How do Israeli universities resist getting overwhelmed by the conflict? We continue this week’s series of articles by Julia Christ and Élie Petit – who set off for K. to document the complexities of an Israeli society grappling with war and its dilemmas – with an interview with Mona Khoury, Vice-President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The contrast between the university life she describes and the hustle and bustle of American and European campuses is striking: while one might expect proximity to a conflict that affects Jewish and Arab students in their very identity to exacerbate tensions, the opposite seems to be true. In Israel, the conflict is not an abstract affair, but a reality that has long been experienced collectively, in a familiar relationship with its contradictions. A reality that the administration has been able to recognize in order to ensure the continuity of university life, by organizing mediation between the different sensitivities. Far from the monolithic image that is often associated with it, Mona Khoury bears witness to the plurality of an Israeli society that is concerned, but prepared for the complexity of the ordeal.
Is it possible that in the heart of Europe, in its very capital, Jews find themselves alone? This is the sad conclusion drawn this week by Belgian historian Joël Kotek. In it, he expresses alarm at the pervasiveness in Belgium of an unabashedly anti-Israeli passion, often openly antisemitism, which seems to extend across the entire political landscape, from the Christian Right to the Socialist Party. While we may wonder about the particularities of this Belgian antisemitism…
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How do Israeli universities avoid getting overwhelmed by the conflict? In this interview - the second in our series of reports from Israel - Mona Khoury, the first Arab Vice-President in the history of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, describes the successful efforts made to ensure the continuity of university life after October 7 and in spite of the conflict. All this while taking a critical look at how, elsewhere in the world, campuses have allowed themselves to be overrun by the ideological conflagration.
What is going on in Belgium? Joël Kotek is alarmed at the spread of an "anti-Israeli passion" across the entire Belgian political spectrum, and asks what is allowing the expression of unabashed antisemitism in Europe's capital.
We've heard of anti-Zionism, but what is counter-Zionism? In this review of Shaul Magid's latest book, The Necessity of Exile, Abraham Zuraw questions the relevance of a certain Jewish-American modality of criticism of Israel, which is articulated in the name of a metaphysics of exile and whose consistency is difficult to grasp.
Gabriel Rom continues his report on how Polish cemeteries have become an increasingly sensitive issue in Polish society over the years. With the emergence of a dictable, albeit contested or revised, Jewish memory, Rom examines the history of Nazi and Polish policies to destroy Jewish cemeteries. Yet, he is also astonished by local initiatives to recreate them, suggesting the beginnings of a sense of history.
After having published a review of Motl in America a month ago, Mitchell Abidor returns in his text to this extraordinary tale of Jewish immigration to the United States. Blending his family’s memories with Sholem-Aleichem’s account, Abidor recounts the journey to the “Promised Land”, the new arrivals’ disorientation and their acculturation to American society. Above all, he pays tribute to the unfailing optimism of these Jews who had left “Pogromland”.
Two members of the K. editorial team, Julia Christ and Élie Petit, are currently in Israel to document and analyze the various movements underway in the country, post-October 7 – the war in Gaza is still going on and an agreement is in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas for the cessation of fighting and the release of hostages. First stop on their journey this week: on their first evening in Tel Aviv, they took part in one of the weekly anti-Netanyahu demonstrations, guided by producer Karen Belz. They report their impressions and first analysis.
Poland once had more than 1,500 Jewish cemeteries. Since Poland’s current Jewish population is estimated at 10,000. The math is stark: today in Poland there is about one Jewish cemetery for every 15 living Polish Jews. In the report — which we are publishing in two parts — American journalist Gabriel Rom tells us about both the virtuous initiatives to preserve these cemeteries and the vicious policies of exploitation to which they are subjected.
In one of Omer Bartov’s latest books Tales from the Bonderlands. Making und Unmaking the Galician Past (Yale University Press, 2022) he writes about an almost forgotten “end of the world” – that of a Galicia where Jews, Poles and Ukrainians lived side by side – whose memory the historian seeks to narrate from its tales and legends. Boris Czerny provides a critical account, noting that Bartov’s nostalgia for this lost Eden-like land is matched by a mistrust of the way in which Jews have taken over another “end of the world”, which would appear to have turned them into “bullies”.
“We have to differentiate between anti-Zionism and antisemitism”, say those who don’t like being called antisemitic. On the face of it, there’s nothing foolish about this demand: it’s necessary to distinguish between legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and dubious feelings towards Jews. But is it really necessary to invent a specific word for this criticism? Philosopher Julia Christ traces the various possible uses of the notion of “anti-Zionism” and asks under what conditions, and in what context, criticism of the State of Israel can legitimately be called anti-Zionist. This brief analysis of state criticism and its modalities provides a clearer picture of when anti-Zionism is just another word for antisemitism.
“It is the calm after the storm. / It is the calm before the storm. / We know what happened. / We got back to normality. / We know what is yet to come. / We will lose said normality. / War is here, and more is coming.”
In February, we published a text by Gabriel Abensour lamenting the lukewarmness of Franco-Judaism and its disarray due to the neglect of its spiritual heritage, particularly its Sephardic one. David Haziza responds here, in the form of a “moderate and amicable critique”. While he agrees with Abensour’s observation of a loss of the vital forces of Judaism, he doesn’t attribute it to a colonial disdain for Sephardism, but rather to an attempt to make Judaism modern and presentable.
On February 26, a riot broke out on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, on the occasion of the visit of an Israeli lecturer. Daniel Solomon, a doctoral student in history and K.’s first English translator , gives us an insider’s account of the event and the threatening climate in which it took place. As the rise of antisemitism calls into question American exceptionalism, Solomon examines the loss of illusions, and the sense of loneliness that accompanies it.
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