Jewish Questions

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In February 2024, Gabriel Abensour opened a debate in K. on the state of contemporary French Judaism, lamenting its lukewarmness and the neglect of its spiritual heritage. After David Haziza and Julien Darmon, it is now Jérémie Haddad’s turn to offer a friendly critique of the diagnosis proposed. Should we really regret a bygone era, when the present is full of signs of the vitality of a French Judaism that knows how to demonstrate its uniqueness in relation to the Anglo-Saxon and Israeli worlds?

At the 2025 Primo Levi Prize award ceremony in Genoa, the great American writer Jonathan Safran Foer delivered a powerful speech on memory, responsibility, and contemporary indifference. In a clear nod to Levi’s thinking, he evoked Gaza, called for moral vigilance in the face of global suffering, urged us to turn turmoil into ethical strength rather than weakness, and warned against becoming shadows of ourselves.

Who is invited to share the meal of liberated humanity, and what is there to eat? Through a comparison between the Seder and the Greco-Roman banquet, Ivan Segré highlights a specifically Jewish conception of liberation, and what it implies. For what is shared during this Jewish “feast of words” is the story of a liberation that took place but which, in order to be effective, must be re-enacted for each human being: “where do you stand, individually, with the story of your own exodus from Egypt?”

In the name of what promise, and what law, is the conquest of the promised land justified? Ivan Segré proposes a reading of the book of Judges, whose structure reveals the need to put to death the phallic, warmongering impulse that, yesterday as today, alienates Israel from its foundation.

On the occasion of the K. sur scène evening, centered on the theme of The Last of the Jews, Ruben Honigmann invited us to meditate on these never-ending endings. We publish the text of his speech.

Can Jewish religiosity blend with Zionism without ending up in messianism? Through this personal reading of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin’s latest essay, Mishnaic Consciousness, Biblical Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture, Noémie Issan-Benchimol introduces us to another way of thinking about Jewish existence in the land of Israel: the Safed model, for which there is no outside of exile.

Last February, Gabriel Abensour lamented in our columns the disarray of Franco-Judaism, deploring its lukewarmness and the forgetfulness of its spiritual heritage. After David Haziza, it is now Julien Darmon’s turn to offer a friendly retort. Rather than looking to the German model of the 19th century, or envying the spread of Anglo-Saxon Jewish thinkers, wouldn’t it be better to appreciate and encourage the intellectual creativity of the French Jewish world, in all its specificity?

The October 7 massacre sent shockwaves through the Jewish world, extending far beyond Israel. One year on, we present David Seymour’s concomitant reflections on the consequences of the massacre for Jews in the Diaspora. What if what was revealed was in fact the permanence, in new clothes, of the “Jewish Question”?