The very nature of horror is to be questioned only with difficulty. Whether it fascinates the captive (and therefore blind) gaze, or forces us to avert our eyes, horror seems to thwart our capacity for comprehension, as if it had reached its limit. As a video of Israeli hostage Liri Albag was broadcast last week by Hamas, reactivating the original horror of the event, the question once again arises: what should we do with these images, which bear witness to the unbearable nature of the crimes of October 7, and which Hamas terrorists have sought to propagate? For Emmanuel Taïeb, whose text invites us to reflect on the fate of these images, there is no other way but to look at them lucidly, provided we shift the focus to their uses. For the use of these images for memorial purposes or political mobilization, against the initial intention of those who took them, bears witness to their reversibility. Refusing to confront horror would mean letting the horrific have the last word in history.
Pivoting over to New York, the current exhibition of The Morgan Library and Museum is celebrating Franz Kafka with a profound exploration of his manuscripts, letters, and diaries, offering an unparalleled glimpse into the creative mind that reshaped modern literature. Mitchell Abidor intricately examines Kafka’s impact, particularly his influence on Philip Roth, who reimagined Kafka’s struggles with identity, family, and Jewishness through the lens of American immigrant life. Through this dialogue between two literary titans, we are invited to reconsider the Kafkaesque not merely as a symbol of bureaucratic absurdity, but as a deeply human confrontation with love, alienation, and cultural dislocation.
From day one, Israel’s war in Gaza has been legitimized by a dual objective: to destroy Hamas and to bring back the hostages. However, since wanting to free the hostages “at all costs” implies negotiating with Hamas to buy them back, these two objectives are in contradiction. Thus, from the very first days of the war, a new political divide emerged in Israel: should an agreement for the return of the hostages be negotiated, or not, at the risk of national security? Noémie Issan-Benchimol examines the coordinates of the opposition between the various Israeli “tribes” on this thorny issue. At a time when hostage posters have been torn down even in Israel on the basis that they would undermine martial morale, it is in fact Jewish fraternity that is at stake: is the person captured by the enemy still part of the community, is solidarity still required? Tracing the traditional legitimization of hostage rescue in Jewish thought, Noémie Issan-Benchimol asks how the form of brotherhood specific to exile can relate to the state situation.
