Center for Israel Studies

17. Mai 2018 “Tumbling Thoughts – Dealing with the Shoah as a Memory in Israel” Prof. Moshe Zimmermann (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
„Gedankliche Stolpersteine – Der Umgang mit der Shoah als Erinnerung in Israel“

Prof. Moshe Zimmermann was born in Jerusalem in 1943 and studied history and philosophy there. After gaining his doctorate on the Emancipation of the Jews in Hamburg in the 19th century, Zimmermann worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on setting up an Institute of German History. The Richard Koebner Institute of German History was founded in 1980; Prof. Zimmermann has been its director since 1986. The central topics of his work are the history of the German Jews and German-Jewish relations.  Prof. Zimmermann also worked at the University of Giessen: at the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) on Cultural Memories. Researchers from twelve disciplines of cultural studies examined the content and forms of cultural memories in their plurality, constructiveness and dynamics – from Antiquity until the 21st century.

10. April 2018 “Antisemitismus und Islamophobia” Prof. Helga Embacher  (University of Salzburg)

Prof. Helga Embacher ist Professorin am Fachbereich Geschichte an der Universität Salzburg mit den Forschungschwerpunkten Nationalsozialismus, Jüdische Geschichte, Emigration, Israel und Antisemitismus. Gastprofessorin an der University of Minnesota in Minneapolis und der PEN University in Philadelphia. Derzeit Leiterin des vom Jubiläumsfonds der österreichischen Nationalbank geförderten Forschungsprojekts: Diskurse zum Holocaustgedenken, Juden und Israel unter Muslimen im Kontext von Islamfeindlichkeit

26. Juni 2017 “Heiliges oder Unheiliges Land? Religion und Staat in Israel” Prof. Michael Brenner ( Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Center for Israel Studies at the American University in Washington, D.C. 

Prof. Michael Brenner ist Professor für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Direktor des Center for Israel Studies an der American University in Washington, D.C. Er ist Internationaler Präsident des Leo Baeck Instituts und gewähltes Mitglied der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften sowie der Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Mantua. 2014 wurde ihm das Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande verliehen. Zu seinen Buchveröffentlichungen, die in über zehn Sprachen übersetzt wurden, zählen:
Israel: Traum und Wirklichkeit des jüdischen Staates,
Kleine Jüdische Geschichte, Propheten des Vergangenen: Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert sowie
Jüdische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik.
U.a gab er die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis in die Gegenwart heraus.

5. Oktober 2016 “Thoughts about the Origin of Life” Nobel Laureate Prof. Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)

Nobel Laureate Prof. Ada Yonath was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to Zionist immigrants. After her father, a grocer and rabbi, died, the family moved to Tel Aviv where Ada attended Tichon Hadash High School. After military service, she entered the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, receiving a BS in chemistry in 1962 and an MS in biochemistry in 1964 before earning a PhD in X-Ray crystallography in 1968 at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Moving to America, Yonath worked at the Carnegie Mellon University and MIT together with F.A. Cotton. From 1979-84 she was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and headed their research unit in Hamburg from 1986–2004 as well as the Mazar Center of Structural Biology (1988-2004). She has been a professor at the Weizmann Institute since 1988, heading the Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly since 1989. She has also served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago. She is a member of the US National Academy, the Israel Academy and several European Academies (France, German, Italian, Spain, UK).
Yonath has received several awards, including the first European Crystallography Prize in 2000, the Israel Prize for chemistry in 2002 and shared the Wolf Prize in Chemistry with George Feher. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared between  Ada E. Yonath, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz, each of whom has contributed to our knowledge of the “…structure and function of the ribosome”.