Als gäbe es Morgen – Anti-Zionismus: eine Jüdische Geschichte

What does it mean for a Jewish author today to discuss anti-Zionism as a Jewish legacy on a public stage in Berlin? Which Jewish traditions had to be repressed and replaced so that a single one could be declared the only legitimate version? And what changes when this repressed history, retrieved from the archives, claims its rightful place at a time when, according to the vast majority of experts worldwide, Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and Zionism is becoming increasingly aggressive toward its theoretical rivals?

As part of the Als gäbe es Morgen series, the curators Abdalrahman Alqalaq, Katharine Halls and Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus discuss with authors and thinkers about possibilities for a future between the river and the sea. It’s a series of literary events where each show is unique with its own distinct focus. In this session, Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus talks to Benjamin Moser following the German translation of Moser’s most recent book Anti-Zionism – A Jewish History, published in German this autumn.

Benjamin Moser is a writer, critic and translator. He was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Susan Sontag, Sontag: Her Life and Work. He is the author of Why This World, the first major biography of the famous Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Focusing on artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers and activists, his new book maps out a Jewish intellectual tradition that was suppressed for generations as it challenged the foundational political and moral claims of Zionism – often at a high personal cost.