Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
Upcoming Events
Public lecture
The 1948 Palestine war: from the local to the global
Date: 30 October 2024
Time: 6:30pm to 7:30pm (GMT)
Location: Online – the joining link will be sent the day before the event
Speaker: Derek Penslar, Harvard University
Booking: Free event – book your place: https://bisa.bbk.ac.uk/event/decentering-the-1948-palestine-war-from-the-local-to-the-global/
Short synopsis: Between 1947 and 1949, debates about Palestine within the United Nations pulled dozens of countries into the determination of the land’s fate – national interests and transnational sympathies shaped attitudes towards the partition of Palestine and the ensuing Arab-Israeli war. The war riveted the attention of the world – for reasons that still apply in our own day.
Long synopsis: In this talk, Professor Derek Penslar links the Palestine Question with the formation of a new global political order after the Second World War. Between 1947 and 1949, debates about Palestine within the United Nations pulled dozens of countries directly into the determination of the land’s fate. A complex mixture of national interests and transnational sympathies shaped attitudes towards the partition of Palestine and the ensuing Arab-Israeli war. A comparison of governmental documents and the popular press shows that in most of the world high diplomacy was in sync with public opinion. The war riveted the attention of the world – for reasons that still apply in our own day.
Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. His books include Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press, 2013), Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (Yale University Press, 2020); and Zionism: An Emotional State (Rutgers University Press, 2023). He is currently writing a book titled The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History.
This lecture was originally scheduled to take place in June 2024 and was rescheduled due to illness.
Seminar for scholars
Antisemitism, Sexuality, and Sadism
Date: 04 November 2024
Time: 1pm to 2pm (GMT)
Location: Online – the joining link will be sent the day before the event
Speaker: Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
Event link: https://bisa.bbk.ac.uk/event/antisemitism-sexuality-and-sadism/
Booking: Free seminar for scholars. Contact bisa@bbk.ac.uk for further information.
Short synopsis: Historians have recognized the wide range of sexual fantasies underlying attitudes toward Jewish men and women that have developed over the centuries. However, those fantasies about Jewish women, enacted over centuries in horrific acts of sexual violence, most recently in Israel on 7 October 2024, have received far less attention. In this context, Susannah Heschel will argue that antisemitism requires reinterpretation as a culture of sadism.
Long synopsis: Antisemitism and sexual violence have a bond that demands theorization. Historians have recognized the wide range of sexual fantasies underlying attitudes toward Jewish men and women that have developed over the centuries – Jewish men as a third gender, menstruating, and posing a threat of rape to Gentile women, for example. For centuries, antisemites have viewed Jews as sexually abnormal, “perverting” gender and sexual norms, and using sexuality as a weapon. Those fantasies have been expressed in explicit language, in subtle and implicit wording, and in visual representation.
Fantasies about Jewish women, which have received far less attention from historians, have been enacted over the centuries in horrific acts of sexual violence, most recently in Israel on October 7, 2024, and have also informed the denial of that violence, including by noted feminist theorists. Given the sexual fantasies and violence, I will argue that antisemitism requires reinterpretation as a culture of sadism. Further, I will argue that rape constitutes the climax of pogrom violence by combining sexuality, physical cruelty, and intimacy in a unique form of sadistic aggression against both the body and the soul. I define mass-perpetrator rape as an attack against women, against Judaism as a religion, and as an effort to end the possibility of a Jewish future.
Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor and chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She is the author of several books, including Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung (Matthes & Seitz Verlag, 2018); The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2010); Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press, 1998); and a forthcoming book, written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies, as well as numerous articles and edited volume.