Windows of the exile's soul
Diaspora is not a Jewish word. It is a Greek term applied by the Romans to the indigenous people they expelled from the Holy Land in AD70 and dispersed among the nations. The Jews call it galut - exile.
More than a political statement, galut is a state of mind, a wariness that flickers in the eyes of Jews of all ages and national origins whom the social anthropologist Frèdèric Brenner has photographed in a 25-year odyssey. The results are now published as DIASPORA: Homelands in Exile (Bloomsbury, £60).
Some of the portraits are stunningly intimate - a teenaged Yemenite couple in an Israeli shanty house (left), a baby at the instant of circumcision. Others are declamatory - a clique of New York religious feminists in phylacteries, solemn members of the Psychoanalytic Institute, four arm-branded Auschwitz survivors in Salonika. But the eyes have it in every exposure, daring the camera to intrude upon ancestral grief.
The photo book is supplemented with a companion volume of essays, some no longer than extended aphorisms, by such merchandisable penseurs as Jacques Derrida and George Steiner.
It is hard to fathom the purpose of these random contemplations and explanations except as a makeweight in a slipcase. Together, the object consists of something I never imagined possible - a coffee-table book on refugees.
Frédéric Brenner's photographs will be shown until 7 March in the hotel's Ellis Room.