ÜBER DIESE EPISODE
“I think that Jews have become extremely solipsistic in a way that is embarrassing. It's very much contrary to the way I was brought up, which was not to talk about yourself, which was to talk about other people and to serve other people. That was part of the heritage that I received from the Holocaust and from my family's background as refugees was, “You're not a refugee. You've got it pretty good. You live in America.” We were very much exhorted against that and exhorted to serve other people and to try to do something good in the world. And so I hope this will be one tiny little part of something that will make a change for the Palestinians.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Benjamin Moser about his new book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. A book of immense historical and geographic reach, Anti-Zionism conveys its arguments through the lives of twelve Jewish anti-Zionists. From the 19th century Polish-Jewish rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares to the contemporary photographer and activist Nan Goldin, we learn how Jews have fought against the reduction of the traditional, expansive notion of Jewishness open to and in service to the world, to a form of narrow ethno-nationalism, closed off to all how do not subscribe to its genocidal settler colonial logic. We learn how many of these figures foretold precisely the perpetual cycles of violence Zionism has unleashed. One of the reasons Moser wrote this book is contained in this statement. I offer it as a contribution to the movement by so many noble people who are working to construct an alternative vision of Jewish life, one that is free from racism, nationalism, and militarism. It is an attempt to say, especially to younger people, that we are not the first, and that we do not need to start afresh.
(0:00) The Jewish Heritage of Service vs. Solipsism
(8:10) Theodor Herzl's Zionist Writings
(16:29) The Sensitive Rabbi: Aaron Samuel Tamares
(22:16) The Tragic Fate of Jacob Israël de Haan
(27:53) Hannah Arendt and the Backlash to Eichmann
(41:25) A Spiritual Catastrophe for Judaism
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