Derek Penslar will discuss his book Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader with Jonathan Gribetz. About the Book The life of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) was as puzzling as it was brief. How did this cosmopolitan and assimilated European Jew become the leader of the Zionist movement? How could he be both an artist and a statesman, a rationalist and an aesthete,…
In March 1968, in reaction to a student rebellion, the communist government of Poland launched a noisy propaganda campaign against the alleged Zionists, who were accused of a conspiracy to undermine socialist Poland. The campaign of slander, harassment, and persecution forced half of Poland’s Jews into exile and deeply affected the life of those who remained. For the fiftieth anniversary…
In Stranger in a Strange Land, George Prochnik revisits the life and work of Gershom Scholem, whose once prominent reputation, as a Freud-like interpreter of the inner world of the cosmos, has faded in the United States. He vividly recreates Scholem’s upbringing in Berlin and brings to life Scholem’s transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, the critic and philosopher. In doing so,…