Judah Isseroff is a visiting lecturer in the department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is at work on a book called Judaism Politicized: Hannah Arendt's Lessons for an Age of Jewish Power and Fear.

This talk will consider Hannah Arendt's claim from her 1967 preface to Origins of Totalitarianism that Zionism is the "only direct consequence of antisemitism." There are two possible understandings of Arendt's provocative statement. The first is that Zionism was born of antisemitism in order to solve the problem of antisemitism. The second is that Zionism was the Jewish people's way of adapting itself to the logic of antisemitism. I will argue that the tension between these two interpretations remains an unresolved and damaging feature of Jewish politics today. I will explore the surprising resilience of the idea that antisemitism is actually good for the Jews.

This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science. To register for this event, go to http://tiny.utk.edu/isseroff25