The Center for Israel Studies Vienna, in Cooperation with the Vienna School of International Studies, invites you to a

Symposium in Recognition of the 120th Anniversary of the Death of Theodor Herzl

Remembering What Herzl Stood For: The Past and Future of Zionism”

Date: Wednesday, 27 November 2024, 18:00h (6:00 pm)

Place: Main Hall, Vienna School of International Studies, Favoritenstraße 15A, 1040 Vienna

Theodor Herzl’s vision for a Jewish state was well expressed in Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948: „The state of Israel will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of shrines and holy places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations“.

The purpose of this event is to remember that inspiring vision, and to consider its future prospects.

Co-sponsors/Contributors:
Österreichisch – Israelische Gesellschaft, New Israel Fund Austria, Josef Shaked Fonds

 

Words of greeting: Prof. Dr. Emil Brix, Director, Vienna School of International Studies
Moderator: em. Prof. Dr. Mitchell Ash, President of the Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Keynote address by Prof. Dr. Arieh Saposnik, Ben Gurion Institute for the Study of
Israel and Zionism, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Beer Sheba, Author of  Zionism’s Redemptions: Images of the Past and Visions of the Future in Jewish Nationalism (2021)

Additional remarks by

Senior Scientist Dr. Stephan Wendehorst, Faculty of Law, University of Vienna
em. Prof. Dr. Fania Oz-Salzberger, University of Haifa, author of Deutschland und Israel nach dem 7. Oktober (2024), and Alon Ishay, President of the Jewish-Austrian Students’ Association.

 

Discussion among the speakers, followed by questions or comments from the audience.
Language: English

Registration by 25 November 2024, 24:00h (12 midnight) is mandatory:

office@center-for-israel-studies.at

ID check (passport or ID card) at the entrance, please bring your registration confirmation.

Prof. Dr. Arieh Saposnik is Associate Professor at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, and Editor of the journal Israel Studies. Before coming to BGU, Saposnik held the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies at UCLA, where he was also the founding director of the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. He is a historian of Zionism and Jewish nationalism in the broader context of the construction of national cultures and identities. In his current research, Saposnik is working on imagery and symbolism of the sacred in the making of Jewish nationalism, and in Zionism and Israeli culture in particular. He is also studying competing notions of the link between Jews and territory in the modern world.

Prof. Dr. Fania Oz-Salzberger is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Haifa School of Law and the Haifa Center for German and European Studies, and a leading Israeli intellectual who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala in 2020. She has published extensively on the political theory of the Scottish enlightenment, German-Israeli relations, and contemporary politics in Israel and the Near East.  Her books include Israelis in Berlin (2001), Jews and Words (with her father Amos Oz) (2012), and The Israeli Nation-State: Political, Constitutional, and Cultural Challenges (ed. with Yedidia Stern 2014).

Senior Scientist Dr. Stephan Wendehorst teaches at the Institute for Legal and Constitutional History, Faculty of Law, University of Vienna. He works in the fields of legal history in Early Modern Europe, with emphasis on Jewish law; international law; and international humanitarian law. His publications include British Jewry, Zionism and the Jewish State 1936-1956 (2012) and Geschichte jüdischen Rechts vor, mit und jenseits des Nationalstaats (2020). He completed a research project, “Theodor Herzl als österreichischer Staats-und Verfassungsrechtler? Der Einfluss des österreichischen Staats- und Verfassungsrechts auf die jüdische Nationalbewegung und deren verfassungsrechtliche Konzepte” in 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Veranstaltung des Center for Israel Studies Vienna, in Kooperation mit dem Jüdischen Museum Wien und mit der Unterstützung des Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich, der Österreich-Israelischen Gesellschaft und den Freundinnen und Freunden des New Israel Fund Österreich.

