5:30 - 7:15 pm: Discussion
Concluding the series,
Omri Boehm,
Udi Aloni,
Meron Mendel, and
Haviva Pedaya will reflect on the relations between academia, art and activism from Franz Rosenzweig until today in a discussion with
Arielle Angel (
Jewish Currents).
7:30 - 8:45 pm:
Local Angel (Udi Aloni, 2002, 70 min.)
Local Angel is about thinking with Walter Benjamin. The movie takes us on a personal odyssey of discovery of the root causes and present contradictions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Part intellectual pilgrimage, part surreal work of art in which poetry, music and images are intertwined.
Udi Aloni (b. 1959) is a filmmaker, writer, visual artist and political activist whose works focus on the interrelationships between art, theory, and action. His book
What Does a Jew Want? published by Columbia University Press and his last film
Why is we Americans (2020) explored the legacy of African American poet Amiri Baraka. Aloni lives in Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv.
Omri Boehm (b. 1979) is a philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is known for his interpretation of the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) and his work on Spinoza and Kant. His latest book,
Radical Universalism was published in Germany 2022. Boehm's writings have appeared in the
New York Times,
Washington Post,
Haaretz and
Die Zeit, among others.
Meron Mendel (b. 1976) is director of the Anne Frank Educational Center and professor of transnational social work at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. He studied history, education and Jewish history in Haifa and Munich and received his doctorate with a thesis on "Lifeworlds of Jewish Youth in Germany." Meron Mendel's research includes the present of anti-Semitism and the future of memory culture. His book
Talking about Israel: A German Debate will be published in 2023 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch.
Haviva Pedaya (b. 1957) is an Israeli poet, author, cultural researcher, and professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University, where she is head of the Elyachar Center for Studies in Sephardi Heritage.
Arielle Angel (b. 1984) is the editor-in-chief of
Jewish Currents, and was part of the team that spearheaded its relaunch. She was a 2018 New Jewish Culture Fellow and a 2016 Fellow at Tent: Creative Writing at The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. She made the Forward 50 list in 2020, and was one of JTA's "36 under 36" in 2021. She received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and also holds a degree in Studio Art and Creative Writing from NYU.
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