Gideon Katz discusses some of the mure surprising aspect of Israeli secularism The fear of Judaism is an important theme in Israeli culture. By analyzing Israeli dystopias and essays we have the chance to “look” closely at this fear, and its images. The main one is the image on Judaism as the Israeli unconsciousness that ambush to the secular identity. This central image tells us something about the roots of the fear. Gideon Katz is an associate professor in Ben-Gurion Research Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of To the Core of Secularism: A Philosophical Analysis of Secularism in its Israeli Context, (Jerusalem, 2011), The Pale God – Israeli Secularism and Spinoza's Philosophy of Culture (Boston, 2011) and co-editor of Music in Israel (Sede-Boker, 2014). His book In Silence and out Loud: Leibowitz in Israeli Context (Open University Press, Ra’anana) has been recently published.
Nitzan Levobic discusses Zionism and melancholy, through the woks of Israel Zarchi The story of the early Zionist settlement in Palestine could be told from the viewpoint of failure and melancholia. An untold history of this period ignores the high rate of suicides and cases of clinical depression among the Zionist “pioneers”. The story of the forgotten author Israel Zarchi (1909-1947) will serve as a test case: During his short life he published six novels and seven collections of short stories, as well as translations from German, English, and Polish. He also became a close friend of Bialik, Agnon, Klausner and other literary and academic dignitaries of the Jewish Yishuv. His “Left-Wing Melancholy” was adopted by the young Amos Oz who mentions him as a key source of inspiration. Zarchi’s life and writing reflects his deep melancholy, the result of the growing gap between the high Zionist ideals and the reality on the ground. Nitzan Lebovic is Professor of History and the Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of monographs and edited collections dedicated to German Lebensphilosophie [Life-Philosophy], Zionism and Melancholy, or happy concepts such as Nihilism, Catastrophe, Complicity, and Dissent.
The authors of a recently published book dealing with the history of Hollywood's relation with Israel discuss some of their findings From Frank Sinatra's early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg's present-day peace-making, Hollywood has long enjoyed a 'special relationship' with Israel. Based on a newly-published book by Columbia University Press, this paper outlines the ways in which Hollywood's moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades, including Eddie Cantor, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Redgrave, Arthur Krim and Arnon Milchan. The paper probes the influence of Israeli public diplomacy on Hollywood's output and lobbying activities, but also highlight the limits of ideological devotion in high-risk entertainment industries. It demonstrates how show business has played an important role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance and illuminates how U.S. media and soft power have helped shape the Arab-Israeli conflict. Tony Shaw is professor of contemporary history at the University of Hertfordshire. Giora Goodman, a historian, chairs the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.
Haggai Ram charts the (modern) history of Hashish in the Holy Land After a century of prohibition, we are witnessing a dramatic shift in cannabis culture and policy around the world from a “killer weed” and a cause of racial degeneration to an accepted recreational drug and a “magic medicine.” In his lecture, Haggai Ram will examine this global shift of cannabis by focusing on the social history of the drug (i.e., hashish and marijuana) in Palestine-Israel from the late nineteenth century to the present. Ram will offer a vista into the political and cultural contexts within which cannabis became a “drug”; the underworlds of Jewish and Arab users and traffickers; the complex roles played by race, gender, and class in the construction of cannabis “addiction”; the place of the Zionist project in dispersing cannabis use and enforcing drug restrictions; and the normalization-cum-medicalization of this intoxicant in recent decades. In the process, he will demonstrate the extent to...
Amnon Aran maps the development of Israeli foreign policy since the end of the Cold War This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. The book provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. In my talk, I shall demonstrate how Israeli foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, I shall highlight the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. I shall demonstrate that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances...
Michael Karayanni considers how the Israeli construction of religion and politics shapes the live Palestinian-Arabs in the state. The religion-and-state debate in Israel is Jewish centred and systematically disregards the Palestinian-Arab minority. This is rather puzzling. For the religion-and-state debate in many other countries does take up conflicts pertaining to minority religions, and the Palestinian-Arab minority did generate quite a diverse series of questions that could have easily qualified as part of the existing debate. In this article, I decode this anomaly by pointing out the existence of a legal matrix in the Israeli religion-and-state debate. This matrix identifies the recognition accorded to Jewish religious institutions and norms as "public and coercive" but that accorded to the Palestinian-Arabs as "private and liberal". In the second part of this article, I point out some of the legal implications of this matrix as well as critically evaluate if what seems to be "...
Eldad Ben-Aharon charts the history of Israel's refusal to recognise the Armenian Genocide. In a milestone vote in late 2019, both the US House of Representatives and Senate overturned more than forty years of precedent to pass a bill declaring that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks was, in fact, a genocide. Subsequently, on 24 April 2021, also US President Joe Biden has officially recognized the Armenian genocide. These decisions reinforced the importance of the subject matter and which offers the opportunity to learn how the 1980s were a formative period for the campaign for international recognition of the Armenian genocide. In his talk, Dr. Ben Aharon will assess how from the 1980s onwards, the state of Israel found itself in the remarkable position of supporting denial of the Armenian genocide. His talk takes us behind the scenes of the Israeli foreign ministry in the 1980s to examine how these state actors strategically mobilised the memory of the Armen...
Kathrin Bachleitner remaps the road that led to Germany's "atonement" for the Holocaust The duty to remember the Holocaust, the profession of responsibility for the atrocities committed, the admission of guilt and shame on the part of all Germans with the ensuing effort to atone for the past constitute the cornerstone of Germany’s national memory approach today. However, what started this official ‘atoner attitude’ in the first instance? More specifically, what was the initial push towards the long road of atonement, and why did German political leaders decide to take this approach in the first place? To answer this question, the presentation examines the decision to pay reparations to Israel in 1952. Through archival documents, the case study reconstructs the international incentives, mindset and diplomatic backchannel discussions between the Israelis, the Allies and the West Germans and compares these with the Austrian case. Altogether, the paper sheds new light on the roots of...
Atalia Omer discusses restorative justice practices and the possibilities (and limits) of Jewish critiques of Zionism. In the same way that it is no longer possible to talk about antisemitism without also thinking about Israel/Palestine, it is no longer possible to imagine Jewish ethics outside the realities of Jewish power. My focus here is on when such thinking unfolds through a restorative justice prism or carries a restorative justice potential. At stake is not only a Jewish critique of Zionism, but also justice for Palestinians. The two issues are forever enmeshed. Examining Judith Butler’s relational ethical analysis of Zionism in her Parting Ways and Michael Manekin’s recent The Dawn of Redemption, I argue that, to the degree that restorative justice practices are missing from ethical Jewish reflections on Zionism and Israelism, the sources of such Jewish critiques of Zionism remain diasporic. Butler approaches it from the comfort of diasporic “authenticity,” while Maneki...
Elana Shapira discusses the tangled relationship between Austrian Nationalism and Zionism in Viennese Modernism Berta Zuckerkandl grew up witnessing her father, publisher of the newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Moritz Szeps’s stormy career and political engagements. Moritz Szeps was a close advisor to the liberal Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf and a supporter of an Austria-France alliance through his connections with liberal French politicians such as Léon Gambetta and Georges Clemenceau. Clemenceau’s brother, Paul, married Szeps’s eldest daughter Sophie. Berta also became involved in political causes. Learning about the “Dreyfus affair” at her sister’s salon, Zuckerkandl supported the fight to recognize his innocence. For Berta Zuckerkandl, the city of Vienna would become hers to form. Among the guests in the early days of Zuckerkandl’s renowned salon were non-Jewish cultural critic and Zionist Hermann Bahr. Other members in her salon associated with the Zionist movement were...