Lesung und Gespräch:

„Gleichzeit. Briefe zwischen Israel und Europa“

Datum: Donnerstag, 21.November 2024, 18:30 Uhr

Ort: Jüdisches Museum Wien, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Wien

Grußworte:  Dr.in  Barbara Staudinger, Direktorin, Jüdisches Museum Wien

Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell G. Ash, Präsident, Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Synopse:[1]

Unmittelbar nach dem Terroranschlag der Hamas auf Israel beginnen Sasha Marianna Salzmann und Ofer Waldman eine Korrespondenz über eine erschütterte Welt. In Briefen und Chats, mit Gedichten und Musik, die sie einander schicken, versuchen sich die beiden Autor:innen an einer Beschreibung und Benennung dessen, was sie gerade sehen und erleben – jenseits des tagespolitischen Geschehens. Ofer Waldman erzählt von seinem Alltag in Israel. Er sitzt Shiva, unterhält sich mit seinen Kindern, geht auf Mahnwachen, hört auf die Klänge des Krieges. Sasha Marianna Salzmann verdichtet ihre Erlebnisse und Beobachtungen in unterschiedlichen Städten Mitteleuropas.

Salzmann sitzt am Mahnmal für die ermordeten Jüdinnen und Juden an der Donau in Budapest, streitet sich in Wiener Kaffeehäusern und schaut dem Blaulicht der Polizeikonvois am Berliner Hermannplatz zu.

Was ist noch übrig von alten Gewissheiten nach dem 7. Oktober, was hat Bestand im Strudel der Meinungen, Behauptungen und Positionierungen? Und was scheint in der Folge des furchtbaren Krieges im Nahen Osten unwiederbringlich verloren? Im Versuch, sich diesen Fragen erzählerisch zu nähern, entsteht ein Dialog, der immer mehr zum berührenden Dokument einer Freundschaft wird: Ich sehe dich, sagen diese Briefe, ich kann nichts tun, aber ich bin da.

Sasha Marianna Salzmann ist Theaterautor:in, Essayist:in und Dramaturg:in. Für ihre Theaterstücke, die international aufgeführt werden, hat sie mehrere Preise erhalten, zuletzt den Kunstpreis Berlin 2020. Ihr Debütroman Außer sich wurde 2017 mit dem Literaturpreis der Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung und dem Mara-Cassens-Preis ausgezeichnet, stand auf der Shortlist des Deutschen Buchpreises und wurde in sechzehn Sprachen übersetzt. Für ihren zweiten Roman, Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein (2021) erhielt sie ebenfalls zahlreiche Auszeichnungen, wie den Preis der Literaturhäuser und den Hermann-Hesse-Preis 2022 sowie den Kleist-Preis 2024. Ihr Stück „Muttersprache Mamaloschen“ wird derzeit im Studio des Maxim Gorki-Theaters in Berlin mit großem Erfolg gespielt.

Ofer Waldman, geboren in Jerusalem, zog 1999 als Mitglied des von Daniel Barenboim und Edward Said gegründeten West-Eastern Divan Orchestra nach Berlin. Er spielte in mehreren deutschen und israelischen Orchestern, darunter dem Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin und dem Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Seit 2015 ist er als freier Autor und Journalist tätig. 2021 gewann er zusammen mit Noam Brusilovsky den Deutschen Hörspielpreis der ARD. Sein literarisches Debüt, Singularkollektiv. Erzählungen, erschien 2023 im Wallstein Verlag. Waldman ist in mehreren zivilgesellschaftlichen NGOs aktiv. Er lebt in Israel und Deutschland.

https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/gleichzeit-t-9783518432136

Fotos:  © Suhrkamp Verlag

[1] Synopse und Kurzbiografien – Quelle: Website des Jüdischen Museums Wien https://www.jmw.at/events/salzmannwaldman_gleichzeitbriefe_zwischen_israel_und_europa_?termin_id=1728157322891

Public Lecture with Dr. Sonia Gollance

“Jewish Masculinity in the Zionist Ballroom”

Date: 22 May 2024, 17:30

Venue: Central European University, CEU, Quellenstraße 51-55,
1100 Wien, Room D002.

Abstract: When people think about the Zionist “New Jew” in early twentieth-century Europe, all-male spaces like sporting clubs and dueling fields come to mind. Yet the dance floor was an important proving ground (and site of anxiety) for Jewish men, who demonstrated their adherence to European and Zionist views of masculinity by dancing with women, an activity forbidden by traditional Judaism. This talk examines how Zionist balls could reenact heated debates about German identity and a Jewish state, focusing in particular on Clementine Krämer’s 1918 serialized novel, “Der Weg des jungen Hermann Kahn.”

