The Holocaust in Visual Memory

"My Race: A Jewish Girl Growing up Under Apartheid in South Africa"

“Philosophy and Literature: The Ancient Quarrel”

Franz Boas

Franz Boas: The Intellectual as Anti-Racist?

The Unity of Prejudice: The Rise and Fall of an Idea

Brother Can You Spare a Dime 

Barbara Epstein is a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches on the history of social movements and theory relevant to social change.  Her books include Political Protest and Cultural Revolution:  Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and the 1980s (Univ. of California Press) and The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism (Univ. of California Press).  Between the 1970s and 1990s, Prof. Epstein was a member of the editorial collective of Socialist Revolution, later renamed Socialist Review. She is currently at work on a study of socialist-humanist thought and politics after World War II.

Left Hostility to Israel: Sources, Consequences, and Alternatives

Moishe Postone is a professor of History at the University of Chicago. He is author of Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (Cambridge Univ. Press), History and Heteronomy (The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy), and co-editor (with Eric Santner) of Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century (Univ. of Chicago Press), among many other books and articles.

Israel, the Left, and the Crisit of the Late 1960s

Mitchell Cohen is a professor of Political Science at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York.   His books include Zion and State:  Nation, Class, and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Columbia Univ. Press), The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics, and the Hidden God (Princeton Univ. Press), and as co-editor, Princeton Readings in Political Thought (Princeton Univ. Press).  In addition to scholarly journals, Prof. Cohen as written for The New York Times Sunday Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and The New Republic.   From 1991 to 2009, he co-edited Dissent magazine.

Does the Left Have a Zionist Problem?

In recent decades, sympathy toward Israel among Leftists in Europe and the United States has given way to hostility.  Perceived in its early years as a vital experiment in socialist democracy, Israel is now typically viewed by radicals and even many progressives as a colonialist power.  What explains this shift in opinion?  Does it reflect larger changes in the politics of the Left or, rather, changes in Israel?  Does hostility toward Israel and Zionism have ramifications beyond the Left itself?  These questions framed a day-long symposium on April 19, 2012, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This symposium was sponsored by the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, with additional support from the Harvey Goldberg Center.

The Question of Zionism: Introductory Remarks

Audio

I hang on every word he utters! He is a very special man working to make this world a more loving, kind and understanding place for all!

Jay is beyond amazing!

Center for Jewish Studies

During the nineteenth century the majority of masskilim (Jewish intellectuals) in Germany  appreciated only the “enlightened” aspects of  Jewish religion. Mysticism was for them an obscure, retarded deviation from Judaism. When, where, how, and why did the rehabilitation of Jewish mysticism take place?  This lecture will try to answer these questions. It will show that research of Jewish mysticism did not begin with Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, and it was not connected with Zionism. A positive change of attitude toward Kabbala, Sabbetaianism, and Hassidism was a process which was taking place in Russia during the last third of the nineteenth century. It was carried out by Jewish scholars and writers of literature who were influenced by Russian modern mystical trends, which at that period were spreading in Russia and in other European countries.

How did Mysticism Penetrate into Jewish Studies? The Russian Context

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