Books by Jacob A . Labendz
A multidisciplinary approach to the study of veganism, vegetarianism, and meat avoidance among Je... more A multidisciplinary approach to the study of veganism, vegetarianism, and meat avoidance among Jews, both historical and contemporary.
In recent decades, as more Jews have adopted plant-based lifestyles, Jewish vegan and vegetarian movements have become increasingly prominent. This book explores the intellectual, religious, and historical roots of veganism and vegetarianism among Jews and presents compelling new directions in Jewish thought, ethics, and foodways. The contributors, including scholars, rabbis, and activists, explore how Judaism has inspired Jews to eschew animal products and how such choices, even when not directly inspired by Judaism, have enriched and helped define Jewishness. Individually, and as a collection, the chapters in this book provide an opportunity to meditate on what may make veganism and vegetarianism particularly Jewish, as well as the potential distinctiveness of Jewish veganism and vegetarianism. The authors also examine the connections between Jewish veganism and vegetarianism and other movements, while calling attention to divisions among Jewish vegans and vegetarians, to the specific challenges of fusing Jewishness and a plant-based lifestyle, and to the resistance Jewish vegans and vegetarians can face from parts of the Jewish community. The book’s various perspectives represent the cultural, theological, and ideological diversity among Jews invested in such conversations and introduce prominent debates within their movements.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Considering Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism
Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz
Part I. Studies
1. The Slipperiness of Animal Suffering: Revisiting the Talmud’s Classic Treatment
Beth A. Berkowitz
2. Vegetarianism as Jewish Culture and Politics in Interwar Europe
Nick Underwood
3. “I am a Vegetarian”: The Vegetarianism of Melech Ravitch
Irad Ben Isaak
4. Farm Animal Welfare in Jewish Art and Literature
Hadas Marcus
5. Vegetarianism and Veganism among Jewish Punks
Michael Croland
6. Opening the Tent: Jewish Veganism as an Expression of an Ecological Form of Judaism
Adrienne Krone
7. A Linguistic Appraisal: Jewish Perceptions of Animal Suffering
Victoria Greenstone and Shlomi Shmuel
Part II. New Directions
8. Veganism and Covenantalism: Contrasting and Overlapping Moralities
David Mevorach Seidenberg
9. Musar and Jewish Veganism
Geoffrey D. Claussen
10. The Vegetarian Teachings of Rav Kook
Richard H. Schwartz and David Sears
11. Relevant and Irrelevant Distinctions: Speciesism, Judaism, and Veganism
Alan D. Krinsky
12. A Morally Generative Tension: Conflicting Jewish Commitments to Humans and Animals
Shmuly Yanklowitz
13. Linking Judaism and Veganism in Darkness and in Light
Sherry F. Colb
14. Jewish Veganism as an Embodied Practice: A Vegan Agenda for Cultural Jews
Jacob Ari Labendz
Report: Jewish Vegan and Vegetarian Movements in North America
Sarah Chandler and Jeffrey Cohan
Questions arose after 1945, and have persisted, about the ownership of properties which had belon... more Questions arose after 1945, and have persisted, about the ownership of properties which had belonged to Jewish communities before the Second World War, to Holocaust victims and survivors, and to Jewish expellees from the Middle East and North Africa. Studies of these properties have often focused on their symbolic values, their places in cultures of memory and identity construction, and measures of justice achieved or denied.
This collection explores contesting conceptions of ownership and property claims advanced in the post-war years. The authors focus considerably upon how conflicts over these properties both shaped and reflected shifting and competing ideas about Jewish belonging. They show their outcomes to have had considerable consequences for the lived experiences of both Jews and non-Jews around the world. This is because the properties in questions always maintained their worth as material assets, just as they could also impart financial liabilities and other responsibilities to their stewards, regardless of the morality of their title. The unique decision to include studies of European, Middle Eastern, and North African communities into one volume represents an attempt to achieve a more globally sensitive language for thinking about these histories, especially at their points of contact and mutual-reference. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.
