Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Traveling Jewish: Touring Lands of Dreams Deferred
    Traveling Jewish: Touring Lands of Dreams Deferred
    Traveling Jewish: Touring Lands of Dreams Deferred
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    Traveling Jewish: Touring Lands of Dreams Deferred

    By Marc H. Ellis

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Since 1987, with the publication of his groundbreaking book, now classic, Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, Marc H. Ellis has been touring the world with a prophetic global message of peace and justice, and especially

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGlobal Prophetic Studies
    Release dateJun 12, 2021
    ISBN9781087968711
    Traveling Jewish: Touring Lands of Dreams Deferred

    Read more from Marc H. Ellis

    Related to Traveling Jewish

    Related ebooks

    Judaism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      When Beauty Gets In The Way Of Science

      Apr 18, 2019

      The biggest news in particle physics is no news. In March, one of the most important conferences in the field, Rencontres de Moriond, took place. It is an annual meeting at which experimental collaborations present preliminary results. But the recent

      7 min read

    • Article

      Minyan

      Jan 13, 2022

      Minyan
      2 min read

    • Article

      Jerusalem

      Jul 20, 2019

      Jerusalem
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Long Life Lived For All

      May 21, 2024

      A Long Life Lived For All
      4 min read

    • Article

      Black Buddhists, Black Buddhisms

      Jun 28, 2022

      Black Buddhists, Black Buddhisms
      3 min read

    • Article

      UBUNTU I Am Because We Are

      Jan 18, 2022

      UBUNTU I Am Because We Are
      10 min read

    • Article

      Roaring Revival

      Dec 27, 2024

      I had the incredible privilege of being invited to attend the historic Lausanne Congress in Seoul, Korea, in September 2024. Serving as a journalist, I joined the congress’ writing team as the only South African. I felt deeply humbled and blessed by

      3 min read

    • Article

      For Love Of Strangers: Behind The Jewish Legacy Of Welcoming Refugees

      Oct 31, 2018

      For many, the question of whether to accept refugees into the United States comes down to politics. For many Jews – as well as Muslims and Christians – it is “a matter of moral commitment.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      Death Of a Prophet

      Sep 24, 2021

      Death Of a Prophet
      16 min read

    • Article

      Man of Science, Man of Faith

      Sep 22, 2017

      Man of Science, Man of Faith
      14 min read

    • Article

      Black Atlantics

      May 31, 2024

      Black Atlantics
      15 min read

    • Article

      My Two Religions

      Jan 18, 2022

      My Two Religions
      4 min read

    • Article

      Talking in Tongues

      Mar 22, 2019

      Talking in Tongues
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hillels Are Under Attack

      Oct 9, 2024

      Hillels Are Under Attack
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Pained Intuition and a Palpable Longing: Katie Ford on Theology, Poetry, and the Unknowable

      Sep 13, 2018

      If You Have to Go, the new collection of poems by Katie Ford, is a book that conjures powers of possession. I feel that way about all of her books: Her poems bring me to a mystical plane somewhere between language and life. I’m left shaken. Her willi

      17 min read

    • Article

      A Rosary In My Pocket

      May 23, 2023

      A Rosary In My Pocket
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Dangerous Quest for Identity

      Jan 21, 2023

      The Dangerous Quest for Identity
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Traveling Jewish

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Traveling Jewish - Marc H. Ellis

      © 2021 Marc H. Ellis

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Photographs by Marc H. Ellis

      Edited and Cover Design by Carolina Dionco

      Book Design by Dominique Ison

      Published by the Center for the Study of the Global Prophetic

      Email: [email protected]

      PAPERBACK ISBN 978-1-0879-6870-4

      HARDCOVER ISBN 978-1-0879-6903-9

      EBOOK ISBN 978-1-0879-6871-1

      To

      Aaron and Isaiah,

      with love, our inheritance shared

      Indeed, I have inherited an interpretive framework and existential directedness, a way of life toward which to strive. I have been given tools with which I may now seek an intentional orientation toward myself; toward various communities, my own included; toward others; toward the Other; toward the divine; toward the world.

      Aaron Moore Ellis

      To make a future, to make it an object and work on it, is often not possible within the prophetic frame. It is the prophetic call to think beginnings without a future.

      Isaiah Dylan Ellis

      Contents

      Preface

      Looking Back at the Year Ahead

      Gathering Light

      Father, Son, Keffiyeh at the Cape

      Prophetic Rebellion

      Relinquishing Modernity’s Ghosts

      Star of David Helicopter Gunships

      All Hands (Un)Clean

      Late Arrival

      Teaching What Cannot be Taught

      Jewish Travelers

      Buddhist Shabbat

      Contracting Colonialism

      Kneeling & Returning

      Twice Blessed

      A Voice (Un)Stilled

      At Home Among the Other Nations

      JuBu’s for Peace

      A Future (Still Being) Born

      The Formidable Black Nazarene

      A Special Keychain

      Rent-a-Jew

      Mutual Blessing

      Faith vs. Empire

      I AM WHO LOVES THE PROPHETS

      Holocaust as Imperial Export

      Aaron’s Existential Directedness

      Gentrified Jewish

      Are We All Jews?

      Cabinet Theology

      Jesus Was a Jew, So What?

      Delightfully Disoriented

      Transnational Karaoke

      Departures

      Crossing the Imperial Divide

      Arriving as I Depart

      Boomerang Prophetic

      The Gospel of Colonialism and the Book of Palestine

      Fragments of the Mystical Prophetic

      Colonial Black Space

      Center for the Study of the Global Prophetic

      A Rabbi at the End of Ethical Jewish History

      Homeward Bound

      Existential Directedness. Jewish. The Prophetic.

