This summer, K. invites you to rediscover, in each of its weekly issues, a feature comprising five previously published articles from the magazine. This week, we have put together a selection entitled “Utopia/Dystopia”, with articles by Noémie Issan-Benchimol, Julia Christ, Bruno Karsenti, and Danny Trom, a short story by Guy Konopnicki, and two interviews: one with Meron Rapoport and the other with Ronen Eidelman.
A Jewish State in Weimar for the 21st century : Interview with Ronen Eidelman
Elie Petit – Published February 10, 2022
In 2008, Ronen Eidelman, an Israeli artist living in Germany, founded the movement for the creation of a Jewish state in Thuringia: Medinat Weimar. The artistic project questions, seduces some and horrifies others, makes people react. More than 15 years later, he tells us, from Jerusalem, where he lives today, what led him to imagine such a project, oscillating between eccentric provocation and incitement to debate. An interview in which he talks about German guilt, Herzl as a plastic artist, and a second Jewish state conceived as a plan B…
>>> Read the interview with Ronen Eidelman by Elie Petit
‘Autonomies’, or How Israel Exorcises the Demons of the Future
Noémie Issan-Benchimol – Published June 9, 2021
The series ‘Unorthodox’ and ‘Shtisel’ are global hits that brought haredim into the home and question the cinegeny of the Orthodox world today, when its characters become mainstream points of identification. For K., Noémie Issan-Benchimol evokes a series that has not yet been released in Europe, available in the United States – and in Israel, of course, where it has provoked discussion: a dystopian series, ‘Autonomies’ imagines Israel split in two: here, the autonomous territory of Jerusalem run by an ultra-Orthodox religious group; there, a secular state with Tel Aviv as its capital …
>>> Read the article by Noémie Issan-Benchimol
A conversation with Meron Rapoport from “A Land for All”
Elie Petit – Published May 29, 2025
Israeli journalist and former reporter for Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, Meron Rapoport co-founded the initiative A Land for All with Palestinian Honi Al-Mashni, which proposes a unique solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: two fully sovereign states, but linked by a confederation, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, an open border, and a negotiated right of return for both sides. In this interview, Rapoport looks back on his personal journey, his break with the paradigm of separation, and the need to think beyond the logic of exclusion and toward a future based on sharing, reciprocity, and democracy.
>>> Read the interview with Meron Rapoport by Elie Petit
Israel-Palestine: “Two States Plus” – The Urgency of a Real Utopia
Julia Christ, Bruno Karsenti & Danny Trom – Published May 29, 2025
As the situation in Gaza worsens and the Israeli political debate becomes increasingly radicalized, any plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems out of reach. Yet many are working to prepare for the future. One political project, A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland, deserves special attention. It proposes two sovereign states linked by a confederation, each recognizing the national legitimacy of the other and organizing coexistence throughout the disputed territory. In a context marked by military deadlock, democratic fatigue, and the rise of anti-Zionist interpretations in Europe, including of this project, what can we make of such a utopian construct?
>>> Read the article by Julia Christ, Bruno Karsenti & Danny Trom
Israel upon Danube. Episode 1
Guy Konopnicki – Published July 18, 2023
“With the approval of our great comrade Stalin, I came to you to propose giving Austria to the Jews so that they can build their state there.”
