Israel and Palestine - Out of the Ashes: The Search For Jewish Identity in the Twenty-First Century

"Marc Ellis is a brilliant writer, a deeply thoughtful and courageous mind." Edward Said "[Ellis provides] a vital contribution to solving one of the few remaining intractable problems of our time." Archbishop Desmond Tutu "Marc Ellis has demonstrated great courage, integrity, and insight in the very important work he has been doing for years. It has been an inspiration for all of us." Noam Chomsky As the world watches with horror the unfolding events in Palestine and Israel, Marc Ellis, a Jewish American scholar, examines what he sees as a crisis point in Jewish identity. In this book, Ellis offers a vision of Judaism that testifies to an ethical life in our era, based on the principles of justice and community upon which the Jewish faith was founded. Only by addressing the way in which those original principles are being squandered by a miltarized state of Israel and a complicit Jewish establishment in America, he argues, can there be hope for peace in the future. Israel and Palestine: Out of the Ashes is a deeply personal, philosophical account of contemporary Jewish identity. Looking beyond the legacy of the Holocaust and beyond the portrayal of Jews as either victims or persecutors, Ellis forges a new vision of what it means to be Jewish today.