9:30-10:00 Greetings

Dr. Marco Mattheis, Cultural Department Director, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany

Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi, representing the institutes

10:00-11:30 First double panel

Knowledge Migration and German Jews

Chair: Prof. Gideon Reuveni

Dr. Shir Kochavi: German-Jewish Immigrants and the New York Art Market after the Holocaust

Dr. Ofri Ilani: “He’s infected with the Berlin Disease”: Homosexuality, Nazism and Germanness in Mandate Palestine 

Avishag Ben Yosef: “Pomegrante” and “Milgroim”: Bilingualism Short and Sweet in the Weimar Republic

Messianism, Judaism and Law

Chair: Prof. Doron Avraham

Tamar Kojman: Between the End of History and Judgment Day: The Jewish Question as a Messianic Question 

Dr. Naama Jager: “A Voice in the Wilderness”: Skepticism and Criticism in the Religious Reform in Germany in the Middle of the 19th Century

Dr. Meir Yarom: On the Empiricism of Hans Kelsen: The Pure Theory of Law from the Perspective of British Philosophy  

11:30-12:00 – Coffee Break

12:00-13:30 Second double panel

Orientalism in the Orient: A German-Jewish Ethnography in Spaces Old and New

Chair and Respondent: Dr. Amos Noy

Lee Rotbart: “Man accumulates memories”: The Palestinian Villages Destroyed in 1948, as Documented by Ethnographer Erich Brauer

Dr. Hanan Harif: From Goitein’s to Havshush’s Voyages: Planting a European Heritage in Middle-Eastern Soil

Dr. Amit Levi: Between Stange Peoples: The Project of Ethnographic Recordings in WWI POW Camps

Dr. Arndt Engelhardt: German Visions of the Holy Land? Serena Rosen’s Oriental Album, 1854–1867

Intercultural Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity

Chair and Respondent: Prof. Ephraim (Efi) Shoham-Steiner

Aviad Markovitz: Inquisition in the Rhein Valley? On the Repercussions of a Unique Ashkenazi Halachic Ruling

Dr. Ahuva Liberless: Cross-Cultural Transitions: Law, Halacha and History between Germans and Jews

Prof. Maoz Kahana: “Wunderliche Zeichen am Himmel”: David Gans of Prague and the Melanchatonian Reformation

13:30-14:30 – Lunch Break

14:30-16:00 Third double panel

From Goethe to Lasker-Schüler: Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in German Literature

Chair and Respondent: Dr. Chiara Caradonna

Adi Molad: Elsa Lasker-Schüler and the Oriental Circus

Yarden Ben-Tzur: The Garden and Orient in Goethe’s Writing

Eran Horowitz: Ruins as an Encounter Between Man and Nature and as an Ironic Mirror

Between Critique and Theology: A Discussion of “Critiques of Theology”: German-Jewish Intellectuals and the Religious Sources of Secular Thought

Chair: Dr. Silvana Kandel-Lamdan

Prof. Ronny Miron: Theology and Criticism

Prof. Binyamin Pollock: “Give me a place to stand”: Criticism and Tradition in German-Jewish Thought

Dr. Cedrick Cohen-Skalli: Criticism of Modernity, Religion and the Middle East in the Writings of German-Jewish Thinkers

Response: Dr. Yotam Hotam

16:00-16:30 Coffee break

16:30-18:00 Fourth double panel

Institutional History

Chair: Dr. Kim Wünschmann

Niv Perelsztejn: A Hundred Years of (German?) Jewish Studies 

Josefine Langer Shohat: The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and the Jews –  Early German-Jewish Encounters after the Holocaust

Yael Diamant: “A historical thread caught them and brought them back to the village where they were no more”: The Horb am-Main Synagogue and Its Integration in the Israel Museum

Sociological Perspectives

Chair: Dr. Orr Scharf

Dr. Robert Ziehelmann: “A Photograph of Earthly Life from the Perspective of the Redeemed”: Kafka as a Model for Social Critique in Kracauer, Benjamin and Adorno

Anya Zhuravel Segal: The Red City: The Soviet Cultural Presence in 1920s Berlin

Moshe Semyonov*, Noah Lewin-Epstein*, and Christian S. Czymara (presenter)* (postdoc Tel Aviv University): Go West? Domestic Migration and Wealth Accumulation in Unified Germany 

18:00-18:15 Coffee break

18:15:19:00 Roundtable: German Studies (in Israel) after October 7

Chair: Dr. Irene Aue-Ben-David

Prof. Gisela Dachs, Prof. Stefan Ihring, Prof. Gideon Reuveni, Dr. Kim Wünschmann

Free attendance, registration required. Please register by June 23, 2024