Friday Lecture: What Does it Mean to be an Implicated Stranger?
As we navigate challenging questions about Jewish and universal rights—about the needs and interests of Jews and Palestinians, and of other marginalized groups in the United States—we can look to Jewish history for new ways of thinking beyond the usual binaries. This discussion focuses on four Franco-Jewish thinkers who wrote during the Algerian War for Independence (1954–1962) and wrestled with questions that still resonate today: Who is my brother or sister? What are my responsibilities to Jews and to other persecuted peoples when both are in crisis? Their work, shaped by Jewish law, solidarity, Holocaust memory, and the global struggles for decolonization, offers powerful insights for our own time.
 

Saturday Lecture: Unsettling Histories: Zionism, Anti-Zionism, and Antisemitism
This session explores when and under what circumstances anti-Zionism can be understood as antisemitism, both in the past and today. Heated debates on this topic often obscure deeper historical questions about the relationships between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Zionism and colonialism, and Jews and other marginalized groups. Rather than framing these issues in divisive or polemical terms, this lecture will invite a more nuanced and empathetic understanding. We will trace two major strands of anti-Zionism, one that aims to avoid antisemitism and one that often overlaps with it, and consider what these histories can teach us about how to approach today’s conversations within and beyond the Jewish community.