Jewish Revival Inside Out: Remaking Jewishness in a Transnational Age (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology)

By: Zvi Gitelman and Shaul Magid and Daniel Monterescu and Michael Paley and Jonathan Boyarin and Geneviève Zubrzycki and Ruth Ellen Gruber and Asher Biemann and Sara Zorandy and Hannah Tzuberi and Lucine Endelstein and Nissim Leon and Rachel Werczberger and Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli and Cara Rock-Singer

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Synopsis: Against the gloomy forecast of "The Vanishing Diaspora", the end of the second millennium saw the global emergence of a dazzling array of Jewish cultural initiatives, institutional modalities, and individual practices. These "Jewish Revival" and "Jewish Renewal" projects are led by Jewish NGOs and philanthropic organizations, the Orthodox Teshuva (return to the fold) movement and its well-known emissary Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and alternative cultural initiatives that promote what can be termed "lifestyle Judaism." This range between institutionalized revival movements and ephemeral event-driven projects circumscribes a diverse space of creative agency, which calls for a bottom-up empirical analysis of cultural creativity and the re-invention of Jewish tradition worldwide. Indeed, the trope of a "Jewish Renaissance" has become both a descriptive category of an increasingly popular and scholarly discourse across the globe, and a prescriptive model for social action. This volume explores the global transformations of contemporary Jewishness, which give renewed meaning to identity, tradition, and politics in our post secular world.