Yiddish Culture Center in Warsaw invites for the seminar “A People without a Land”? The Jewish National Movement and the European Nation-States – seminar hosted by Joseph Grim Feinberg, the anthropologist and philosopher, an employee of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

29 October 2017, Sunday, 11.00, Yiddish Culture Center in Warsaw, 15 Andersa St.

Registration: ckj@jidysz.org.pl

After registration we will send you a textbook at the seminar.

Jewish nationalism is sometimes considered to be among the world’s oldest expression_s of national sentiment, and the Jews’ struggle against ancient Roman domination became seen by many as a prototype for later national liberation struggles. Yet modern Jewish nationalism appeared relatively late, after other nationalist movements had already begun to carve up the European continent, creating new mono-national states out of old multiethnic empires. In this context, advocates of the Jewish nation faced a problem: modern European nationalism aimed at the creation of states as the institutional guarantee of national culture, but a nation whose population was dispersed over large territory had difficulty laying claim to any particular land. But because precisely because Jews were viewed by many as a threat to the successful establishment of homogeneous nation-states, discrimination against Jews took on increasingly violent forms. Jewish activists were therefore faced with the challenge of defending Jewish life and culture in a context that set aside no clear place for them. In the context of the new Europe, they appeared as a nation without a country. This seminar will explore the variety of responses to this situation given by the emerging Jewish national movement, ranging from the search for a territory where Jews could set up their own nation-state, through demands for cultural autonomy within existing nation-states, to the rejection of the very principle of nation-states.

A researcher at the Philosophy Institute of Czech Academy of Sciences, Joseph Grim Feinberg has written on nationalism, the concept of “the people,” labor songs, and critical social theory. His book The Paradox of Authenticity is due to be published spring 2018 by the University of Wisconsin Press. He has also published extensively in non-academic media, including Political Critique.