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Fachtagung

„Kein Staat kämpft für die Freiheit der Völker“ Martin Buber in Berlin 

27. – 30. März 2023
Katholische Akademie in Berlin

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Political Theology

Gustav Landauer: Skepsis und Antipolitik

Podiumsgespräch mit Dr. Cedric Cohen-Skalli, Dr. Libera Pisano, Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik, Prof. Dr. Dominique Bourel, Dr. Francesco Ferrari, Jun. Prof. Dr. Yemima Hadad

March 30, 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

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Political Theology

Louis Ginzberg – Die Legenden der Juden

Akademieabend mit
Prof. Dr. Andreas Kilcher (Zürich), Prof. Dr. Gerhard Langer (Wien), Dr. Johannes Sabel (Bonn) und Dr. Thomas Sparr (Berlin)

January 23, 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

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Alte Sprache, Neue Sprache – Die Bibel und das Moderne Hebräisch

January 10, 2022
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Workshop

Re-Thinking Zion: Altneue Visions of Jewish Politics

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in cooperation with the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora
December 12, 2022

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Culture of Difference

60 Years to the Algerian War:

Interculturality in the Postcolonial Age

In cooperation with Minor Cosmopolitanism and RePLITO. 

October 25–27, 2022
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Talmud and Contemporary Thought

Politics of Not Speaking

October 20–23, 2022
Center for Jewish Studies Antwerp

Culture of Difference

Showcase 1

Culture of Difference

Anti-Anti-Semitismus und Postkolonialismus

Öffentliches Podiumsgespräch

October 13, 2022, Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

Showcase 1

Political Theology

Opposition to Zionism in Jewish Orthodoxy

September 13, 2022
19h, Katholische Akademie Berlin

Showcase 1

Political Theology

Master Class on Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics II

Katholische Akademie Berlin
with Oded Schechter and Elchanan Reiner
September 12–14, 2022

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Political Theology

Rabbinic Dissidence: Jacob Sasportas against Sabbatianism

September 11, 2022
19h, Katholische Akademie Berlin

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Political Theology

Political Theology in Jewish an Christian Contexts: Reception Histories and Controversies with Carl Schmitt

The conference is cosponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

July 18–20, 2022

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Culture of Difference

From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen

A Conversation with
Marcia Pally & Moshe Halbertal

June 27, 2022, 7PM

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Political Theology

Seele und Moral der Truppe – Militärseelsorge in schwierigen Zeiten

Ein interkonfessioneller und interreligiöser Dialog zur Situation der Militärseelsorge (Fachtagung)

June 13–15, & June 21

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Spring School “Religion and the Culture of Democracy”

Religion and Democracy

A cooperative project between the University of Virginia – Forum on Democracy, the Catholic Academy of Berlin and the FEST Heidelberg

May 15–20, 2022

Spring School “Religion and the Culture of Democracy”

Religion and Democracy

A cooperative project between the University of VirginiaUniversity of Virginia – Forum on Democracy, the Catholic Academy of Berlin and the FEST Heidelberg

May 15–20, 2022

Showcase 1
Master Class on Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics

Katholische Akademie Berlin with Oded Schechter and Elchanan Reiner

December 7–9, 2021

Master Class on Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics

Katholische Akademie Berlin with Oded Schechter and Elchanan Reiner

December 7–9, 2021

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Conference

Diasporic Knowledge

Katholische Akademie Berlin & Humboldt University Berlin & RePLITO

December 6, 2021

Conference

Diasporic Knowledge

Katholische Akademie Berlin & Humboldt University Berlin & RePLITO

December 6, 2021

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Annual Network Meeting “Jewish and Catholic Intellectuality”

Political Theology, Now, Why?