Introduction – Jewish property after 1945: cultures and economies of ownership, loss, recovery, and transfer Jacob Ari Labendz
1. The amnesia of the Wirtschaftswunder: Essen’s ‘House of Industrial Design’ Michael L. Meng
2. Toward a material culture of Jewish loss David Gerlach
3. Unsettled possession: the question of ownership of Jewish sites in Poland after the Holocaust from a local perspective Yechiel Weizman
4. Synagogues for sale: Jewish-State mutuality in the communist Czech lands, 1945–1970 Jacob Ari Labendz
5. Property Claims of Jews from Arab Countries: political, monetary, or cultural? Shayna Zamkanei
6. Grave connections: Algeria’s Jewish cemeteries as sites of diaspora-homeland contact Sara T. Jay
7. Reconnecting with a fugitive collection: a case study of the records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1945–1949 Jeffrey Edelstein
Papers by Jacob A . Labendz
American Jewish History, 2021
A small cohort of Czech-Jewish immigrant-activists in the USA struggled publicly with nostalgia a... more A small cohort of Czech-Jewish immigrant-activists in the USA struggled publicly with nostalgia and loss after fleeing Nazism and Communism. Edified and empowered during the war by major Jewish organizations, they continued their diaspora-nationalist politics in a secondary diaspora (from interwar Czechoslovakia) and took it upon themselves to speak for Czechoslovak Jewry in a single voice. With the advent of the Cold War, American’s Czech-Jewish activists turned to tending the memory of their lost homeland, cultivating a diaspora not only of space but also of time; not from contemporary Czechoslovakia, but with each other and in reference to a memory of the First Republic (1918-1938). This study of the organizational life of Czech-Jewish activists, follows the evolution, not only of their activities, but of their relationships with their past, as they slowly and painfully relinquished it to history. This study thus suggests much about the silent processes of acculturation experienced by a broader community of Jewish immigrants from Central Europe and raises questions about the nature of Jewish diasporas, multi-diasporicity, sub-ethnic communities, and peoplehood. It follows the work of other authors in suggesting a focus on the complexity, porousness, and ephemerality of lived networks and projects.
Four Years After: Ethnonationalism, Antisemitism and Racism in Trump's America (Universitätesverlag Winter), 2020
The New York Times sparked acrimonious debate when it reported misleadingly, on 10 December 2019,... more The New York Times sparked acrimonious debate when it reported misleadingly, on 10 December 2019, that President Donald Trump would sign an executive order against antisemitism that "will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion […]" (Baker and Haberman; Burack; Trump). Even observers, like me, who insist that Jewish particularity exceeds the religious sphere, worried that Trump sought to change prevailing attitudes and legal norms related to the social position of Jews in the USA. The depth of concern reflected an association of Trump with the far right and with rhetoric that has led to mass-shootings in US synagogues. More fundamentally, it derived from heightened tensions around the nature of Americanness and the place of Jews and religion therein. Trump's politics with respect to Jews-popular on the mainstream rightparticipate in a global retreat from multiculturalism and in a tendency towards retrenchment in the construal of national boundaries, which have blurred in recent decades. Trump's hyper-focus on Jews and Israel, as bounded lynchpins in a national and global drama, aligns with the objectification of Jews and Israel by Christian Zionists (O'Donnell). 1 On the one hand, Trump presents himself as a defender of Jews, fulfilling an expectation for anti-antisemitism that transcends the divides of normative US political culture; a commitment which can enshrine notions of essential Jewish difference. On the other hand, Trump and many of his allies have repeatedly invoked (partially) dejudaized conspiracy theories to account for and repudiate social change; discourses with analogues in other national settings. In doing so, Trump has emboldened far right extremists. This chapter offers perspective on Trump's attitude towards Jews by drawing on the history of nationalism in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Europe. I argue that Trump and his associates-in some ways-construe Jews, collectively, as a national minority associated with the State of Israel; a belief which implies that Jewish citizens, regardless of race, belong differently to the "American" nation than do their white Christian compatriots. Trump referred to Israel as "your country" when speaking to US Jews at the 2018 White House Hanukkah party (JTA and TOI Staff). Addressing an audience of Jewish conservatives in 2019, he called Benjamin Netanyahu "your prime minister" (TOI Staff and AP). Trump has also accused Jews who vote for Democrats of disloyalty both to Israel and to him, despite the fact that, as of 2013, seventy percent of US Jews either identified with the Democratic Party 1 In this research, I have arrived at many of the same conclusions as did S. Jonathon O'Donnell in their study of Christian Zionism and antisemitism, from which I draw liberally but also depart.
"Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions", 2019
This volume reflects the studied intuition that Jewish veganism and vegetarianism have come of ag... more This volume reflects the studied intuition that Jewish veganism and vegetarianism have come of age. Jewish vegans and vegetarians have formed organizations and online forums to advocate within their communities and beyond and to develop, debate, and promote animal-product-and meat-free Jewish cultures. 1 One finds no shortage of Jewish vegan and vegetarian cookbooks, blogs, and other resources. Articles appear frequently in the Jewish press and have crossed over into mainstream publications, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 2 Jewish communities across denominations and around the world are renegotiating their food practices and implementing policies to reflect their new or renewed ethical commitments. 3 By some counts, up to 5 percent of the Israeli population has gone vegan. This includes Jews of all backgrounds, from secular Jews to Haredim, as well as Muslim, Christian, and nonreligious Palestinians, and others. Even the Israeli Defense Forces have had to accommodate the demands of vegan soldiers. 4 Jewish people have also counted among the most prominent vegan activists, such as Mayim Bialik, a founding member and senior leadership consultant at the Shamayim V'Aretz Institute, and Academy Award-winning actor Natalie Portman. This collection of essays by scholars, rabbis, activists, and community leaders explores the history, contours, and scope of veganism and vegetarianism among Jews and presents compelling new directions in Jewish thought, ethics, and foodways. As ever more Jews adopt vegan and vegetarian lifestyles, and thereby join movements that transcend the porous boundaries of Jewish communities, this volume asks what distinguishes Jewish veganism and vegetarianism as Jewish. It offers opportunities to meditate on the varied intellectual, cultural, and religious roots of these movements across centuries and continents. Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism asks how Judaism, broadly considered, has inspired Jews to embrace such practices and how those lifestyles in turn have enriched and helped define Jewishness. This collection of essays tests the boundaries of Jewish veganism and
"Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism," eds. Labendz and Yanklowitz, 2019
Jewish Culture and History, 2017
Jewish Culture and History, 2017
Jewish Culture and History, 2017
The Jewish communities of communist Czechoslovakia enjoyed the right to receive in restitution pr... more The Jewish communities of communist Czechoslovakia enjoyed the right to receive in restitution property which had belonged to their interwar predecessors and which had been lost or stolen during the Second World War. The efforts to recover, manage, and dispose of these properties brought the interests of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in the Czech Lands into alignment with those of their minders at the State Office of Ecclesiastical Affairs and its successor institutions. Their collaboration in the sale of surplus synagogues and the protection of cemeteries (as a class of properties) helped them develop a close working relationship characterized by limited mutuality. This, in turn, contributed to the context which gave rise to an efflorescence of Jewish cultural life in the 1960s. While self-consciously revisionist, this article in no way seeks to deny the prevalence of state and popular antisemitism in the postwar years, which often came in the guise of anti-Zionism. It seeks, rather, to show that Jewish-state relations were complex through a focus on specific institutions, instead of Jewish-state relations in the aggregate. Doing so helps account for apparent inconsistencies in party-state policy and practice without assuming the normalcy of antisemitism and the exceptionality of its absence. Jewish communal properties in postwar Czechoslovakia 1 During the first postwar quarter century, the Jewish religious communities of the communist Czech lands and the state offices that managed ecclesiastical affairs benefited together, albeit differently, from the recognition and defense of Jewish-communal property rights and from the sale of synagogues without congregations. The modus operandi that developed between these two bodies for dealing with such matters played a structuring role in the evolution of Jewish-state relations more broadly. Specifically, an alignment of interests and years of close cooperation between Jewish leaders and a specific cohort of central state administrators in Prague helped produce the context which made possible an efflorescence of Jewish life in that city in association with the political and cultural liberalizations of the 1960s. Beginning in 1945, Jewish survivors and returnees reestablished between 57 and 59 Jewish communities across the Czech lands. 2 Unlike in Poland and, more complexly, the
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, 2016
East European Jewish Affairs, 2014
The Slánský Affair of 1952 introduced a specific matrix of ideas about Jewish power and the dange... more The Slánský Affair of 1952 introduced a specific matrix of ideas about Jewish power and the danger that Jews posed to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. These ideas, with roots in earlier discourses, conditioned Jewish-state relations for decades, providing party-state officials and even Jewish functionaries with a language for articulating demands of the government and a framework for understanding the place of Jewish citizens in the socialist nation. Inter-and intraministerial conflicts reveal that differences in purview and philosophy often led officials to prioritise different aspects of the Jewish power-danger matrix. The paternalistic responsibility to protect domestic Jewry from the negative influences of foreign "Zionists" frequently clashed with the objective of appeasing Western Jewry, whose influence in the US Czechoslovak communists overestimated. While the latter considerationand othersoften moved the Ministry of Culture to advocate in favour of the Czechoslovak Jewish communities, the former concerntaken remarkably seriouslyled the secret police to oppose them at every turn, often in the most conspiratorial of ways. To that end, this article introduces new information and perspective on the murder of Charles Jordan in 1967 and its repercussions and political uses in the years that followed.
