehudah Mirsky Jews and the Land in Early Modern Germany: Yedi‘at Ha-’arez. Reclaimed: Classic Zionist Ideology Responses to Crisis and Natural Disaster 26 in the Advance of West Bank Settlement 58 Dean Bell Eric Fleisch A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Hiking in Israel: Why Are These Trails Different? 62 Birobidzhan and Jewish National Cosmopolitanism 28 Shay Rabineau David Shneer LandWork: Israel, Nakba, Memory 64 Jews and the Geography of Contest in the Rebecca Stein American Frontier West 34 David Koffman Ottolenghi: A Love Story 66 Ari Ariel Lower East Side Landings 36 Jonathan Boyarin and Elissa Sampson Emily Jacir: The Place Beyond 68 Carol Zemel Hallowed Ground: National and Otherwise 44 Oren Kosansky Places vs. Spaces for Palestinians and Jews 70 Ian Lustick The Questionnaire What would you like Perspectives to be? 72 AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of President Please direct correspondence to: the Association for Jewish Studies Jonathan Sarna Association for Jewish Studies Brandeis University Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street Editors New York, NY 10011 Matti Bunzl Vice President/Publications University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Leslie Morris University of Minnesota Voice: (917) 606-8249 Rachel Havrelock Fax: (917) 606-8222 University of Illinois at Chicago Vice President/Program E-Mail: [email protected] Pamela Nadell Web Site: www.ajsnet.org Editorial Board American University Allan Arkush AJS Perspectives is published bi-annually Binghamton University Vice President/Membership by the Association for Jewish Studies. Carol Bakhos and Outreach University of California, Los Angeles Carol Bakhos The Association for Jewish Studies is an UCLA affiliate of the Center for Jewish History. Orit Bashkin University of Chicago Secretary/Treasurer © Copyright 2014 Association for Sarah Benor Zachary Baker Jewish Studies ISSN 1529-6423 HUC-JIR, Los Angeles Stanford University Michael Brenner American University, Washington DC AJS Staff Ludwig Maximilian University Munich Rona Sheramy Executive Director AJS Perspectives reserves the right Nathaniel Deutsch to reject advertisements or other Shira Moskovitz University of California, Santa Cruz items not consonant with the goals Program and Membership and purposes of the organization. Todd Hasak-Lowy Coordinator; Manager, Copy may be condensed or rejected School of the Art Institute of Chicago Distinguished Lectureship Program because of length or style. AJS Ari Kelman Ilana Abramovitch Perspectives disclaims responsibility Stanford University Conference Program Associate for statements made by advertisers Heidi Lerner Laura Greene and contributors. Stanford University Conference Manager Laura Levitt Amy Weiss Temple University Grants and Communications Meira Polliack Coordinator Tel Aviv University Riv-Ellen Prell Artwork by Daniel Bauer. Courtesy of the artist. University of Minnesota Front Cover: Har Bracha II (Shtender), 2010 Interior Covers: Grandfather’s Books (2005–2014) Jonathan Schorsch Back Cover: Har Bracha I (Aron Sefarim), 2010 University of Potsdam, Germany Page 6, left: Nachal Alexander (Yad Hana), 2012 David Shneer Page 6, right: Untitled (Mevo Beitar), 2010 Page 7, top: Untitled (from The Combination of Limits, French Hill), 2012 University of Colorado Page 7, bottom: Untitled (Mt. Hermon Model), 2012 Dina Stein University of Haifa Daniel Bauer’s work from Israel exposes fissures and rifts in the multiple strains of modernism that have been imported, developed, or mutated in the contemporary Nadia Valman Levant. Often focusing on architectural additions and subtractions, Bauer seeks out Queen Mary University of London the spatial, temporal, and conceptual topos between the personal and the collective, each a reflection of the other seen askew. The dormant histories emerge slowly from Yael Zerubavel the built and rebuilt surfaces—latent images that document a decisive absence. Rutgers University Daniel Bauer received his BFA from the Photography Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and his MFA from Columbia University, Managing Editor New York. He has had two solo shows at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York, Karin Kugel and has worked with architects and historians on exhibitions and projects in Kunst Werke, Berlin and the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. His Graphic Designer work is in the collection of Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Ellen Nygaard 2 AJS Perspectives From the Editors Dear Colleagues, The love affair with homeland is the central drama of the Tanakh. In order to locate this discussion squarely in a Jewish context, this Pursuing it requires the blind devotion of Abraham, fulfilling it takes issue juxtaposes traditional texts and contemporary controversies. the turbo-virility of Joshua, and mourning it taxes the shrill voices Nationalist and religious commitments to land are further of the prophets. Acquisition and loss of the land contribute to the bound up with economic factors. For example, Jewish settlers in the people’s collective neurosis. In the absence of its soil, covenant, temple, West Bank have been encroaching upon and seizing water springs. and redemption are impossible. Seemingly, there can be no people These localized actions cohere with the broader state agenda of of Israel without the land of Israel, no Judeans without the place of controlling the significant water resources of the Mountain Aquifer, Judah. Yet the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the which runs through the West Bank. Along with the redistribution Assyrian Empire does not undo Israel as a people; Babylonian exile of resources, the occupation and conflict have driven up real estate prompts the collation of traditions as Scripture; and the Temple’s prices throughout the contested land. How land functions as final destruction by Rome transforms Judeans into wandering Jews. commodity and real estate is never far from its symbolic valuation. Most of Jewish culture—characterized in different ways by reflection Often lost in the overlay of national, religious, and economic on this history—transpires outside of a homeland. Land becomes claims, territory is also earth, necessary to sustain human life. At image, reference, and memory, without need of coordinates. current rates of exploitation, scientists wonder how much longer Of all the changes introduced by early Zionism, the relationship the land can support human health and sustenance. An apocalyptic to land was perhaps the most dramatic. Prominent Zionist thinkers rhetoric sometimes accompanies the call for change. Like the prophets recast the sacred place that oriented Jewish prayer as national territory before them, ecologists envision extinction and transformation and interpreted Tanakh as an authorizing charter. In the absence of a happening at the same place. They stress the basic and most vital tradition of Jewish cartography, biblical itineraries were projected on features of the land as a source of food and stability and suggest the landscape until, in 1921, the British imperial map set the limits of that this perspective can connect people across national, religious, the Jewish conception of the modern land of Israel. The map became and even real estate borders. If the residents of a region recognize fully realized as national ground and occupied territory in 1967. themselves as exercising collective power, then they might be able American sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli to preserve local control of resources and halt rapid privatization settler land grabs, and Palestinian protest contribute to the renewed or militarization of their land. Treating the land as material rather urgency surrounding the question of Jewish territoriality. Answering than symbolic may have the power to realign national borders and the question with depth requires a look back at classical Hebrew challenge the increasing multinational corporate possession of land. writings and Jewish homes in lands not construed as homeland, as well as a look forward to future solutions such as two states, one state, Matti Bunzl federation, or regionalism. In this day and age, most answers meet University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with immediate opposition in a polarized field of discourse. Although not as yet evident, Jewish culture with its fierce dialectical tradition Rachel Havrelock should be particularly able to accommodate such charged discussions. University of Illinois at Chicago The Association for Jewish Studies wishes to thank the Center for Jewish History and its constituent organizations American