This year’s Sitomer Lecturer is Professor David Engel, who served for more than three decades as Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and Professor of History at New York University and as a fellow of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of nine books on various aspects of modern Jewish history and politics, including Zionism: A Short History of a Big Idea.

For the past four decades, the formula, “Israel as a Jewish and a Democratic State,” has served as a point of consensus among wide segments of Jewish Israeli society, with the two values seen as fundamentally in harmony with one another. More recently, though, ever-growing numbers of Jewish Israelis have been questioning whether a synthesis of the two is possible, and if not, which of the two is the more important for Israel’s future. The lecture will examine how the formula first came into being, how the terms “Jewish” and “democratic” have been interpreted by Israeli political institutions, and how the phrase has moved gradually from a source of consensus to one of conflict.

Sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program.

This event is free and open to the public.