View the recording of this webinar here.
Contemporary antisemitism and the recent surge in antisemitism must be understood in context – the context of an increased permissiveness in the expression of hatred, political polarization, and the battle over Israel and Zionism. Yet the overwhelming context has been a time of relative prosperity.
But there is a brand new context that must be understood, as we face a period of high unemployment, uncertainty about one’s future, and fear for the economic future of the United States and the world.
Join us for a dialogue about these important issues between two long-time students of antisemitism.
Michael Berenbaum is the Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust and a Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University. The author and editor of 20 books, he was also the Executive Editor of the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. He was Project Director overseeing the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the first Director of its Research Institute and later served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which took the testimony of 52,000 Holocaust survivor in 32 languages and 57 countries. His work in film has won Emmy Awards and Academy Awards.
Steven M. Wasserstrom is The Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he has taught since 1987. His books include Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, (1995) and Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (1999). In 2003 he selected, edited and annotated “The Fullness of Time”: Poems by Gershom Scholem. He has been an invited Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), an Invited Scholar at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (Berlin), and member of the Working Group on Messianism, The Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought (Princeton).