© Cover: Zero Point, Bloomsbury Zero Point Friday, September 19, 2025, 12:30 pm, Katholische Akademie in Berlin The essays in the philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s new book Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it – questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the…
Photo: Elad Lapidot L’école de pensée juive de Paris et son rapport à la tradition Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne, Paris June 25 – 26, 2025 La France a été le théâtre d’un renouveau de la pensée juive au lendemain du traumatisme de la Shoah. Les membres de ce qu’il est désormais convenu…
Image: Generated 02.2025, ChatGPT Jewish Diasporic Homeland(s) March 3-4, 2025Katholische Akademie Berlin This workshop focuses on diaspora and homelands in Jewish settings through the works of Jewish philosophers such as Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem and others. Contributors are coming from various disciplines and will think broadly about the theme, including…
Image: Book Cover / Other Press Another Zionism, Another Judaism. The Unrequited Love of Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis Elad Lapidot (Berlin/Lille) with Göran Rosenberg (Stockholm) and Susan Neiman (Berlin) February 27, 2025, 19:00Katholische Akademie Berlin Born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1869, Marcus Ehrenpreis was the secretary of Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in Basel…
Photo: Wikimedia PDM 1.0 Winter School: Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics IV Oded Schechter, Elchanan Reiner, Jayne Svenungsson, Daniel Boyarin and Elad Lapidot December 10–12, 2024 The winter school on modern talmudic hermeneutics will be led by two main instructors through guided readings in primary sources, Elchanan Reiner (Tel Aviv University, emer.) and Oded Schechter (Makhloykes Berlin),…
Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought – Communities of Disagreement International Workshop September 12–15, 2024Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp The Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought is an annual intellectual encounter, which explores ways of how the Talmudic tradition of text may offer a medium for contemporary thought, in the sense of…
© Atelier Populaire, 1968 New Research on Contemporary Jewish Thought in France and Germany Graduate Workshop September 9, 2024, University of LilleCampus Pont-de-Bois, Maison de la recherche, Salle F0.13Rue du Barreau BP 60149, 59650 Villeneuve-d’Ascq The University of Lille and the University of Frankfurt launched in 2022 a new international research program on “Jewish Thought…
© G. Krikorian Jerusalem, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Queerodox: Jacob Israel de Haan – 100 Years to his Assassination International Conference June 26, Cinema Babylon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, 10178 BerlinJune 27, Katholische Akademie in Berlin Jacob Israel de Haan, born in 1881 to an orthodox Dutch Jewish family, was a social-democratic lawyer, journalist and poet…
© The Jewish Imperial Imagination Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought, Cambridge University Press Leo Baeck und die jüdische imperiale Imagination Vortrag und Podiumsdiskussion mit Dr. Yaniv Feller (University of Florida) und Prof. Dr. Liliana Ruth Feierstein (Humboldt-Universität-Berlin) Mittwoch, 22. Mai 2024, 19:00 Uhr, Katholische Akademie in Berlin Leo Baeck (1873-1956) war Rabbiner, Intellektueller und der offizielle…
© C.H.BECK Peter Schäfer, Das aschkenasische Judentum Das aschkenasische Judentum. Herkunft, Blüte, Weg nach Osten Prof. Dr. Peter Schäfer lehrte Judaistik an der Freien Universität und der Princeton University. Er war bis 2019 Direktor des Jüdischen Museums Berlin und stellt sein neuestes Buch vor. Dienstag, 28. Mai 2024, 19.00 Uhr, Katholische Akademie in Berlin Aschkenas:…
© Naples National Archaeological Museum | Public domain via Wikimedia Commons Frauen in der Spätantike – wie Judentum und Christentum ihre Rolle definierten Referentinnen: Prof. Dr. Dr. Catherine Hezser und PD Dr. Dagmar Hofmann 7. März 2024, 19:30 Uhr, Katholische Akademie in Berlin Was heute jüdisch oder christlich heißt, ist aus dogmatischen, juristischen und sozialethischen Festlegungen…
Winter School: Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics III With Oded Schechter, Elchanan Reiner, Vivian Liska and Elad Lapidot December 12–14, 2023 The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora brings together graduate students and early-career scholars to participate in a master class on modern talmudic hermeneutics. The master class will be led by two main instructors through guided readings…
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, 2023Institute of Jewish Studies Antwerp The theme for the 2023 workshop is Exile. Exile is existence removed or in distance from one’s own home, land or state. The…
