Photos: ComebackFilms

24 January 2022. Film Screening International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. “Box for Life” by Uri Borreda

In cooperation with the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations (Vienna), with the French Embassy in Austria and the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) Vienna
“Box For Life”
With opening remarks by
Ambassador Mordechai Denis Paul Rodgold, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations (Vienna) and Ambassador Gilles Pécout, French Embassy in Austria
Panel discussion with
Uri Borreda – Director of the film  ‘Box For Life‘
Iris Lifshitz Klieger – Journalist
Shlomo Balsam – Instructor, Yad Vashem
Martin Nesirky – Director UNIS, Vienna
Film synopsis:
This is the story of a boy who smuggled Jewish children from Belgium to Switzerland. He was captured by the Germans and was sent to the Auschwitz death camp. When he arrived at the camp, he claimed himself as a boxer which saved his life. In this documentary, Noah Klieger returns for the first time to the places that marked his life as a French Jewish teenager, before immigrating to Israel as a crewmember on board the famous boat “Exodus – 1947”. Noah Klieger, who passed away in 2018, was an example of courage, optimism and resilience.

Welcome: Ambassador Mordechai Denis Rodgold, Ambassador of the State of Israel
Moderator: Martin Nesirky, UNIS

25 November 2021. Web Forum with Prof Dr Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

“The challenges of diversity in Israeli higher educational institutes”
Abstract: The lecture will address the challenges of diversity in Israeli universities from the perspectives of minority groups. It will present the gaps and obstacles that minority students face, such as: economic, social, and political within the academic Israeli context. Through two case studies of Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel and Ethiopian Jews, I will discuss the implications of diversity policies practiced in this sphere.
In cooperation with the Vienna School of International Studies (Diplomatic Academy).

Welcome: Univ Prof (em.) Dr Mitchell Ash
Moderator: Dr Eleonore Lappin-Eppel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H2PQyp0Sjs&t=1486s

Prof Dr Katharina T. Paul                                      Prof Dr Yael Hashiloni-Dolev

10 March 2021. Web Forum with Prof Dr Yael Hashiloni-Dolev and Prof Dr Katharina T. Paul

“Vaccination programmes for Covid-19: Public views and experiences in Israel and Austria” When it comes to vaccination for Covid-19, it seems, Israel and Austria could not be more different: Vaccination programmes are progressing at very different paces, and vaccine skepticism is differently distributed as well. What are the reasons for this? And is everything really as different as it seems at first sight? Two experts in the sociology of health and vaccination policy respectively will answer these and any other questions that participants may have.

Welcome: Prof Dr Mitchell Ash, President Center for Israel Studies Vienna
Moderator:  Prof Dr Barbara Prainsack, Dept. of Political Science, University of Vienna:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPcAYo52f_U&t=54s

Prof. Dr. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev is a sociologist of health and illness and a former member (2012-20) of Israel’s National Bioethics Council. Her areas of interest include new reproductive technologies, genetics, gender, bioethics, contemporary parenthood and posthumous reproduction. She is also a member of Israel’s vaccination prioritization committee.

Prof. Dr. Katharina T. Paul holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam and joined the University of Vienna in 2013. Her research on vaccination policy is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). She is affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity (CeSCoS) and the Department of Political Science.

28 October 2021. Web Forum with Dr. Anat Gilboa „The Legacy of Helmar Lerski”

“The Legacy of Helmar Lerski” “Faces” was the title of an outstanding exhibition of photography at the beginning of the year at the Albertina in Vienna. The artworks of Helmar Lerski (1871-1956), a path breaking avant-gardist in modern photography at the beginning of the 20th century, formed the main part of this exhibition. Lerski’s extraordinarily innovative attitude towards photography of human images as well as his connection to Mandatory Palestine brought a stunning artist to broader public notice. His life as a Zionist and pioneer of modern photography has been illustrated from an interdisciplinary angle.

Welcome and Moderator: Univ Prof (em.) Dr Mitchell Ash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2DQg9Jlgn4&t=173s

31 May 2021. Web Forum with Prof Dr Itamar Rabinovich
Virtual Book Launch “Syrian Requiem”

Leaving almost half a million dead and displacing an estimated twelve million people, the Syrian Civil War is a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale. Syrian Requiem analyzes the causes and course of this bitter conflict—from its first spark in a peaceful Arab Spring protest to the tenuous victory of the Asad dictatorship—and traces how the fighting has reduced Syria to a crisis-ridden vassal state with little prospect of political reform, national reconciliation, or economic reconstruction.
In cooperation with the Vienna School of International Studies (Diplomatic Academy) and our supporter University of Vienna, Department of Contemporary History.

