This book gathers twenty-two scholars and activists, living in interconnected diasporas, to explore the connections between Marc H. Ellis’s Jewish liberation theology and current intellectual and geopolitical developments in Israel/Palestine and the world.

For four decades, Marc H. Ellis has sought to rethink the Jewish tradition in light of the prophetic imperative, especially with regard to the need for geopolitical justice in the context of Israel/Palestine. Here, twenty-two contributors offer intellectual, theological, political, and journalistic insight intoEllis’s work, connecting his theological scholarship to the particularities of their own contexts. Some contributors reflect specifically on Israel/Palestine while others transfer Ellis’s theopolitical discussions to other geopolitical, cultural, or religious concerns. Yet all of them rely on Ellis’s work to understand the connections of prophetic discourses, religious demands, social movements, and projects of social justice. Paying particular attention to global racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, white supremacy, and current neocolonial practices, the contributors also address minoritized liberation theologies, the role of memory, exile and forgiveness, biblical hermeneutics, and political thought. In diverse and powerful ways, the contributors ground their scholarship with the activist drive to deepen, enrich, and strengthen intellectual work in meaningful ways.

Introduction: The Emergence of the Global Prophetic in the New Diaspora

Susanne Scholz and Santiago Slabodsky

Practicing Exile in the New Diaspora as a Jewish Scholar of Conscience: An Interview with Marc H. Ellis

Susanne Scholz and Santiago Slabodsky

Part 1. Beyond Innocence and Redemption: Jews, Race, and Colonization

1.The Last Jew in Gaza

Sara Roy

2.Israel and the Idolatry of Whiteness: The Critique of Race that Marc Ellis Never Knew He Made

Jessica Wai-Fong Wong

3.The Ecumenical Deal, the Judeo-Christian Tradition, and the Christian Colonization of Judaism

Robert O. Smith

4.“When Can You Start?” Marc Ellis’s Contributions from a Jewish Latin American Standpoint

Santiago Slabodsky

Part 2. Unholy Alliance: Other Christianities, Prophetic Liberations

5.A Palestinian Christian Liberation Theologian Encounters a Jewish Liberation Theologian

Naim Ateek

6.Riding with Don Quixote

Miguel A. De La Torre

7.Reading the Hebrew Bible in Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Luis N. Rivera-Pagán

Part 3. Revolutonary Forgiveness: Global Perspectives on the Prophetic

8.A Letter to Marc Ellis

Claudio Carvalhaes

9.The Politics of Memory and Theological Reflection

Kwok Pui-lan

10.Exile, Power, and Decolonizing God/Ourselves

Thia Cooper

11.Reclaiming the Prophetic for Dystopian Times: Marc Ellis and the New Diaspora

Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

Part 4. Expanding the View: Marc H. Ellis and Personal Journeys

12.On My Teacher Who Embodies Revolutionary Forgiveness

William A. Walker III

13.On Embodying the Prophetic Call for Justice in the Land: Jewish Identity and Religion in the Biblical Hermeneutics of Marc H. Ellis

Susanne Scholz

14.Our Encounters in the New Diaspora: Reading Paul with Ellis

Jin Young Choi

Part 5. Reading the Torah Out Loud: Jewish Voices in Conversation

15.Welcome to the New Diaspora, Rabbi Rosen!

Brant Rosen

16.Marc H. Ellis: Eulogy of a Conscious Conscience

Keren Batiyov

17.Is There a Jewish Place to Call “Home”?

Robert Cohen

Part 6. Religious Odysseys: Dialogues beyond Boundaries

18.In Search of Dialog between Womanist Theology and Jewish Liberation Theology

Karen Baker-Fletcher

19.An-Other Holy Land: The Imagining of Pakistan and Muhammad Asad’s (née Leopold Weiss, 1900-1992)

Charley M. Ramsey

Postscripts

20.What is the Body in Our Work? A Son’s Liberationist Inheritance

Aaron Ellis

21.Beginnings, the Breath of Life: A Preface to Marc Ellis’s Prophetic Political Thought

Isaiah Ellis