Politics

How did Jews come to be defined as “white” by a critical discourse in vogue today? Why do we label Jews as dominant or privileged – and Israel as a colonial entity practicing apartheid motivated by Jewish and white supremacism? Part one of an essay by Balázs Berkovits on the supposed color of Jews…

Would the prohibition of ritual slaughter jeopardize the very existence of a European Judaism? What is at stake goes beyond the simple comfort of the Jewish community: it is the durability of the pact linking Jews to the continent that is at stake. Beyond that, the identity of Europe and the place it intends to give, in the twenty-first century, to its own Hebrew roots are at stake. Here is the second part of David Haziza’s essay on ‘shehita’ in Europe.

How do we explain the return of pogrom imagery as Israel grapples with interethnic violence between Jews and Arabs? More than seven decades after the state’s founding and the end of the British Mandate, why does such language persist? Examining the spate of Jewish-Arab clashes, Danny Trom reflects on the political dimension of majority-minority relations in Israel.

A certain postcolonial thinking is diametrically opposed to what can be considered left-wing politics and would be structurally anti-Jewish argues the great art historian Horst Bredekamp, one of the founders of the Humboldt Forum, in an op-ed published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) last March. This text had a considerable impact on the German and English-speaking intellectual and media scene. We take it up in K., putting it in context: within a controversy about the ‘decolonization’ of art and museums.

A marginal or minimal problem for some, a barbaric custom that should be modernized for others, ritual slaughter is one of the pillars of Jewish life. Requiring the stunning of animals prior to killing is not contrary to the law, the European Court of Justice concluded in a recent ruling. Is ritual slaughter compatible with Europe? David Haziza asks this question in an essay published by K. in two parts.

In his column, Rudy Reichstadt,returns to the growing presence of the yellow star in demonstrations (against the vaccine, against health restrictions linked to Covid, etc.): an instrumentalization that testifies both to a pathology of the memory of the Holocaust and to a crisis of the rhetoric of protest.

On April 19, Jean Claude Kuperminc reviewed the books “Aux sources juives de l’histoire de France” by Mathias Dreyfuss and “Les juifs, une tache aveugle dans le récit national” co-edited by Claire Soussen and Paul Salmona. The latter responds to him and returns to the debate about the tension that is revealed between the history of the Jews in France and their place in the national narrative.

As Minister of the Interior during the presidency of François Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve had to deal with the wave of attacks in 2015. An interview about the threats to the Jews of France and the attacks they suffered, as well as his conception of the Republic and the relationship of Jews to it … >>>

The decision of the Cour de Cassation (French court of appeal), which confirmed the penal irresponsibility of Sarah Halimi’s murderer, has provoked a tremendous collective emotion. An unprecedented fact: the civil parties plan to fight, not on the French judicial terrain – which seems blocked to them – but by addressing themselves to Israel… >>>