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Talk: Exile and the Jewish Imagination

@ Laing Art Gallery

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Ian Biddle (Senior Lecturer in Music and Cultural Theory, Newcastle University) discusses the special Jewish understanding of ‘exile’ and shows how this helps us understand the works being shown in the Out of Chaos exhibition.

Jews have traditionally understood themselves, with good reason, as exemplary exiles. Indeed, the very term ‘diaspora’ (from the Greek of the Septuagint the Greek translation of the Hebrew five books of Moses), was originally used in English only to refer to a series of forced Jewish displacements. In modern Jewish culture, the term has taken on a range of complex and specific meanings and in this talk, Dr Biddle will show how paying attention the richness of these meanings and the various changes they have undergone in the last 200 years, helps us understand some of the ways in which ideas of exile, displacement and difference play out in the works of the group of artists being shown in the Out of Chaos exhibition.

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