      Lenten Passover

      On the Edge in My Chapel of Love

      (Un)Real Hope

      Performing the Prophetic

      Memories

      Tallahassee Breakdown

      Something Wrong With Us

      Heartbeats & Tears

      Cold Chicago

      Present & Future

      The Voice to Come

      Burning Bridges

      Confessions

      Time, History, (In)Justice Moves On

      Melancholy Gratitude

      Epilogue

      Preface

      Some years ago, I retired from full-time teaching and though I continue to write and lecture at various universities around the world, it has been some time since I accepted a teaching assignment. Thus I was excited when I was invited to teach for a month at De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines in 2016. After arriving at La Salle, I received a series of other speaking invitations. The invitations were well-timed and in a geographic sequence. After I departed the Philippines, I traveled to San Francisco, Houston, Tallahassee, and Chicago. My teaching stint had become a speaking tour.

      In the Philippines, I spoke at a number of seminaries, school complexes and home-based seminars. My Manila teaching assignment became a speaking tour as well. Among the places I lectured within the Philippines include: the Institute of Formation and Religious Studies, Maryhill School of Theology, both in Quezon City; the De La Salle Integrated School, part of the De La Salle University Science and Technology Complex in Laguna. In the United States, I spoke in San Francisco at St. Thomas More Church; in Houston at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference; in Tallahassee at St. Thomas More Church, sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine at Florida State University; and in Chicago at the Latina Center at McCormick Theological Seminary.

      I have been touring for decades, to be more precise, since 1987, when I first published Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation. Since then, my book has gone through a second and third edition, while being translated into numerous languages. In 2014, a 25th anniversary, the newly translated Spanish edition of my book was published. I was pleased to travel to Cuba the following year for its debut at the Havana International Book Fair.

      Though it has many twists and turns, the essence of a Jewish theology of liberation is a prophetic questioning of Jewish empowerment in Israel and the United States after the Holocaust. In 1987, and even more so today, I and other Jews of Conscience refuse the either/or of contemporary Jewish life as proposed by the Jewish establishment in Israel and the United States. The proposed either/or is that either Jews suffer or use power over others to secure Jewish life. While supporting the need for Jewish empowerment after the Holocaust, a Jewish theology of liberation demands an ethical critique of the abuse of Jewish power against the Palestinian people. For what gains us as Jews if we survive and flourish over against others and in the process lose our Jewish ethical soul?

      During my tours, I often write down thoughts and experiences that come my way. I did so again during my travels to the Philippines and beyond. In my journal are reflections on a mix of issues related to who I am as a person and as a Jew, interfaith religious queries, and the political realities of our time. Written daily in the morning, in the evening, and sometimes in the middle of the night, my reflections are part diary, part journal, and part memoir. I title these reflections Traveling Jewish because though I also reflect on other subjects, my primary experience is one of being Jewish in mostly non-Jewish areas of the world. Yet Jewish, mythic and real, in the Bible, in Christianity and Islam, in modern cultural life, is everywhere I travel. What is it like for a committed Jew, especially a Jew of Conscience, to experience the world outside Jewish geography, yet filled with diverse ideas about Jewish?

      I wrote my Jewish theology of liberation before the first Palestinian Uprising began in December 1987. I knew that we Jews had gone wrong in our treatment of Palestinians and that Jews had to speak for Palestinian freedom in light of our own history of justice-oriented values. In a Jewish theology of liberation, I found my voice. My writing found its way to different parts of the world and is still being read today. In some ways, Traveling Jewish is an updated commentary on the themes I wrote about many years ago.

      Though there are many more Jewish voices speaking and acting on behalf of justice today, the situation in Israel-Palestine has gone from bad to worse. In my diary, I write of the situation in Israel-Palestine and the many issues that surround it. Israel-Palestine is a key to understanding other longstanding themes in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic life. These include but are not limited to the struggle to achieve justice in the world; the cost of waging war and committing atrocities to life and identity; the ongoing and costly dynamic of colonial and imperial power; the possibilities and pitfalls of the interfaith dialogue; the flourishing of the prophetic in our time.

      The hybrid format—diary, journal and memoir—allows my personal reflections to interact with thoughts and ideas beyond my person. Since this is the way I live and think, I present my writing as I wrote day by day, with some minor grammatical and syntactical changes.

      Speaking tours are a time for reflection and clarification. The many encounters I experience, the change of location and audience, even the various modes of travel that transport me from place to place, impact my life and those who hear me. These various encounters become part of the tour.

      Some of my longest and most interesting conversations in the Philippines took place while stuck in the endless and time-consuming traffic in and around Manila. A certain keychain I describe provided an interesting insight into Filipino culture, occasioned many photographs and abundant humor. Two of my latest books I ordered shipped to Manila for a book signing arrived a day after I left the Philippines. A disaster on the face of it, the missed opportunity became a running joke that afforded me and my hosts countless laughs.

      Traveling Jewish is the product of a lifelong search and contested understandings, thus my reflections and the way I express them are distinctly my own. Long discourses on the meaning of this or that idea might be of help to the reader. However, I find that the wonder of reading someone else’s experience is best found by jumping into unfamiliar territory and following the story as it unfolds.

      I am an amateur photographer or, as they say, an iPhonographer. On my tour I took several hundred photos. They are an integral part of my tour, and a special thanks to Albert Kishek for his moving photograph of my son, Aaron, and the renowned Black scholar and activist Cornel West.

      I am thankful to those who made my speaking

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1