Exactly thirty years ago, on November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a religious Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process. In Yitzhak Rabin, la paix assassinée ? [ET: Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated peace], Denis Charbit revisits the shockwaves caused by the event, the ambiguous legacy and fractured memory of the Israeli prime minister in his own country. For his name still divides, despite the commemorations that have become "a time for lies, a role-playing game, where, out of respect for form, Rabin's opponents, who have been in power for nearly thirty years, have ‘a moral duty to commemorate him and a political duty to forget him’" writes Charbit, from whose book, to be published in French this week, we are publishing two excerpts.
“Betrayal” is the appropriate word to describe what the ruling coalition in Israel is doing to the spirit of Zionism. While we hope that the end of the war in Gaza will be an opportunity for Israel to get off this slippery slope, German historian of Zionism Michael Brenner reminds us here what the founding fathers, across the political spectrum, had in mind when they envisioned the creation of a democratic Jewish state.
Né en 1925 à Vilnius, le YIVO – Institut scientifique juif – voulait être le « toit » de la culture yiddish. Cent ans plus tard, installé à New York, il reste la référence mondiale pour l’étude et la transmission de l’univers ashkénaze. À l’occasion de ce centenaire, nous avons rencontré l’historienne Cécile Kuznitz, qui retrace pour nous l’aventure intellectuelle et politique de cette institution unique.
Under Netanyahu’s government, and with the war in Gaza, the State of Israel has found itself increasingly isolated on the international stage. The Israeli Prime Minister, a fan of power politics and macho bravado, would like to make this a source of pride: “We are going to be super-Sparta.” But, asks Danny Trom, isn’t Spartan sovereignty a pseudo-sovereignty, especially for the Jewish people? Examining the political lessons drawn by Hannah Arendt from Jewish history, the sociologist identifies the requirements that the Jewish state must meet if it wants to ensure more lasting autonomy.
After nearly a decade under the rule of the right-wing populist Law and Justice Party (PiS), marked by a deeply ambiguous relationship with the memory of the Holocaust and antisemitism, Poland has been led by a centrist coalition since December 2023. Can we now hope that the public authorities will take real action to tackle the still endemic problem of antisemitism in Poland? Paula Sawicka tackles this difficult question in this article, published as part of our partnership with DILCRAH.
In March 1973, Robert Badinter — the French lawyer, humanist, and future justice minister who would later lead the fight to abolish the death penalty — delivered a little-known but crucial courtroom plea during the first trial brought under France’s newly enacted Pleven Law, which criminalized incitement to racial hatred. The case centered on a piece of Soviet propaganda in which antisemitism hid behind the mask of anti-Zionism. In his argument, Badinter wove together law, history, and Jewish memory with remarkable moral clarity.
To mark his recent induction into the Panthéon, France’s secular temple to its national heroes, K. publishes the full text of this 1973 plea — a powerful early example of Badinter’s lifelong fight against antisemitism and his commitment to socialist and humanist principles. The document is introduced and annotated by historian editor-in-chief of Droit de vivre Emmanuel Debono.
Introduction: The massacre of October 7, 2023, caused an earthquake whose shockwaves continue to reverberate throughout the Jewish world. In Israel, it reactivated the specter of pogroms, which the state was supposed to have made impossible; in the diaspora, it revealed the fragility of a security that was thought to be guaranteed. In this lecture given in Bern on October 9, historian Jacques Ehrenfreund examines what this event says about our times: the end of the post-Shoah era, the dissolution of European moral standards, and the persistence of a hostility that history seemed to have disqualified.
What is “traumatic invalidation”? According to psychologists Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman, it is a concept that could adequately describe the subjective effects of October 7 on the psyche of many Jews. Their important work is presented here by clinical psychologist Céline Masson.
October 7 did not only reopen the wound of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it also revived a fault line buried in the Western consciousness, particularly in Europe. The event laid bare the link between the history of the Middle East and that of the continent that scrutinizes its explosions. For October 7 was not only imported into the debates: it was reflected upon, revealing the internal crisis of a Europe uncertain of its post-Shoah and post-colonial legacy, and now divided between three irreconcilable narratives—the Western-oriented, the anti-colonial, and specifically the European. At the heart of this divide are two haunting questions: What remains of Europe if it can no longer recognize what the resurgence of antisemitism means, here and there? But also, what remains of Zionism as a European project if its response to antisemitism in terms of the rights of peoples eludes it just as much?
In this short text, originally published in the New York Times, Israeli writer Etgar Keret discusses the rift that war has created in his society, to the point of making communication impossible.
While the Polish state continues to systematically deny Polish responsibility for the Holocaust and engages in a continuous effort to distort memory, two eminent specialists on these issues, Jan and Katarzyna Grabowski, are sounding the alarm and calling for transparency in memory policy.
In a New York yeshiva, a young student scarred by the Six-Day War decrees that Talmudic law prohibits collateral damage. His friend, a not-so-innocent narrator, recounts the ensuing adventures, with their share of unexpected consequences. Through this novella, which reads like a coming-of-age novel, Elie Hirsch introduces us to the eccentric charm of the yeshiva world, against a backdrop of teenage misadventures.
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