The international conference, “Bund and Borders – German Jewish Thinking between Faith and Power”, was held from May 17th to 19th, 2009, in the Jewish Museum Berlin. The conference was conceptualized by two alumni of the Leo Baeck Fellowship programme, Nitzan Lebovic and Mirjam Wenzel, and was jointly supported by the Leo Baeck Institute London, the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Stiftung “Verantwortung, Erinnerung und Zukunft”, and the Jewish Museum Berlin. The event brought together leading scholars, former and current fellows of the Leo Baeck Programme, and members of the interested public, to discuss a topic rooted in German-Jewish history, but very much alive in present conceptual and political discourses – namely, how to negotiate between a theo-political Bund and geo-political Borders. Over the three days of the conference, it became clear that the problems confronted by Weimar era German-Jewish thinkers are by no means dead questions; they have only intensified and acquired new meanings in their migration into Israeli and North American contexts.

The conference was comprised of four panels, workshops for students, and a concluding round-table discussion. The opening session, chaired by THOMAS MEYER (Simon Dubnow Institute, Leipzig), asked whether there is a distinctive German-Jewish Culture. STEVEN ASCHHEIM (Hebrew University Jerusalem) set the program by questioning why we continue to return to the ideas of German-Jewish intellectuals. He traced our fascination to the perception that German-Jewish thought offers a radical critique of liberalism, which (for historical reasons) was not subsumed under totalitarianism, and seemed to endure the disillusionments of Western Marxism. But return does not confront a static past; the sources themselves acquire new alliances and meanings, raising the question of the future of the German-Jewish legacy. AMIR ESHEL’S (Stanford University) talk took up this reflection with an examination of futurity and alterity in the poetry of Paul Celan. Time oriented toward the future, and language which addresses the future without presenting it, both point to an ‘otherness’ which at once constitutes and interrupts transmissible experience. Eshel balanced a detailed reading of three of Celan’s poems with the bold thesis that poetry’s linguistic alterity may itself be a Jewish aesthetics. ADI GORDON (Hebrew University Jerusalem) examined the dislocation of European concepts of the sovereign nation state into theories of Zionism, and the actualization of a Jewish state in Palestine. Although focused on Hans Kohn’s conception of a bi-national Jewish state, Gordon's paper raised more general questions about the space of European Judaism in relation to the land of Israel. Meyer's commentary drew out the conceptual unity of the three papers, and prepared us for the subsequent discussion, which carried over into the reception in the courtyard of the Jewish Museum.

The second day began with a panel, chaired by CILLY KUGELMANN (Jewish Museum Berlin), on 'German-Jewish Intellectual Positions from Mystical Traditions to Radical Politics'. MARTIN KAVKA (Florida State University) opened with a paper on Buber's claim that meaning in the world is verified in the dialogical encounter with another (a ‘you’). Verification purports to render the objective world compatible with the subjective experience of revelation, but so understood, it lacks a criterion for assessing its failure. If the enchantment of the world is always on the horizon, then even “man-made-mass-destruction” could be redeemed as a step toward the Kingdom of Heaven. Kavka urged against this mystical interpretation, drawing on Kant's distinction between logical and real possibility; the latter indicates only the moral necessity, not the objective reality, of confirming that the world should and can really be otherwise. CHRISTIAN WIESE (University of Sussex) followed with a paper that spoke to the relationship between an individual bond – between the lifelong friends, Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas – and the national instantiation of a bund, challenged in Arendt's case by the accusation that she lacked Ahavat Israel. Dwelling on Jonas' insistence on Arendt's wish for a Jewish funeral, despite her own silence on the matter, Wiese's paper complicated the notion of verification ('Bewährung') that was taken up by Kavka: what does it mean to bear witness to a Jewish bond, and could silence be another way of testifying, beyond the limitations of language, national identifications, and political divides? UDI GREENBERG (Hebrew University Jerusalem) concluded the panel with an exceptionally clear statement of the relationship between radical politics and mystical theology, as framed in Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism from the standpoint of secularized (Neo-Catholic) theology. If German-Jewish thinkers developed their own political theology, what was the meaning of their critique of liberalism, and in what ways did it confirm or diverge from Schmitt's?

Greenberg's commentary anticipated the afternoon session, chaired by MARTIN TREML (Zentrum für Literaturforschung Berlin), on the topic of a Jewish political theology. VIVIAN LISKA (University of Antwerp) began by distinguishing between Benjamin's weak messianic power and Agamben's Pauline power of weakness. Liska developed the theological and political implications of Agamben's ‘Christianizing’ reading of Benjamin, ultimately arguing for the difference between Benjamin's and Agamben's state of exception. NITZAN LEBOVIC's (Tel Aviv University) paper demonstrated a close link between the codification of emergency measures in Israeli legislation and an unconscious response to the failure of Weimar democracy. The argument worked on two levels to criticize the unreflective transposition of the Weimar experience into the Israeli context: drawing on Agamben’s political philosophy, Lebovic argued that the failure to draw temporal borders separating the state of exception from the norm points to a ‘zone of indifference’ which binds the State indefinitely to crisis. In support of this argument, Lebovic made detailed reference to the rulings of German-Jewish jurists on the first generation of the Israeli Supreme Court, showing that even the most liberal of these judges (Haim Cohn) confused the need to secure the state’s borders from external threats with an ethnic determination of the bund, to be protected from alien elements within. MENACHEM LORBERBAUM (Tel Aviv University) concluded the panel with an argument cautioning against the collapse of political legitimacy and divine power, or between theocracy and political theology. Whereas theocracy sees political attributes in the bible as a divine prerogative, political theology, by contrast, establishes the secular order as a representative of God’s will. Against the latter, Lorberbaum argued for a sharp separation of Halakhic law, as a moral regiment for life, from political rule. The kingdom of God is only related to this world as a normative space, and cannot be fulfilled in any geo-political realm.

