Review of Boustan et al., "Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History"

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Raʻanan S. Boustan, Oren Kosansky, Marina Rustow, eds. Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition. Jewish Culture and Contexts Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 424 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4303-1.

Reviewed by Kimberly Arkin (Boston University)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Deconstruction without Destruction: Reimagining Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History

Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History is an ambitious edited volume that includes a number of rich and important essays. I call it ambitious because--as outlined in the extensive introduction--it seeks to address and overcome a number of the theoretical problems that have long dogged Jewish studies as a discipline. These include homogenizing and essentializing the “Jewish” object and subject of Jewish studies; the reification and simplification of insider-outsider divides and relationships; the focus on text and textual analysis over a more embedded approach that examines the lived experiences that enable textual production, circulation, and interpretation; and approaches to diaspora that project certain kinds of contemporary Israeli concerns (center versus periphery, homeland versus exile, civilized Westerners versus primitive orientals) onto very differently organized worlds. These are important critiques of contemporary Jewish studies that deserve considerable attention and reflection. Ra’anan S. Boustan, Oren Kosansky, and Marina Rustow seek to overcome these limitations by combining textual and cultural, synchronic and diachronic, and top-down and bottom-up analyses that represent the best possible fusion of contemporary historical and anthropological approaches. The volume is thus organized around three large themes--“Authority,” “Diaspora,” and “Tradition”--rather than by historical period, geographical region, research question, or disciplinary approach.

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