Atalia Omer’s lecture will examine motifs that emerged from in-depth interviews with Jewish Israeli religious “unlearners,” who question from within the sources of Jewish history and traditions, including how Jewish history and biblical warrants are invoked in support of violent goals. Unlike secular activists, their solidarity actions are also driven by an urgency to reclaim the Jewish tradition from what they see as its misinterpretations, reflected in the mainstreaming of messianic and chauvinistic theologies of ethno-religious political sovereignty. The work of these “unlearners” will be framed in the context of prior sociological research on religion and peacebuilding beyond Palestine/Israel, in locations such as Kenya and the Philippines.

The Frederic C. Wood Lecture, an endowed annual event, is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Department of Religion and co-sponsored by the International Studies Program and the Department of Sociology.

About Atalia Omer

Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She also recently served as a senior fellow at the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard University’s Religion and Public Life program. Omer’s research focuses on religion, violence, and peacebuilding, Palestine/Israel, and theories and methods in the study of religion.

Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). She is also the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019), among other publications. Omer is a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015) and a co-editor of Palestine/Israel Review. She earned her PhD from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University.