In Exile: Geography, Philosophy and Judaic Thought

In In Exile, Jessica Dubow situates exile in a new context in which it holds
both critical capacity and political potential. She not only outlines the
origin of the relationship between geography and philosophy in the Judaic
intellectual tradition; but also makes secular claims out of Judaism’s
theological sources.

Analysing key Jewish intellectual figures
such as Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt, Dubow presents exile as a form of thought and action and reconsiders attachments of identity, history, time, and territory. In her unique
combination of geography, philosophy and some of the key themes in Judaic
thought, she has constructed more than a study of interdisciplinary fluidity.
She delivers a striking case for understanding the critical imagination in
spatial terms and traces this back to a fundamental - if forgotten - exilic
pull at the heart of Judaic thought.