Translations by Jacob A . Labendz
East European Jewish Affairs, 2019
Includes critical introduction, conceived as a "state of the field," and substantial annotation.
Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 8, 2020
Book Reviews and Lists by Jacob A . Labendz
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2021
East European Jewish Affairs, 2018
East European Jewish Affairs, 2015
East European Jewish Affairs, 2021
List of books published in Czech and Slovak in the field of European Jewish Studies. "Due to the ... more List of books published in Czech and Slovak in the field of European Jewish Studies. "Due to the volume of materials published, brief summaries have been provided for selected titles only, either copied from or based upon texts from their publishers, followed by a list of additional books (only for the Czech section). Lists of selected Holocaust memoirs and local histories follow. This resource features books from 2017 that were not included into the list for 2015–2017 publish in vol. 50, no. 1–2."
East European Jewish Affairs, 2020
"Due to the volume of materials published, brief summaries have been provided for selected schola... more "Due to the volume of materials published, brief summaries have been provided for selected scholarly titles, either copied from or based primarily upon texts by their publishers, followed by lists of additional titles without names. Texts that have been reviewed or are in the process of being reviewed for EEJA are marked with and asterisk and are not summarized."
Public History – Video and Audio by Jacob A . Labendz
WYSU, 2021
I discuss the antisemitism associated with the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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Books by Jacob A . Labendz
In recent decades, as more Jews have adopted plant-based lifestyles, Jewish vegan and vegetarian movements have become increasingly prominent. This book explores the intellectual, religious, and historical roots of veganism and vegetarianism among Jews and presents compelling new directions in Jewish thought, ethics, and foodways. The contributors, including scholars, rabbis, and activists, explore how Judaism has inspired Jews to eschew animal products and how such choices, even when not directly inspired by Judaism, have enriched and helped define Jewishness. Individually, and as a collection, the chapters in this book provide an opportunity to meditate on what may make veganism and vegetarianism particularly Jewish, as well as the potential distinctiveness of Jewish veganism and vegetarianism. The authors also examine the connections between Jewish veganism and vegetarianism and other movements, while calling attention to divisions among Jewish vegans and vegetarians, to the specific challenges of fusing Jewishness and a plant-based lifestyle, and to the resistance Jewish vegans and vegetarians can face from parts of the Jewish community. The book’s various perspectives represent the cultural, theological, and ideological diversity among Jews invested in such conversations and introduce prominent debates within their movements.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Considering Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism
Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz
Part I. Studies
1. The Slipperiness of Animal Suffering: Revisiting the Talmud’s Classic Treatment
Beth A. Berkowitz
2. Vegetarianism as Jewish Culture and Politics in Interwar Europe
Nick Underwood
3. “I am a Vegetarian”: The Vegetarianism of Melech Ravitch
Irad Ben Isaak
4. Farm Animal Welfare in Jewish Art and Literature
Hadas Marcus
5. Vegetarianism and Veganism among Jewish Punks
Michael Croland
6. Opening the Tent: Jewish Veganism as an Expression of an Ecological Form of Judaism
Adrienne Krone
7. A Linguistic Appraisal: Jewish Perceptions of Animal Suffering
Victoria Greenstone and Shlomi Shmuel
Part II. New Directions
8. Veganism and Covenantalism: Contrasting and Overlapping Moralities
David Mevorach Seidenberg
9. Musar and Jewish Veganism
Geoffrey D. Claussen
10. The Vegetarian Teachings of Rav Kook
Richard H. Schwartz and David Sears
11. Relevant and Irrelevant Distinctions: Speciesism, Judaism, and Veganism
Alan D. Krinsky
12. A Morally Generative Tension: Conflicting Jewish Commitments to Humans and Animals
Shmuly Yanklowitz
13. Linking Judaism and Veganism in Darkness and in Light
Sherry F. Colb
14. Jewish Veganism as an Embodied Practice: A Vegan Agenda for Cultural Jews
Jacob Ari Labendz
Report: Jewish Vegan and Vegetarian Movements in North America
Sarah Chandler and Jeffrey Cohan
This collection explores contesting conceptions of ownership and property claims advanced in the post-war years. The authors focus considerably upon how conflicts over these properties both shaped and reflected shifting and competing ideas about Jewish belonging. They show their outcomes to have had considerable consequences for the lived experiences of both Jews and non-Jews around the world. This is because the properties in questions always maintained their worth as material assets, just as they could also impart financial liabilities and other responsibilities to their stewards, regardless of the morality of their title. The unique decision to include studies of European, Middle Eastern, and North African communities into one volume represents an attempt to achieve a more globally sensitive language for thinking about these histories, especially at their points of contact and mutual-reference. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.
