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Oded Schechter, Elchanan Reiner, Vivian Liska and Elad Lapidot

Winter School:
Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics III

In cooperation with the European Association for Jewish Studies, the University of Lille and the Potsdam School of Jewish Theology

December 12–14, 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

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Ein Abend mit Kunst und Debatte 

Was heißt hier ‚immaculata‘?
Braut und Reinheit in jüdischen und katholischen Kontexten

7.12.2023, 19.00 Uhr
Katholische Akademie Berlin

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International Workshop in cooperation with the University of Lille and the Antwerp Institute of Jewish Studies

Talmud and Contemporary Thought III
Exile

November 30 – December 3, 2023

Center for Jewish Studies Antwerp

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International Conference

Back to the Texts Themselves!
Phenomenology and Ressourcement

November 8–9, 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Public Evening

Blasphemie im interreligiösen Vergleich

October 25, 2023, 19:00
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Transatlantic Workshop Series
“Religion and the Cultures of Democracy”

Community & Critique

A cooperative project between the University of Virginia Forum on Democracy, the Catholic Academy of Berlin and the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research ‘FEST’, Heidelberg

October 1–5, 2023
University of Virginia

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A Loving Conduct: Marking 30 Anniversary of
Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture

A conversation between Dr. Hannah (Omri) Ben Yehuda and Prof. Daniel Boyarin

August 24, 2023, 19 h
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Public Evening

Jacob’s Younger Brother – Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II

July 12, 2023, 19:00–21:00
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Public Evening – Discussion and Concert 

Literature in Diaspora: What is the Place of Words?

Katholische Akademie Berlin
July 11, 2023

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International Conference

Weltliteratur:
Contemporary Readings of a Contested Concept

Katholische Akademie Berlin
July 10–11, 2023

POSTPONED

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17th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) 

The Role of the Intellectual in Times of Turmoil: Ways of Looking at Europe’s Troubled Geist

Catholic Academy of Berlin 
July 3–6, 2023

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Orientalismus – jüdisch und katholisch

Workshop an der Katholischen Akademie Berlin
in Kooperation mit der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

26.–28. Juni 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Beyond Liberalism:
Commons, Constitutionalism,
and the Common Good

Workshop at the Catholic Academy of Berlin
May 31 – June 2, 2023

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Mensch-Sein inmitten der Geschichte  
Karl Löwith und die Kritik der historischen Vernunft 

10.–12. Mai 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

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The Jewish Diaspora of Berlin 

In Cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

April 30 – May 5, 2023
Katholische Akademie Berlin

POSTPONED

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Safed: Jewish Exile
in Falastin?

With Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), Oded Schechter (Makhloykes Berlin) and Gil Anidjar (Columbia University), moderated by Elad Lapidot (University of Lille/Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora)

May 1, 2023, 19:00-21:00h

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On Thinking God:
A Conversation with Menachem Lorberbaum

April 27-28, 2023
Catholic Academy of Berlin

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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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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.