Here, the provocative theorist argues for the separation of Jewishness from Zionism, engaging a number of thinkers who offer important resources for thinking about dispossession, state violence, and possibilities of cohabitation.

Introduction: self-departure, exile, and the critique of Zionism -- Impossible, necessary task: Said, Levinas, and the ethical demand -- Unable to kill: Levinas contra Levinas -- Walter Benjamin and the critique of violence -- Flashing up: Benjamin's Messianic politics -- Is Judaism Zionism?: Or, Arendt and the critique of the nation-state -- Quandaries of the plural: cohabitation and sovereignty in Arendt -- Primo Levi for the present -- "What shall we do without exile?": Said and Darwish address the future.