Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert Naomi Baldinger Ranen Omer-Sherman . Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 210. Cloth $35.00. ISBN 0252030435. Biblical and liturgical Hebrew frequently conceptualizes God as "Makom," or "place," especially in the context of the exodus from Egypt. This concept, combined with a sense of urgency inherent in the contested national space of Israel, makes Ranen Omer-Sherman's Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert a timely study of the desert's crucial role in the construction and reconstruction of Jewish ethics and identity. The desert, as a site both metaphorical and physical, has been a key trope in Jewish literature from the Bible to contemporary works both Israeli and diasporic. From the biblical narrative of desert wandering to twentieth century Zionist discourse of "making the desert bloom," the desert has been an unrivaled locus for nation-building and transformations both collective and personal. As a transitional space between exile and nation, between slavery and redemption, it challenges both collectivity and individual. It also opens space for encounters with alterity, including those dissenting views and revolutionary undercurrents inherent in collective discourses of Self. For example, Moses's encounter with the rebellious Korah and an Israeli officer's encounter with a dead Egyptian pilot provoke meditations on the definitions and limits of the nation and the self. As Omer-Sherman puts it, "the desert not only crystallizes the urgency of re-visioning the other and reappraising the self, but it affords a space for transformation outside of the particularism of the Zionist, or any other exclusionist, narrative" (161). Indeed, Israel in Exile is, to a large extent, a sustained meditation on the ethical possibilities that desert space opens. Chapter 1 introduces the multiple intersections of "poetics and politics" that inform Omer-Sherman's study, including the consistent thread of Levinasian ethics that runs through the book. Omer-Sherman writes that "the revelation in the desert continues to provoke an ethical orientation towards alterity" (13), citing Levinas's thoughts about Abraham's hospitality towards strangers in the desert he inhabited. Omer Sherman uses Levinas's concept of ethics as a perpetual orientation towards the Other, coupled with Theodor Adorno's injunction that "it is part of morality not to be at home in one's home," to craft a notion of Jewish ethics based in the experience of exile even when applied in the national homeland of Israel. In addition to introducing this notion of ethics, Omer-Sherman details the renewed interest in writings about the desert that emerged in the twentieth [End Page 71] century. To this end, he evokes various traditions of writing about the desert including British romanticism as well as diasporic Zionism. One of the unique features of Omer-Sherman's style is how he blends his broad and well-considered textual analysis with his own experiences in the desert. He writes that following his decision to make aliyah as a teenager, the desert provided a crucial place for him to explore the tensions inherent in his love for Israel and his increasingly critical stance towards its political positions with regard to the Arab other. This approach is unusual in academic writing, but it lends a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to Omer-Sherman's style, which is eminently clear and engaging. Israel in Exile's greatest strength lies in Omer-Sherman's close readings of contemporary Jewish texts that engage the trope of the desert. He interweaves his interpretation with biblical analysis informed by scholars like Ilana Pardes and theological reflections by the likes of Annie Dillard and Rabbi Aaron Soleveichik. Omer-Sherman devotes his second chapter to Shulamith Hareven's The Desert Trilogy, and argues that it offers a feminist critique of "the power of territorial redemption" (53) and an alternative reading of how Israel's national consciousness was forged. This divergent explanation challenges tribalism and emphasizes the ethical treatment of minorities. He treats Hareven's text as a contemporary midrash on biblical and prophetic texts that resonates in Israel's contemporary political context. In the next two chapters, he analyzes Amos...