© Elisabeth Masé Was heißt hier ‚immaculata‘? Braut und Reinheit in jüdischen und katholischen Kontexten Ein Abend mit Kunst und Debatte 7.12.2023, 19.00 UhrKatholische Akademie Berlin, ClubraumHannoversche Str. 5, 10115 Berlin Seit dem Mittelalter wird am 8. Dezember, genau 40 Wochen vor dem 8. September, an dem die Geburt Marias gefeiert wird, das Hochfest der unbefleckten…
Image from the cover of Carnal Israel A Loving Conduct: Marking 30 Anniversary ofCarnal 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 In 1993 Daniel Boyarin has published his first big success in Talmudic research. Carnal Israel: Reading…
Portable typewriter, Olympia Splendid 66′ © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, CC BY-NC 4.0 Literature in Diaspora: What is the Place of Words? Public Evening – Discussion and ConcertJuly 11, 2023Katholische Akademie BerlinHannoversche Str. 5, 10115 Berlin Intensified processes of migration, voluntary or forced, generate in recent years new diasporic forms of…
Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (c) Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC BY-NC 4.0 Weltliteratur: Contemporary Readings of a Contested Concept July 10–11, 2023Katholische Akademie BerlinHannoversche Str. 5, 10115 Berlin The notion of Weltliteratur has a long and rich history. Since Goethe’s reflections on the encounters between different literary traditions, Weltliteratur has been used in a variety of contexts and…
Photo: Safed 1908, Wikipedia Safed: Jewish Exile in Palestine? 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, 19–21h In the 16th century, especially after the Ottomans took over the country, a group of…
Master Class on Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora brings together graduate students and early-career scholars to participate in a master class on modern talmudic hermeneutics, which will take place on December 7-9, 2021, at the Katholische Akademie Berlin. Organisation: Prof. Dr. Elad Lapidot The master class will consist in text study led…
Photo: Weingärtner mit Kalebstraube, Wikipedia Re-Thinking Zion: Altneue Visions of Jewish Politics Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in cooperation with the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora December 12, 2022 In recent years, various scholars, intellectuals, and authors have been working on projects that re-visit, re-assess, re-interpret, and re-imagine Jewish politics, both in its modern performance and in its…
Politics of Not Speaking Talmud and Contemporary Thought II The Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought is an annual intellectual encounter, which explores ways of how the Talmudic tradition of text may offer a medium for contemporary thought, in the sense of thought that engages on issues of contemporary social, political and cultural concern. The workshop revolves…
Diasporic Knowledge – Rabbinic Dissidence Public panel discussion in English with Prof. Yaacob Dweck (Princeton) and Prof. Marc-Alain Ouaknin (Paris), moderated by Prof. Elad Lapidot (Berlin/Lille). In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed messiah with a large following in the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was imminent. As Jews everywhere…
Opposition to Zionism in Jewish Orthodoxy Public panel discussion in English with Prof. Yakov Rabkin (Montréal) and Dr. Hannah Tzuberi (Berlin), moderated by Prof. Elad Lapidot (Berlin/Lille) Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism when it emerged in the late 19th century. This rejection has not disappeared to this day and represents an important, often unknown aspect of…
Master Class on Modern Talmudic Hermeneutics II The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora holds a master class on modern talmudic hermeneutics, which will take place on September 12-14, 2022, at the Katholische Akademie Berlin. Organisation: Prof. Dr. Elad Lapidot The master class will consist in text study led by two instructors. Elchanan Reiner (Tel Aviv University,…
Diasporic Knowledge – Conference Last decades have seen the rise of “diaspora” as a central category or Denkfigur for critical thinking of contemporary politics, culture and society, which calls into question dominant nation-state models. This conference seeks to examine more specifically the epistemic foundations of diapora, by exploring conceptually and historically the meaning(s) of diasporic knowledge, whereby “knowledge”…
Talmud and Contemporary Thought General The Talmud is an original intellectual heritage of the Jewish tradition. It is not only a text, but a medium of thought, which is both comparable to and fundamentally different from Western traditions such as philosophy, theology or modern science. Talmudic thought has been active and developing for almost two…