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Michael Brenner (American Univ. and Univ. of Munich): "The Concept of a Jewish State - From Herzl to Netanyahu."

The discussion over recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has become an important part in the peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in recent years. But what exactly is a Jewish state? A state with a Jewish majority? A state with a Jewish character? A religious state? A state like any other state or a light unto the nations? This lecture focuses on the historic debate of what a Jewish state could and should be from Theodor Herzl to the late 20th century.

Michael Brenner is Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich and Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. He taught previously at Indiana and Brandeis University and was a visiting professor at several universities, including Stanford, Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins. He is the International President of the Leo Baeck Institute and an elected fellow of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Mantua. His latest publication is an edited volume on the history of German Jewry from 1945 until today. His previous books, translated into ten languages, include A Short History of the Jews (Princeton 2010), Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History (Princeton 2010), Zionism: A Brief History (Marcus Wiener 2003), and The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (Yale 2000). He has co-edited seventeen books, among them Der Holocaust in der deutschsprachigen Geschichtswissenschaft: Bilanz und Perspektiven (Wallstein 2012).