Welcome: Amb. Dr Emil Brix, Director of the Vienna School of International Studies
Moderator: Univ Prof (em.) Dr Mitchell Ash, President, Center for Israel Studies Vienna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZuvRl8WS5E&t=6s

Order here

12 April 2021. Web Forum with Univ Prof (em.) Dr ltzhak Galnoor

“Arab Citizens in the Jewish State of Israel”

Israel’s Declaration of Independence proclaims full equality for all Israel’s citizens and calls upon members of the Arab nation “to participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.” This solemn pledge has not been kept. Nevertheless, the growing pluralism of the political system has strengthened the foothold of Arabs in Israeli society and politics. The situation of the Arab community in Israel is still dire. The tenuous relationship between Jews and Arabs is under constant pressures, exacerbated by the 2018 Basic Law: Israel – The nation-state of the Jewish people, that undermines the status and legitimacy of the Arab citizens. Nonetheless, a change began to surface tacitly in the official state approach towards the Arabs – recognizing the justification of equality, particularly in economic terms. Politically, the last Knesset elections have increased Arab parties’ visibility and potential strength.
In cooperation with the Diplomatic Academy and the University of Vienna, Department of Contemporary History

Welcome: Amb. Dr Emil Brix, Director of the Vienna School of International Studies
Moderator: Univ Prof (em.) Dr Mitchell Ash, President Center for Israel Studies Vienna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2blf8P2sReI&t=93s

Order here

28 January 2021. Web Forum with Dr Shelly Zer Zion
“The Shtetl in the Eretz-Israeli Theatre of the 1930’s and the Performance of ethnic Zionism”

The Eastern European Jewish Shtetl was much more than a mere historical reality. Historians and literary scholars agree that “the Shtetl” was a metaphoric trope of Jewish imagination, an autonomous space that celebrated an imagined Jewish microcosm. The metaphoric image of the Jewish shtetl migrated to the Eretz-Israeli culture and occupied the stages of the Hebrew theatre of the 1930’s. It became a shared fictional location that appeared in many artistic and cultural performative events. In this lecture Prof. Zer-Zion explores how the theatrical events that re-enacted the landscapes of the shtetl constructed it as a location of boundary work that conceptualized it as a landscape of Jewish past while negotiating it with the Eretz-Israeli reality and desired future. She focuses on three case-studies. In the first case-study she investigates the tension between peoplehood and the formation of cultural hegemony. On the second case-study she discusses the temporal tension between past and present. The third case-study focuses on the spatial tension between a net of locations that constitute Jewish identity vs. the centrality of Eretz-Israel.
In cooperation with the University of Vienna.

Welcome: Dr Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Moderator: Doz Dr Brigitte Dalinger, University of Vienna/ Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBve18oNCnw&t=47s

The Institute for Jewish Studies (IJS) of the Hebrew University was inaugurated at Chanukah time 1924.  It was intended to serve as a source of illumination to the scholarly world, as well as a harmonious meeting point of east and west. With its birth, Jewish studies in Jerusalem was born.
This talk will explore the arc of the IJS from its humble Chanukah origins to the present.

ZOOM lecture: please click here
(Youtube Channel Center for Israel Studies Vienna)

About the speaker:
Prof. Dr. David N. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA, where he serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He is the author or editor of fifteen books in the field of Jewish history, including a forthcoming book with Nomi Stolzenberg on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York. Myers serves as President of the New Israel Fund.

25 November 2020. Jewish Agency and Austrian Culture in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem

In 1856, the Lämel-School was set up in Jerusalem as the first modern Jewish school in the city. According to the wish of the donator Elise Herz-Lämel (1788-1868), it should provide modern education to citizens of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Holy City. Elise Herz-Lämel chose the well-known writer and secretary of Vienna’s Jewish community Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894) to implement the project. Frankl thus embarked on a lengthy journey to the Middle East. An analysis of Frankl’s different missions serves to illustrate the ambivalent position of Jews – as the European Orientals – in the Orient as well as Jewish commitment to academic, social, and cultural projects of Austrian society before the era of legal emancipation.
ZOOM lecture: please click here
(Youtube Channel Center for Israel Studies Vienna)

About the speaker:
Dr Louise Hecht: historian; doctorate summa cum laude in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, habilitation in Jewish cultural history at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, research assistant at the University of Potsdam. Research focus: Central European Jewish history since the 18th century. Publications include Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen (2008) and the edited volume Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894): Eine jüdische Biographie zwischen Okzident und Orient (2016).