Nancy Berg
Exile and Empathy
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 - 7:00-8:30pm EST
Wednesday, April 2nd, 7:00-8:30pm EST
Presented in partnership with the Jewish Publication Society
Exile and Empathy
Since Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden, exile has been a major theme in Jewish literature and history. Most of the history of the Jewish people takes place outside of the land of Israel, as does much of its most creative expression. Most of the process of becoming a nation is due to leaving home and/or being sent into exile.
The core events in Jews’ collective memory – the Exodus from Egypt, the Revelation at Mount Sinai, the expulsions from England and Spain – took place outside the Land of Israel, as did most of the history of the Jewish people and many of the greatest expressions of Jewish cultural creativity: the Babylonian Talmud, medieval Jewish philosophy, Golden Age poetry, modern Jewish literature. Alongside texts that disparage exile as “a kind of death,” others explore the positive aspects of living in creative tension with the majority culture.
This conversation will focus on a few examples to get a sense of the varying ways Jews have conceived of the idea of exile and responded to its reality.
Nancy Berg teaches college courses in Israeli society, Middle Eastern literatures, and Jewish culture. While much of her scholarship focuses on the literature of Iraqi Jews, she has also researched Israeli women’s writing, memory writing, and food.
Her first book, Exile from Exile, explores the writings of Israeli Jews from Iraq, heirs to the longest continuous Jewish community: Babylonian Jewry. In More and More Equal, her next book, she analyzes the literary career of Israeli writer Sami Michael. What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (And What It Means to Americans), coedited with Naomi B. Sokoloff, won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award for Anthologies and Collections. Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making was published in 2020; Exile and the Jews with Marc Saperstein in 2024;Longing and Belonging: Jews in the Modern Islamic World (edited with Dina Danon) was just published last month.
Prof. Berg has been a fellow at CASA (Center for Arabic Study Abroad), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Herbert Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She previously served as president of the NAPH (National Association of Professors of Hebrew).
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