Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Non-Zionist Jewish Traditions

February 3 – 4, 2025
Andrews House 110, 13 Brown St.

This academic conference sets into question contemporary conflations of Judaism and Zionism by exploring a rainbow of non-Zionist Jewish traditions throughout history and across different regions. Speakers at the conference will address the changing relation to Zionism and the State of Israel in various Orthodox communities, in socialist and communist Jewish traditions, in the U.S. and Europe, among Ottoman and Arab Jews critical of the Zionist idea before 1948, among those who refused to immigrate to Israel or who lived there as dissidents, and among disillusioned Zionists in Israel and abroad. Together they will give an account of the spectrum of non-Zionist forms of Jewish thinking, activism, and organizing in their historical, ideological, theological, and theoretical contexts.

Free and open to the public, but registration is required. Registration for this event is now closed. The event is full to capacity.

For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.

The event is cosponsored by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, the Departments of History and Religious Studies, and the Center for Middle East Studies. It is convened by Omer Bartov, Holly Case, Shaul Magid, Adi M. Ophir, and Peter Szendy.

Speakers and Moderators

  • Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (Brown University)
  • Aslı Ü. Bâli (Yale Law School)
  • Omer Bartov (Brown University)
  • Orit Bashkin (University of Chicago)
  • Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley)
  • Jonathan Boyarin (Cornell University)
  • Michelle Campos (Penn State University)
  • Holly Case (Brown University)
  • Mari Cohen (Jewish Currents)
  • Beshara Doumani (Brown University)
  • Sarah Hammerschlag (University of Chicago)
  • Jonathan Judaken (Washington University, St. Louis)
  • Geoffrey Levin (Emory University)
  • Shaul Magid (Harvard Divinity School)
  • Harry Merritt (University of Vermont)
  • David Myers (University of California, Los Angeles)
  • Adi M. Ophir (Brown University)
  • Maru Pabón (Brown University)
  • Michael Steinberg (Brown University)
  • Peter Szendy (Brown University)
  • Max Weiss (Princeton University)

Schedule

Monday, February 3

8:30 am – 9:00 amOpening Remarks
9:00 am – 10:50 am

Panel: In Europe

  • Shaul Magid, “Zionism as Assimilation: Aaron Shmuel Tamares on the Hypnosis of Nationalism”
  • Omer Bartov, “Yankel, Victor, and Manfred: Antisemitism and Zionism Before the Holocaust — Lived Reality and the Literary Imagination”
  • Sarah Hammerschlag, “The Post-war Irremissibility of Being Jewish: Non-Zionist possibilities beyond Diasporism”
  • Moderator: Adi M. Ophir
10:50 am – 11:10 amBreak
11:10 am – 1:00 pm

Panel: Non-Zionists, Old and New

  • Harry Merritt, “Jewish Sons of Latvia: Latvian Jews and Non-Zionist National Identity in War and Peace”
  • Geoffrey Levin, “American Jewish Non-Zionism: A History — and a Future?”
  • Jonathan Boyarin, “The Making of a Non-Zionist”
  • Moderator: Omer Bartov
2:30 pm – 4:20 pm

Panel: In the Wake of the Ottoman World

  • Michelle Campos, “Anti-Zionism in an Ottoman Turkish Key: David Fresko between Empire and Republic.”
  • Orit Bashkin, “Zionism, Arabism, and MENA Jews, 1846–1956”
  • Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, “Ima, Why Didn’t You Love Me in Ladino?”
  • Moderator: Max Weiss
4:20 pm – 4:40 pmBreak
4:40 pm – 6:30 pm

Roundtable: On Recently Published Books

  • Shaul Magid on Jonathan Judaken’s Critical Theories on Anti-Semitism
  • Daniel Boyarin on Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Fate
  • Jonathan Judaken on Daniel Boyarin’s The No-State Solution
  • Moderator: Peter Szendy

Tuesday, February 4

8:45 am – 10:35 am

Panel: On and Over the Margins

  • Michael Steinberg, “The Confederative Imagination”
  • David Myers, “A Taxonomy of Jewish Anti-Zionisms: From the ‘Lost Atlantis’ to the New Jerusalem”
  • Jonathan Judaken, “Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt, and the Tradition of the Conscious Pariah” 
  • Moderator: Maru Pabón
10:55 am – 12:10 pm

Panel: Disillusioned Zionists

  • Daniel Boyarin, “Eretz-Yisroel [Is] Wherever You Are: Zionism Against the Jews”
  • Adi M. Ophir, “Jewish Anti-Zionism: Reflection on Its Context, Meaning, and Political Imagination”
  • Moderator: Holly Case 
1:30 pm – 3:45 pm

Roundtable: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Stakes of the Debate

  • Aslı Ü. Bâli
  • Omer Bartov
  • Mari Cohen
  • Beshara Doumani
  • Moderator: Shaul Magid