Reflections on the Jewish Question

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his prized essay, “Antisemite and Jew,” (in French, translated as Reflections on the Jewish Question) argued that antisemitism, furious as it was and is, corresponds to or represents social intolerance more broadly. With the resurgence of antisemitism in our time, we will consider the dynamics of intolerance that give it potency – cultural swerves, replacement distress, apparent disloyalties, and fading taboos. Time permitting, we will consider recent historical precedents for context (protocols, Dreyfus, Ford, Lindbergh).

Dennis B. Klein, Ph.D., is a member of the affiliate faculty at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and Kean University Professor of History emeritus, where he also directed the university’s Jewish Studies program and Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program. Before joining Kean in 1996 he served as founding director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Braun Center for Holocaust Studies and its Hidden Child Foundation as well as editor in chief of ADL’s Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies. He is the author or editor of seven books, including “Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” “Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto,” “The Genocidal Mind,” Survivor Transitional Narratives,” and “Societies Emerging from Conflict.” He is currently at work on a book about bystander constructions in late 20^th century America.