Daniel Monterescu

The end of the second millennium saw the emergence of a dazzling range of cultural initiatives, institutional modalities and individual practices grouped together under the label “Jewish Revival.” From Chabad's global tactics of outreach into new social spaces, through the alternative cultural projects that are often dubbed “Jewish spirituality,” to local community-based educational activities, these enterprises are realigning the contours of Jewish identity in the three geographic centers of contemporary Jewish life: Europe, North America and Israel. Against the historical crosscurrents of communal destruction, euro-secularity and post-socialism in Europe, and alongside demographic projections of assimilation among North American Jewry, Jewish Revival(s) Inside Out seeks to reframe the interdisciplinary scholarship about the emergent transnational social field of Jewish revival, from a global and comparative perspective. During my residence at AIS I will also start writing my third monograph “Food Across Borders: Terroir and Territory in Central Europe and the Middle East.”