Purely ethical positions, however legitimate they may be, are clearly insufficient to inform the perspective we need in the current crisis, with Israel’s new offensive on Gaza. Social and political analysis of conflicts, identifying the forces at play and the logic behind them, are necessary, and this is usually what we focus on in K. This week, however, we have decided to make an exception to the rule: the speech given by American writer Jonathan Safran Foer last week in Genoa, on the occasion of the awarding of the 2025 Primo Levi Prize. Although confined to the ethical realm, this text has the merit of subtly providing some resources for reflecting on our actions. What is at stake is our world, which, at a time when humanity has never been so interconnected, revels in indifference to suffering. What concerns Foer, a reader of Primo Levi, is the possibility of cruelty germinating in our shrugging of shoulders, our negligence, our comfort. The reader will conclude that something must be done, but in order to do something, we must first feel concerned. However, and this is where the originality of the thesis lies, the universal ethic of concern defended by Foer is rooted in a Jewish tradition: a unique relationship with being unsettled, understood as a moral virtue that predisposes one to extreme attention to possible misfortune in the world. Following this logic, something in the Jewish tradition therefore immunizes against the indifference that leads to fascism (as Primo Levi called it in the language of his Italian political tradition), and so there can be no Jewish fascism. However, the fact is that there is Jewish indifference and fascist tendencies represented in the Israeli government. Foer’s speech disturbs us with this reminder. The question then arises as to what it means to assume the responsibility that stems from this tradition. The step to be taken is to recognize that this unease is not powerless passivity, but a demanding position that is already a commitment to action. Fascism marches in the orderly ranks of indifference; it is fascism that, under its claims of omnipotence, is passive in the face of the crimes it commits. For those who are uneasy about their own laws, unease is not simply the opposite of indifference: it is an invitation to differentiate and take ownership of one’s actions. “Something must be done,” we hear. Certainly, but it is in the shadow of this “must” that crime unfolds. Action presupposes that discernment has germinated in unsettlement.
For those who are vigilant on the subject of antisemitism, there have been many alarm signals coming from Sweden lately. We remember the turbulent Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö in 2014, with its large anti-Israel demonstrations and inflammatory slogans, as well as the fact that Sweden has, willingly or not, given birth to two idols of the most radical anti-Zionism: Andreas Malm and Greta Thunberg. But beyond the anecdotal, what is the general state of antisemitism in Sweden and how is it being addressed by the public authorities? As part of our partnership with the DILCRAH, we are publishing the survey conducted on this subject by David Stavrou, who has been working on this issue for a long time, highlighting the transformations of both the scourge and the political response over the last twenty years.
Pivoting over to New York, the exhibition of The Morgan Library and Museum, which closed last month, was 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.