BIO | Dr. Sonia Gollance is Lecturer in Yiddish at University College London. Her book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2021) was a National Jewish Book Awards (USA) finalist.

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Eyal Benvenisti:

International Law on War and Peace “From the River to the Sea”

Date: Monday 29 April 2024, 19:00h

Place: Lecture Hall, top floor, Juridicum, Schottenbastei 10-16, 1010 Vienna

Words of Greeting:

Prof. Dr. Brigitte Zöchling-Jud, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Vienna
Prof. Dr. Mitchell G. Ash, President, Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Ursula Kriebaum, Department of European, International, and
Comparative Law, University of Vienna

The on-going war in the Middle East is multifaceted. It encompasses the struggle between the Zionist movement seeking to establish refuge for the Jews in their ancient homeland and the Palestinian people resisting losing theirs. Additionally, there is a battle between extremists on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide seeking to undermine the materialization of the two states vision. The far-reaching implications of this conflict challenge the existing international legal framework. International law is often invoked to temper these disputes. However, this too has become a battleground in both the academic and the political spheres, as seen most recently in the debates surrounding the complaint against Israel now being adjudicated at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In this lecture, Professor Benvenisti will discuss some of the pivotal legal issues involved.

Eyal Benvenisti is the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge since 2016, and was the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law there until 2024. He is Member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the Institut de droit international. A Co-Editor of the British Yearbook of International Law, he served on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law (2009-2018). He has held visiting professorships at the law schools at Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Toronto and Yale, and in July 2024 will deliver the General Course at The Hague Academy of International Law.
Selected recent publications: Occupation in International Law, (Oxford University Press, 2022, with Eliav Lieblich); and Between Fragement and Democracy: the Role of National and International Courts. (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with George W. Downs).

Vortrag
Univ. Prof. Dr. Helga Embacher

Antisemitismus im 21. Jahrhundert: linker Antisemitismus, rechte Bemühungen um Israel und Israels Reaktionen

Grußworte und Moderation
Univ. Doz. Dr. Louise Hecht

Wo:  Fachbibliothek des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, Campus der Universität Wien,
Spitalgasse 2-4/Hof 1.12, 1090 Wien

Wann: 9. April 2024
18:30 Uhr

Mit Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts wurde weltweit ein Anwachsen des Antisemitismus verzeichnet. Die sehr kontrovers geführte Debatte um einen „neuen Antisemitismus“ fokussierte lange auf einen linken und muslimischen Antisemitismus, mitunter von unterschiedlichen politischen Seiten vereinnahmt. Erst mit dem Terroranschlag auf die Synagoge in Pittsburgh (2018) und in Halle an der Saale (2019) sowie den sich abzeichnenden Wahlerfolgen rechter und rechtsextremer Parteien kam „rechtem Antisemitismus“ größere Aufmerksamkeit zu. Viele dieser Parteien (Front National, Fidesz, die Schwedendemokraten oder die FPÖ) hatten nunmehr eine pro-israelische Position übernommen, allerdings eng verbunden mit Islamfeindlichkeit und antisemitischen Verschwörungserzählungen.

Der Vortrag fokussiert zum einen auf die Rolle des Antizionismus im linken Spektrum und die Frage, wann dieser zum Antisemitismus mutiert und ob sich dabei klare Grenzen ausmachen lassen. Zum anderen werden rechte und rechtsextreme Positionen zu Israel kritisch hinterfragt. Damit stellt sich auch die Frage, wie die israelische Regierung auf linken Antisemitismus sowie die Annäherung von rechten Parteien und Politikern reagiert. Welche Rolle spielen dabei realpolitische Interessen, wann und wie werden Grenzen hinsichtlich der Beziehung zu rechten und rechtsextremen Parteien und Politikern gezogen, welche Rolle kommen dabei Antisemitismus zu und wie wird dieser interpretiert oder auch ignoriert?