Introduction – Jewish property after 1945: cultures and economies of ownership, loss, recovery, and transfer Jacob Ari Labendz
1. The amnesia of the Wirtschaftswunder: Essen’s ‘House of Industrial Design’ Michael L. Meng
2. Toward a material culture of Jewish loss David Gerlach
3. Unsettled possession: the question of ownership of Jewish sites in Poland after the Holocaust from a local perspective Yechiel Weizman
4. Synagogues for sale: Jewish-State mutuality in the communist Czech lands, 1945–1970 Jacob Ari Labendz
5. Property Claims of Jews from Arab Countries: political, monetary, or cultural? Shayna Zamkanei
6. Grave connections: Algeria’s Jewish cemeteries as sites of diaspora-homeland contact Sara T. Jay
7. Reconnecting with a fugitive collection: a case study of the records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1945–1949 Jeffrey Edelstein
Papers by Jacob A . Labendz
Translations by Jacob A . Labendz
Book Reviews and Lists by Jacob A . Labendz
Public History – Video and Audio by Jacob A . Labendz
In recent decades, as more Jews have adopted plant-based lifestyles, Jewish vegan and vegetarian movements have become increasingly prominent. This book explores the intellectual, religious, and historical roots of veganism and vegetarianism among Jews and presents compelling new directions in Jewish thought, ethics, and foodways. The contributors, including scholars, rabbis, and activists, explore how Judaism has inspired Jews to eschew animal products and how such choices, even when not directly inspired by Judaism, have enriched and helped define Jewishness. Individually, and as a collection, the chapters in this book provide an opportunity to meditate on what may make veganism and vegetarianism particularly Jewish, as well as the potential distinctiveness of Jewish veganism and vegetarianism. The authors also examine the connections between Jewish veganism and vegetarianism and other movements, while calling attention to divisions among Jewish vegans and vegetarians, to the specific challenges of fusing Jewishness and a plant-based lifestyle, and to the resistance Jewish vegans and vegetarians can face from parts of the Jewish community. The book’s various perspectives represent the cultural, theological, and ideological diversity among Jews invested in such conversations and introduce prominent debates within their movements.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Considering Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism
Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz
Part I. Studies
1. The Slipperiness of Animal Suffering: Revisiting the Talmud’s Classic Treatment
Beth A. Berkowitz
2. Vegetarianism as Jewish Culture and Politics in Interwar Europe
Nick Underwood
3. “I am a Vegetarian”: The Vegetarianism of Melech Ravitch
Irad Ben Isaak
4. Farm Animal Welfare in Jewish Art and Literature
Hadas Marcus
5. Vegetarianism and Veganism among Jewish Punks
Michael Croland
6. Opening the Tent: Jewish Veganism as an Expression of an Ecological Form of Judaism
Adrienne Krone
7. A Linguistic Appraisal: Jewish Perceptions of Animal Suffering
Victoria Greenstone and Shlomi Shmuel
Part II. New Directions
8. Veganism and Covenantalism: Contrasting and Overlapping Moralities
David Mevorach Seidenberg
9. Musar and Jewish Veganism
Geoffrey D. Claussen
10. The Vegetarian Teachings of Rav Kook
Richard H. Schwartz and David Sears
11. Relevant and Irrelevant Distinctions: Speciesism, Judaism, and Veganism
Alan D. Krinsky
12. A Morally Generative Tension: Conflicting Jewish Commitments to Humans and Animals
Shmuly Yanklowitz
13. Linking Judaism and Veganism in Darkness and in Light
Sherry F. Colb
14. Jewish Veganism as an Embodied Practice: A Vegan Agenda for Cultural Jews
Jacob Ari Labendz
Report: Jewish Vegan and Vegetarian Movements in North America
Sarah Chandler and Jeffrey Cohan
