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The Department of Religion and Classics presents the third part of a six part series: Conversations on Israel, Palestine, and the War in Gaza.  Shaul Magid in conversation with Aaron Hughes. Livestream: https://rochester.zoom.us/j/93224953468.

The ‘Zionist Consensus,” or a centrist view of Zionism, arose in the early 1970s and has largely dominated the Jewish conversation in America. October 7th and the war in Gaza has resulted in two different but related phenomena in American Jewry that has seriously threatened that consensus. First, there has been a marked rightward shift among many American Jews regarding the on-going conflict in Israel/Palestine, viewing the situation in increasingly zero-sum terms. And second, there has been the resurgence of the Jewish Left that has increasingly questioned and even abandoned Zionism as the sine qua non of Jewish identity. In this talk I will examine some of the new parameters of the American Jewish Left, its deep ambivalence and even abandonment of the Zionist project, and its prospects for a future New Diasporism.

Shaul Magid teaches modern Judaism at Harvard Divinity School, is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, and the Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He studied for his MA in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University and earned his PhD from Brandeis University in 1994. His rabbinical ordination is from Jerusalem in 1984. He is the author of many books and essays including Hasidism on the Margin (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), From Metaphysics to Midrash (Indiana University Press, 2008), American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Indiana University Press, 2013), Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford University Press, 2014), Piety and Rebellion: Essays in Hasidism (Academic Studies Press, 2019), The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik's Commentary to the New Testament (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), and Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021). His new book The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance (New York: Ayin Press) will appear in 2023. He is the contributing editor of the column “Teiku” for the Ayin Journal and writes regularly for +972 and Religion Dispatches. He is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Society for the Study of Religion.

Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Rochester. A specialist in Jewish and Islamic history, he is the author of twenty-one books with titles such as Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast (NYU Press, 2016), Shared Identities: Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam (Oxford, 2017), and An Anxious Inheritance: Religious Others and the Shaping of Sunni Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2022). He has held visiting appointments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Oxford University, and McMaster University. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Killam Trust.

This year-long speaker series is designed to foster intellectual growth and enrich the campus community, particularly in the wake of last year's campus conflicts regarding Israel and Palestine. Recognizing the need for more open dialogue and a deeper understanding of complex issues, we seek to create a space for respectful discussion, critical thinking, and a broadening of perspectives. These topics, often deeply personal and emotionally charged, can be difficult to navigate, but the series aims to provide a platform for exploring them with empathy, understanding, and a commitment to informed discourse. By inviting renowned experts from various fields we hope to stimulate thought-provoking conversations, challenge prevailing perspectives, and elevate the overall level of discourse on campus.

A reception will follow the event.  Parking passes are available for Library Lot at the welcome kiosk at the main entrance to campus on Elmwood Avenue.

Sponsored by the Department of Religion & Classics and the Center for Jewish Studie.

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