Kurzbiographie:
Helga Embacher
ist seit 2001 ao. Univ. Professorin am Fachbereich Geschichte an der Universität Salzburg, sie war Gastprofessorin an der University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (1997), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2003/04), an der University Innsbruck, Politikwissenschaft (2004) und zuletzt an der University Haifa, Israel (2022). Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Nationalsozialismus, Jüdische Geschichte, Israel, Antisemitismus, Exilforschung.

Publikationen (Auswahl)
Antisemitismus in Europa. Fallbeispiele eines globalen Phänomens im 21. Jahrhundert, Böhlau, Wien 2019 (gemeinsame mit Bernadette Edtmaier und Alexandra Preitschopf)
Herausgeberin von Der Gaza-Krieg 2014 und sein Widerhall in Europa. Pro-Palästina-Demonstrationen und Antisemitismus-Debatten, Chilufim 18/2015 (Sonderheft): 105-150.
“Antisemitismus im linken Spektrum und in muslimischen Communities“, in: Europäische Rundschau, 47 (2019/3): 25-32.

   
Book presentation
Laura Almagor: Beyond Zion. The Jewish Territorialist Movement, Liverpool University Press, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2022

Dienstag, 5. März 2024, 19:00 – 21:00
Venue: tiempo nuevo genussbuchhandlung, Taborstrasse 17a, 1020 Vienna

CEU Jewish Studies Program and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invite you to the discussion and book launch of Beyond Zion. The Jewish Territorialist Movement.
Laura Almagor’s book reconstructs the rich history of the activities and changing ideologies of Jewish Territorialism. Via Uganda, Angola, Madagascar, Australia, and Suriname, this story eventually leads us to questions about yiddishkeit and to forgotten ideas about how to be Jewish in the twentieth century. In reviewing Zionism’s monopoly on territorial Jewishness, it reconsiders a Jewish future beyond both state and exile and re-evaluates strategies of Jewish geopolitics.

Discussion
Laura Almagor, Author, Assistant Professor of Political History, Utrecht University Department of History and Art History
Éva Kovács, Deputy Director (Academic Affairs), Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)
Michael L. Miller, Head of the Nationalism Studies Program at CEU and co-founder of its Jewish Studies Program
Laura Almagor is Assistant Professor of Political History at Utrecht University (Department of History and Art History). Previously she held positions as a lecturer in twentieth-century European history at the University of Sheffield and as a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has held fellowships at the VWI, at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, and at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest.
Registration required.
In cooperation with the Wiener Wiesenthal Institut, the CEU and tiempo nuevo

 

 

Panel Discussion

Israel at War: Civil Rights, International Law and the Future of Democracy
in cooperation with the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna,
and with the support of the New Israel Fund, Austria
Date and Time: Thursday, 7 December 2023, 7 p.m.
Place: The Aula on the Campus of the University of Vienna, Hof 1.11, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien
Please register: office@center-for-israel-studies.at
Panelists:
Amichai Cohen, Senior Fellow, Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem and Ono Academic College
Karen Saar, Director of Resource Development and Outreach, ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel), Jerusalem
Dorit Geva, Professor of Political Science, Central European University, Vienna
Words of Greeting: Drin Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, Chairwoman, New Israel Fund Austria
Moderation: Univ Prof (em.) Dr. Mitchell G. Ash, Professor Emeritus of Modern History, University of Vienna and President, Center for Israel Studies Vienna

The horrific mass murder and hostage-taking of Israelis and other nationals living with them or nearby by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023 shocked the world. The bombing of Gaza and the following ground offensive by the Israeli military have been justified by the Israeli government as acts of self-defense intended to eliminate Hamas and thus prevent any recurrence of attacks like the one on 7 October. This policy and the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza have led to international protests and calls for a cease fire, which the Israeli government rejected, although a brief interruption in the fighting was agreed to enable an exchange of a limited number of hostages for prisoners held by Israel. A large majority of the Israeli public, divided only a few months ago by the current government’s attempt to weaken the judiciary, supports the war effort. Protests by the families of those taken hostage calling on the government to assure their immediate return are being heard. Protests by Israeli peace activists, among them Arab members of the Knesset, have been prohibited by the police.

