101/ Mending the World: A Jewish-Arab Diaspora Conversation (with Cindy Milstein)

This is a conversation with Cindy Milstein, editor of the book “There is Nothing so Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World As Jewish Anarchists

What we talked about:

  • Displacement as part of the Jewish experience
  • Being diaspora (Jewish and Arab)
  • Having communities without states
  • Politics of language (Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino etc)
  • Authoritarianism and flattening our differences
  • Jewish anarchism
  • Hegemonic narratives in Europe (Examples of Dreyfus affair, Alsace, Berlin, Spain)
  • Oral histories
  • Tisha B’av, 1492, Tree of Life massacre and needing a language for grief
  • Wrestling with difficulties
  • Antisemitism on the right and the left

Recommended Books:

  • An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
  • The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg
  • Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

And as promised in the episode:


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2 responses to “101/ Mending the World: A Jewish-Arab Diaspora Conversation (with Cindy Milstein)”

  1. […] 101/ Mending the World: A Jewish-Arab Diaspora Conversation (with Cindy Milstein) […]

  2. […] When Joey Ayoub reached out to me to do an episode of his @firethesetimes after There Is Nothing So Whole spoke to him, I was delighted of course, because it’s a wonderful podcast. But what especially excited me was that as an Arab and Jew, we both find our anarchistic sensibilities in diaspora, the shared ground of not feeling at home in this world and wanting to mend it, or what increasingly I see as a generative juncture: diasporic anarchisms. Moreover, the thread Joey pulled from my anthology was language, both stolen by colonialism, capitalism, white Christian supremacy, and states, and (re)claimed by those of us in diaspora as resistance, resilience, and joyous cultures, aiding us in feeling whole. Indeed, Joey shared a bunch of clips of Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic songs, which you’ll find if you check out our conversation at https://thefirethisti.me/2022/03/04/101-mending-the-world-a-jewish-arab-diaspora-conversation-with-c…. […]

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