This collection explores contesting conceptions of ownership and property claims advanced in the post-war years. The authors focus considerably upon how conflicts over these properties both shaped and reflected shifting and competing ideas about Jewish belonging. They show their outcomes to have had considerable consequences for the lived experiences of both Jews and non-Jews around the world. This is because the properties in questions always maintained their worth as material assets, just as they could also impart financial liabilities and other responsibilities to their stewards, regardless of the morality of their title. The unique decision to include studies of European, Middle Eastern, and North African communities into one volume represents an attempt to achieve a more globally sensitive language for thinking about these histories, especially at their points of contact and mutual-reference. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.
Introduction – Jewish property after 1945: cultures and economies of ownership, loss, recovery, and transfer Jacob Ari Labendz
1. The amnesia of the Wirtschaftswunder: Essen’s ‘House of Industrial Design’ Michael L. Meng
2. Toward a material culture of Jewish loss David Gerlach
3. Unsettled possession: the question of ownership of Jewish sites in Poland after the Holocaust from a local perspective Yechiel Weizman
4. Synagogues for sale: Jewish-State mutuality in the communist Czech lands, 1945–1970 Jacob Ari Labendz
5. Property Claims of Jews from Arab Countries: political, monetary, or cultural? Shayna Zamkanei
6. Grave connections: Algeria’s Jewish cemeteries as sites of diaspora-homeland contact Sara T. Jay
7. Reconnecting with a fugitive collection: a case study of the records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1945–1949 Jeffrey Edelstein
The attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was shocking and horrific. In the days afterwards, we started thinking about how this podcast could serve as a platform for serious discussion about antisemitism, political violence, and our current world in historical perspective. Lila, Maja, and Jacob are all looking at different aspects of antisemitism, American Jewish history, and modern Jewish life in general, so we came together in the hope that we could contribute, through this roundtable, to a wider, ongoing conversation about what’s happening now.
Please note: Normally, new episodes of Jewish History Matters are posted every two weeks. There will also be a regularly-scheduled episode posted on Sunday Dec. 9, after which we will return to our biweekly publishing schedule.
Lila Corwin Berman is the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History at Temple University, and she directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History there. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, Lila published an essay in the Washington Post titled “American Jews always believed the U.S. was exceptional. We were wrong.“
Maja GIldin Zuckerman is a Jim Joseph Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford. She’s currently studying Jewish middle school students’ experiences and perception of inclusion and exclusion in the civil sphere today, focusing on how Jewish youth in both Europe and the US react to the general rise of antisemitism and terror.
Jacob Labendz is the Clayman Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies. His research focuses on the history of Jews in and from Central Europe after the Holocaust, and on topics related to antisemitism, nationalism, and migration. Jacob has been writing and speaking about the rise of the alt-right in the US and the cultures of extremist right-wing hate, xenophobia, and antisemitism on the internet.
Traditionally, the United States has long been lauded as a beacon of global democracy - the “shining city on a hill” - but the growing political divide between the two major parties, the decline of American manufacturing, and the ballooning national deficit all threaten America's ability to exert leadership on the global stage. Externally, the rise of authoritarianism, mass migration, the threat of a global trade war, and the emergence of China as a world power threatens the United States' leading position in the world.
What do all these changes mean for the future of the global order? Are we in the midst of an illiberal turn?
With Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley and David Simonelli
More here: https://jewishstudies.ysu.edu/?page_id=733
Organizer: Jacob Ari Labendz, Center for Research on Antisemitism
Keynote: Michael Meng, Clemson University
Host: Center for Research on Antisemitism, TU-Berlin
Sponsor: Volkswagen Foundation