Next week, K.‘s summer break will come to an end and a new cycle of publications will begin. For many months now, however, the breath of fresh air that would give us some respite from the prevailing gloom has been slow in coming and, despite all our hopes, there is no denying that stagnation and deadlock are the watchwords of the moment. For the fact remains, repeated ad nauseam: the war in Gaza drags on, despite the outbursts of protest from part of the Israeli people, and each day seems to further confirm the betrayal of the Zionist ideal. How, in these circumstances, can we speak out again without exhausting ourselves in repetition? Our bet, for this pre-resumption issue, is that we must start from the reality of the deadlock and pause for a moment to say more than we usually do. In addition to our latest summer feature, you will find a new text by Danny Trom that tackles precisely this task: diagnosing the sticking point that is making the war endless. It discusses Jewish lamentation in its traditional form, that of the kinot, which bear witness to the powerlessness of the people in exile, and what it means in the modern era, a product of the Zionist revolution, that this lamentation can now be prolonged in war.
For the final feature before we return next week, we have put together a selection of the big interviews of K. First up is Anna Zawadzka, Polish sociologist, who examines the changing forms of antisemitism in Polish culture in a new book More than a Stereotype; followed by filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, who reflects on her blend of political activism and Judaism over the span of her rich filmography. Historians David Nirenberg and Steven J. Zipperstein offer us a way to take a step back from antisemitism: the former by understanding it as a structure of thought that permeates Western conceptions of itself and its history, the latter by examining the infamous Kishinev pogrom, the myths that have crystallized around it, and its role in the rise of Zionism. Finally, our interview with Daniel Cohn-Bendit links questions of identity to reflections on the excesses of anti-Zionism, but also on the struggle against it.
As a reminder, our archives are open, and we invite you to browse through the hundreds of articles we have published over the past four years.
