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An exploration of how Jews created, lost, and reinvented homes, balancing belonging with displacement across history
Domestic Diaspora tells the story of how Jews, across centuries and continents, have lived a paradox: they were deeply rooted in particular places and their at-homeness was vulnerable and unstable, leading to very high levels of mobility. Bringing the reader into Jewish kitchens, living rooms, synagogues, and neighborhoods, the book reveals how Jews experienced and shaped this paradox. Organized around three themes—“Shaping,” “Breaking,” and “Remaking”—the chapters highlight moments of flourishing, times of crisis, and the inventive ways Jewish families and communities made new homes from the fragments of the old. Contributors offer vivid stories of architecture, food, law, art, and kinship that illuminate the larger history of belonging, displacement, and survival.
Spanning from Renaissance Venice and early modern Prague to Suriname, Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United States, the book argues that Jewish homes were never just private spaces. They were sites of resilience, creativity, and cultural exchange. They could be shattered by violence or exile, yet they were also rebuilt—again and again—through ritual, memory, and imagination. Domestic Diaspora offers fresh insight into Jewish life by focusing not on politics or elites, but on the intimate, everyday spaces where identity and community were forged.
Contributors: Ofer Ashkenazi, Leora Auslander, Cornelia Aust, Ela Bauer, Elissa Bemporad, Aviva Ben-Ur, Federica Francesconi, Keren Friedman-Peleg, Deborah Dash Moore, Katherine Sorrels, Joshua Teplitsky.
Leora Auslander is Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor of Western Civilization in the College and in the Departments of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity and History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France.
Federica Francesconi is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at UAlbany University (SUNY). She is the author of Invisible Enlighteners: The Jewish Merchants of Modena, from the Renaissance to the Emancipation, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Joshua Teplitsky is Joseph Meyerhoff Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library.