Katholische Akademie in Berlin
October 25 – 27, 2021

Annual Network Meeting “Jewish and Catholic Intellectuality”

Political Theology, Now, Why

Catholic Academy of Berlin
October 25–27, 2021 in Berlin

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Talmud and Contemporary Thought

Diasporic Knowledge

International Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought

October 7-11, 2021, Venice

Talmud and Contemporary Thought

Diasporic Knowledge

International Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought

October 7-11, 2021, Venice

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Epochal Event and Current Figure of Thought

Kulturkampf

International Workshop at the Catholic Academy of Berlin

Aug. 31 – Sept. 2, 2021

Epochal Event and Current Figure of Thought

Culture of Difference

International Workshop at the Catholic Academy of Berlin

Aug. 31 – Sept. 2, 2021

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Diaspora Dialogues

Diaspora is the state of the intellectual “that tries to speak truth to power”, a state of “restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others” (Edward Said), simultaneously at home and at distance, at home in distance. Diaspora – being in “double location” (Daniel Boyarin), as “unity-across-difference” (Charles Taylor) – is the condition for critical intellectual engagement.
This is our statement. But what is such a statement without others?
Diaspora, also entails: standing alone – and looking out for others in similar or different positions. What does it mean, in different minorities, to develop diasporic knowledge? What does it mean for the life of an individual? How does diaspora leave traces in individual works and singular groups? These questions are being discussed in detail in our Diaspora Dialogues.
We interview public intellectuals – and invite you to listen to the thoughts they share with us. 

The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora is a public forum of Jewish-Catholic inspiration for discussions, encounters and debates on questions of contemporary politics, religion, society and culture.

Diaspora is the state of the intellectual “that tries to speak truth to power”, a state of “restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others” (Edward Said), simultaneously at home and at distance, at home in distance. Diaspora – being in “double location” (Daniel Boyarin), as “unity-across-difference” (Charles Taylor) – is the condition for critical intellectual engagement.

The initiative draws on attempts made in Jewish and Catholic theo-political traditions to create a – paradoxical – place, a center or many centers for intellectual diaspora: existing in reality as it is, in view of how it ought to be, in the world in tension with the world – and in tension to one another. In Our Times, the modern, non-traditional, nation-state era, these traditions carry on their dispersion, among others, in transnational Jewish and Catholic intellectuals. Berlin, capital of neither, offers a space for dialogue of diasporas.

The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora opens a space for exploration of polyphonic diasporic performances in matters of contemporary public interest, especially in a European perspective. Beyond the Catholic and the Jewish, it seeks exchange with other traditions of intellectual diaspora, such as of Islamic and of other Christian denominations, as well as of African and other transnational communities. The Center brings together theory and politics, academics and decision-makers, in small expert forums and in public events, with special attention to young generations of future intellectual leaders.

The initiative draws on attempts made in Jewish and Catholic theo-political traditions to create a – paradoxical – place, a center or many centers for intellectual disapora: existing in reality as it is, in view of how it ought to be, in the world in tension with the world – and in tension to one another. In Our Times, the modern, non-traditional, nation-state era, these traditions carry on their dispersion, among others, in transnational Jewish and Catholic intellectuals. Berlin, capital of neither, offers a space for dialogue of diasporas.

The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora opens a space for exploration of polyphonic diasporic performances in matters of contemporary public interest, especially in a European perspective. Beyond the Catholic and the Jewish, it seeks exchange with other traditions of intellectual diaspora, such as of Islamic and of other Christian denominations, as well as of African and other transnational communities. The Center brings together theory and politics, academics and decision-makers, in small expert forums and in public events, with special attention to young generations of future intellectual leaders.

The diasporic gaze looks for plurality, diversity and dispersion in culture – and for the culture of dispersion, of difference and heterogeneity. Difference is cultivated by debate, disputationes and makhloykes – the disagreement that is the foundational agreement, difference as seminal society.

Culture of
Difference

The Center explores the dispersion of truth in politics and history, and how it is reflected in contemporary tensions between the intellectual and the political, the state, public institutions and the media. It accommodates debates on complex and varying interrelations between knowledge, philosophy, science, theory and theology, on the one hand, and constellations of power, government, law and administration of justice, on the other hand. 

Political
Theology

Religion and Democracy

The Center interrogates the dispersion within the religious as well as the interreligious, the non-religious and the post-religious. It gives place to discussion on constellations of secularism and postsecularism, democracy and challenges to democratic culture, liberalism and illiberalism, including debates on the very category of “religion”.

Diasporic
Knowledge

The Center facilitates reflections on diasporic forms of knowledge and epistemologies, in historical perspectives as well as in their actual and potential interventions on contemporary social concerns. It focuses on the paradigm of the Talmudic tradition of knowledge, past and present, but also looks for conversations with other forms of diasporic epistemes, such as marranic or monastic.