After Nazism- The Philosophy of Identity and the Jewish Conflict with the West

(2.5-3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

After the Holocaust it perhaps appeared that an age old conflict between Judaism and Western Civilization had finally come to an end. Indeed, since 1945 Jewish life in Israel and in the Diaspora has relied on the "values and interests" that the Jewish People seems to share with the principles of Liberal Democracy that defeated Nazism in WWII. Despite this alliance (which has its roots in the humanism of the Enlightenment), the relationship between Jewish identity and the Western values of Liberal Democracy still seems complicated. Our hypothesis in this course is that modern Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and even assimilation are products of an identity based conflict that has yet to be resolved and whose sources we shall try to trace by analyzing some key differences between Jewish and Western philosophies of identity.