The second day closed with a panel, chaired by DIETER GRIMM (Bundesverfassungsgericht Karlsruhe), on “The Impact of German Jews on Political Culture and Constitutional Issues in Israel”. MORDECHAI KREMNITZER (Hebrew University Jerusalem) analyzed the contribution of German-Jewish (‘Jeke’) Jurists on the first generation of Israeli law, identifying the failure of Weimar era democracy as the most significant lesson carried forward into Israeli legal culture. With reference to specific rulings of the Supreme Court, Kremnitzer maintained that the infamous Jeke respect for the law was no dogmatic formalism, but rather a spirit of critique, according to which positive law was merely an instrument for achieving justice and truth. IZHAK ENGLARD (Hebrew University Jerusalem) followed with a presentation on the neo-Kantian legal theorist, Hans Kelsen. Kelsen distinguished between legal theory and practice, and between the hypothetical normativity of the law and assertoric claims about factual reality, thus manifesting the spirit of critique as a principle of separation between legality and politics, theology and law. But there are two distinct questions here, which resonate differently in the context of Weimar, and its Israeli aftermath: first, can the separation of legality and politics ever be made from outside of a political discourse, or is this separation itself a political act? And second, what does it mean to separate theology and law in the context of a Jewish State? SHAI LAVI (Tel Aviv University) gave the third presentation on conceptual questions arising from the revocation of citizenship of Arab Israelis. In contrast to parallel discourses of citizenship and exclusion in Britain and the States, the Israeli discourse makes use of a secularized theological category – that of ‘fidelity’ to the State. Lavi’s analysis placed the Israel emphasis on allegiance between the British focus on security (which borders on totalitarianism), and American liberalism (in which nothing transcends the individual). ALEXANDRA KEMMERER (Simon Dubnow Institute Leipzig) brought the session to another level of reflection with her knowledgeable commentary.

The third day was given to four concurrent workshops for graduate students. Participants included old and new fellows of the Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme, and doctoral students who joined us from universities across Germany. The morning sessions were led by Menachem Lorberbaum (“Politics meets Halakhic and Chassidic Traditions”) and Martin Treml (“Carl Schmitt and Jacob Taubes”), and the afternoon sessions were given by Vivian Liska (“Ethical considerations and aesthetic forms”) and Mordechai Kremnitzer (“An Israeli Constitution?”). Texts were distributed in advance, which allowed us to get right into detailed discussions, and to sustain an intense seminar-style engagement throughout each two hour period. The conference concluded with a roundtable discussion with RAPHAEL GROSS (Leo Baeck Institute London, Jewish Museum Frankfurt), Vivian Liska, Steven Aschheim, Martin Kavka, STEFANIE SCHÜLER-SPRINGORUM (Institute for German-Jewish History, Hamburg), and Nitzan Lebovic. The discussion aptly reflected on death – or more specifically, the concern that the ideas represented by the ambivalent ‘German-Jewish Symbiosis’ may have lost their vitality as a subject for research. On the one hand, the panellists themselves disproved their premise: the ideas born in Weimar continue to provoke living disputes, which their migration and transmutation only perpetuates. On the other hand, we saw that death itself has an uncanny power to spread beyond borders, as a miasma, which should be faced reflectively, with a conscious effort to re-draw limits.

Conference Overview:

I. A German-Jewish Critique?

Steven Aschheim: Icons Beyond Their Borders: The German-Jewish Intellectual Legacy at the Beginning of the Twenty First Century

Amir Eshel: Futurity: On Paul Celan's poetry and thought

Adi Gordon: »East« and »West« as Central European-Jewish Critique: The Case of Hans Kohn

Chair and Commentator: Thomas Meyer

II. German-Jewish Intellectual Positions from Mystical Traditions to Radical Politics

Martin Kavka: The Success of the Desire: Verification in Martin Buber

Christian Wiese: No »Love for the Jewish People«? Hans Jonas's Controversy with Hannah Arendt over »Eichmann in Jerusalem« Revisited

Commentator: Udi Greenberg

III: A Jewish Political Theology?

Vivian Liska: Giorgio Agamben and the Legacy of Walter Benjamin’s Messianism

Nitzan Lebovic: Between Bund and Borders: The Israeli Case

Menachem Lorberbaum: Two Concepts of Theocracy

Chair and Commentator: Martin Treml

IV: The Impact of German Jews on Political Culture and Constitutional Issues in Israel

Mordechai Kremnitzer: The Impact of German-Jewish Jurists on the Israeli Legal System

Izhak Englard: The Impact of Kelsen's Theory in Israel

Shai Lavi: Punishment and the Revocation of Citizenship in United Kingdom, United States and Israel

Commentator: Alexandra Kemmerer

Chair: Dieter Grimm

V. Workshops with Students

Politics meets Halakhic and Chassidic traditions (with Menachem Lorberbaum)

Carl Schmitt and Jacob Taubes (with Martin Treml)

Ethical considerations and aesthetic forms (with Vivian Liska)

An Israeli Constitution? (with Mordechai Kremnitzer)

VI.Round Table Discussion: The End of German-Jewish History?

Contributions: Steven Aschheim, Martin Kavka, Nitzan Lebovic, Vivian Liska, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum

Chair: Raphael Gross