O, Jerusalem!: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant

by Marc H. Ellis

Overview

This century has bequeathed to the Jewish people a series of events "with horrific and startling consequences," including the Holocaust, the birth of the state of Israel, and its development into a powerful military state. Ellis argues that the history and identity of the Jewish people are now being decisively transformed and reinterpreted. What is their destiny in the next century? Ellis asks, "Are there religious ideals, intellectual concepts, and political movements . . . that will help Jews confront the history we are creating . . . ?" In this profound and provocative work, he finds the answers in the covenant, symbolized by Jerusalem. Ellis offers a renewed theology of the covenant and its justice dimensions, its present "exile," and its future in revolutionary forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800631598
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	05/24/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Marc H. Ellis is retired University Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University. Among his publications areEncountering the Jewish Future (2012), Reading the Torah Out Loud (2007), Practicing Exile (2001), Oh, Jerusalem! (1999), and Unholy Alliance (1997), all from Fortress Press. He is also a regular contributor on Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle Eastwith a series called Exile and the Prophetic

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1 — Visions of the Diaspora and Homeland

Perspectives on the Jewish Return

Ambivalent Legacy, Uncertain Future

The Present Challenge

Chapter 2 — On Memory and Justice

The Jewish Liturgy of Destruction

Remembering Deir Yassin

The Path Chosen

Chapter 3 — Jerusalem and the Broken Middle

Paths of Resistance and Affirmation

A Covenant in Exile

Jerusalem and the Broken Middle

Chapter 4 — The Covenant on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century

Boundaries and the Covenant

Tikkun of Ordinary Decency

A Thick Wall of Scandal

Chapter 5 — The Great Debate over Jewish Identity and Culture

Israel's Fragmentary Tikkun

The Seventh Jewish Culture

A Fatal Embrace

Monumental Anxieties

Jewish Culture and the State

Chapter 6 — Toward a New Sinai

The Time Is Now

Revolutionary Forgiveness

Envisioning the Centenary of Israel's Birth

Toward an Inclusive Palestine Culture

Finding the Lost Agenda

Epilogue

Refusing Partial Practice

The Grounding of Our Fidelity