Jewish Ethnography and the Question of the Book

Abstract

The ethnographic study of Jews remains anomalous as a specialty within the profession of cultural anthropology in America, which is still largely organized according to the paradigm of culture or studies. Critical examination of this situation reveals the need for a re-examination of the area studies paradigm; the linkage between the history of anthropology and the unequal dialogue between Christians and Jews over the centuries; and textual/anamnestic alternatives to an anthropology rigidly grounded in spatialist categories. The work of the contemporary French poet Edmond Jabes is examined as one model for a possible postmodern Jewish ethnography. [Jews, area studies, postmodernism, orality, textuality]