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On Zion, Zionism, and Zionists: A Biblical History

Jim Sleeper begins his long essay on the many forgotten historical and religious foundations of the shallow modern understanding of claims like “zionism,” “settler colonialism,” and “antisemitism” by quoting T.S. Eliot who writes, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” We can’t understand the eruptions in the Middle East and in the United States without facing the ancient religious passions that drive American and Jewish history.

Tekhines

Sarah Chandler is discovering the ancient Jewish art of measuring graves, or tekhines, and she writes about her visit to Hannah Arendt’s grave at Bard College. "I’ve invited my friends to accompany me to the cemetery that sits in the center of the campus of Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. It is just over 100 miles north of my Brooklyn apartment, but I suspect it will take us at least three hours to get there on a Monday afternoon."

"Mafioso Politics"

Roger Berkowitz
Hannah Arendt insists that we look reality in the face and seek to understand even what is most strange, difficult, and horrific. In a new essay, Timothy Snyder analyzes the context of how Trump is seeking to normalize criminality and violence. Snyder’s essay reminds us of Arendt’s worry in her final essay, that “Public opinion is dangerously inclined to condone not crime in the streets but all political transgressions short of murder.”

Chilling Pro-Palestinian Speech

Eyal Press, has written about my Bard College colleague and collaborator, Ken Stern, who has become a critic of the chilling effect of using the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (I.H.R.A.) definition of antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel on college campuses. Stern was one of the original creators of the definition, which was intended to help quantify incidences of antisemitism. But he has always opposed the use of the definition to shut down or regulate speech.

The End of The Golden Age

Franklin Foer has an essay arguing that “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.” What Foer calls the Golden Age was not only good for Jews; the emergence of Jewish-Americans helped define a new American liberalism, one the shed the assimilationist metaphor of the melting pot for the hyphenated-identity of the mosaic. But that Golden Age is ending. Antisemitism, once relegated to the fringes of American society, is back with a vengeance.

The Supreme Court Between Power and Authority

Last week, the Court agreed without dissent to decide whether a former president of the United States is immune from criminal prosecution. But even amidst a unanimous judgment, the justices couldn't present themselves as a body above politics. For Hannah Arendt, the authority of the American Supreme Court was an essential aspect of the country’s foundation of freedom. Without it, all laws appear simply as means of power and politics.

Arendt, Michael Denneny, and the Origins of Gay Cultural Activism

Blake Smith writes about Arendt’s influence on the late Michael Denneny, her former student and one of the most influential gay cultural activists of the '70s. Smith writes, "Like Arendt, Denneny came to argue that the best hope for the survival of freedom lay not in traditional ideas of abstract, universal human rights . . . but rather in minority communities devoted to creating new practices, pleasures and identities, in a spirit of political engagement."

In Memoriam Ingeborg Nordmann

Few have done more to enrich Hannah Arendt scholarship than Ingeborg Nordmann. Nordmann worked with her friends and colleague Ursula Ludz to bring out the first edition of Arendt’s Denktagebuch in 2002 and reissued it in its present form in 2016. Their extraordinary edition has deepened and changed Arendt scholarship, offering a path to Arendt’s thought process and to her at times more personal reflections.

What Is Democratic Protest?

Last week in Berlin, I participated in a performance art show by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, “Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (100 Hours Reading of The Origins of Totalitarianism).” One Hundred scholars and artists and activists were invited to read for one hour. Bruguera asked me to read the first Chapter of Arendt’s book “Antisemitism as An Outrage to Common Sense.” The show was imagined as a way to spur civic dialogue.