At the turn of the twentieth century, Vienna was the site of a fascination without end: the scene of a “joyous apocalypse”, to use Hermann Broch’s expression, which attempted to express the curious mix of an unprecedented artistic, scientific and political modernity and the view that the actors of this modernity had of the destruction of the world they were creating. Indeed, modernity was exalted in Vienna like nowhere else, and like nowhere else, the pathologies of the various modernization processes that were accused there at the dawn of the European catastrophe were revealed. It is therefore not surprising that even today “Vienna at the turn of the century [is] like a question mark in our past,” as Bruno Karsenti writes. To understand this insistent question mark, he rereads Michael Pollak’s great book: Vienne 1900. Une identité blessée (1984, Gallimard). Not to dwell on this “fin de siècle” past, but because Pollak’s work invites us to pursue a true socio-history of Europe and of the wounds that its modernization processes never stop imposing on Europeans, both “native” and “newcomers”. It is only by understanding what hurts identities in the promises of European modernity that have been betrayed, but also kept, that we will understand the current crises of the continent, of which anti-Semitism, including when it is declined into anti-Zionism, is only one of the symptoms – but certainly the most revealing of the global state of political Europe.
On the occasion of Sukkot, Ruben Honigmann once again shares with us one of his intimate testimonies. As in his previous texts published in K. – “Is Your German Hebrew?” and “I pictured Austria as Germany without Nazism. A Childhood Fantasy.” – he manages to turn the most seemingly anecdotal memories into rich fables through which he reflects on his Jewish identity. In “My Father’s Sukkah,” he recalls the place of this holiday in his family history, the tête-à-tête with his father that it made possible as well as the often comical moments of promiscuity in the communal cabin. He is amused by the 50 shades of Jewish practice that Sukkot brings. “A cabin that flies away without collapsing, fragile but perennial, an onion – the human heart – pierced but out of reach, my father’s sukkah contains the essential: the Jewish condition in exile, precarious but tenacious.”
Finally, a report in the Balkans. The Israeli journalist Benny Ziffer went in search of the traces that Sabbataï Tsevi would have left in Albania. By following his journey, we discover an unknown country, long left out of the world under the iron hand of Enver Hoxha. However, from Gjirokastër to Tirana, passing through Berat, Jewish traces are very present: those of the self-proclaimed Messiah of the 17th century at the origin of Sabbataï Tseviism, those of the rescue of the Jews of Albania during the last war, those of a privileged relationship, still today, between Albania and Israel.