The panel discussion will consider wider implications of the conflict, going beyond the immediate military and humanitarian issues now at stake. Amichai Cohen, an expert in international legal affairs, will take note of alleged violations of international humanitarian law and the law of war by both Hamas and Israel, and will address the role of international law in the conflict. Karen Saar will discuss the question of human rights in a time of war and the present and future work of ACRI in this connection. Dorit Geva will analyze the assault on Israeli and Palestinian women’s rights prior to, and during, the Israel/Gaza war, and will also ask how polarization of the war outside Israel has contributed to the policing of who may speak, and who may be mourned, with worrisome consequences for the future of democracy in Israel.

For a statement by the Israel Studies Center on 10 October in solidarity with the people of Israel against the vicious aggression of Hamas and its allies see: www.center-for-israel-studies.at

supported by:   

23 January 2023.  Film screening and Panel Discussion “Game Changers”
Panel discussion with:  Film Director Noam Sobovitz and
the panelists: political scientist and historian Dr. Georg Spitaler, University of Vienna and the Ambassador of Germany to the UN (Vienna), Götz Schmidt-Bremme.
Moderator:  Martin Nesirky, Director of United Nations Information Service (UNIS), Vienna

 

 

     

28 November 2022. Dr Einat Wilf “„The Elections in Israel: Is the Collapse of the Left Parties Punishment for Their Conciliatory Attitude Toward Palestinian Illusions? Is This Also a Problem for the West in General? “

Words of Welcome and Moderation: Univ. Prof (em.) Dr Mitchell Ash, President of the Center for Israel Studies Vienna

 

The recent elections in Israel are likely to produce the most right-wing government in the country’s history. Commentators on this outcome have written that one reason for the left parties’ disastrous performance is that voters no longer think that a two-state solution has any chance of success and have therefore punished liberal and left parties for continuing to maintain what the right calls a conciliatory attitude toward the Palestinians. Einat Wilf sees a connection between this analysis and her own view that the West in general, by indulging Palestinian illusions, has stood in the way of peace.

 

Einat Wilf studied at Harvard University (B.A.) and at Insead (MBA), and received her PhD in Political Science from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge in 2008 with a study of the World Jewish Congress‘ campaign against the Swiss Banks. She served in the Knesset (Avoda, Labour) from 2010 and co-founded the party Ha’Atzma’ut in 2011, which however did not enter the Knesset elections in 2013. She is now an author and political consultant. Among her numerous publications are:
My Israel, Our Generation (2007)
Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel (2015)

Telling Our Story: Essays on Zionism, the Middle East, and the Path to Peace (2018)

 

Her most recent book (with Adi Schwartz) has just appeared in German translation:Der Kampf um Rückkehr. Wie die westliche Nachsicht für den palästinensischen Traum den Frieden behindert hat (2022). 

 

25 October 2022. Univ-Prof Dr Amos Morris-Reich “Helmar Lerski’s ‘Jewish and Arab Types’ Project: Political and Aesthetic Perspectives”

This talk addresses the “failed” project of arguably the most prominent art photographer working
in British Mandate Palestine:the 1930s “Jewish and Arab Types” project by German-born Swiss American Jewish art photographer Helmar Lerski. Lerski’s project involves at least two significant
political contexts. The first is racial photography within science, art, and popular culture, and the
second is Zionism. The talk will pay special attention to Lerski’s photographic method and to its
relationship to the aesthetic and political question of “light” in 1930s Palestine. The talk will attempt
to develop the argument that, in opposition to most recent (especially American) historiography,
aesthetic rather than political categories can better explain Lerski’s motivations, method, and the
grounds of “failure”.

Words of Greeting: Univ Prof Dr RaphaelRosenberg,  Department of Art History
Moderation: Univ Prof (em.)  Dr Mitchell G. Ash, President of the Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Biography:
Amos Morris-Reich is The Geza Roth Chair of Modern Jewish History, the Director of The Stephen
Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, and a Professor at The Cohn
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University.
His book Photography and Jewish History: Five Twentieth Century Cases has just appeared in October 2022 with Penn University Press. His previous book is Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876 – 1980 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)