Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers
Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Delphine Horvilleur (video recording available)
The first lecture of the series features Ofer Waldman and Delphine Horvilleur discussing religious historian Gershom Scholem. Three years after immigrating to Jerusalem, Scholem wrote a letter to Franz Rosenzweig entitled “Confession on the Subject of Our Language.” In it, he links the transformation of Hebrew — from a sacred language to an everyday vernacular, as he observed it in Jerusalem — with a vision of apocalyptic threat. Written in 1926, the letter’s impact remains incredibly relevant today.
Video recording from 22 May 2025; Jewish Museum Berlin 2025
The digital lecture series examines Jewish intellectuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and asks what long-overlooked answers their work might offer to the current challenges of Jewish life in Germany.
We invite four intellectuals from the social sciences and literature to answer the question: Which historic texts do they return to for answers to pressing present-day questions? And how do they read these texts?
Delphine Horvilleur
Delphine Horvilleur, born in 1974 in Nancy, is well-known in France in the fields of Jewish culture and religion. She is one of the rabbis behind Judaïsme En Mouvement, a Paris-based liberal Jewish movement, and is also an author. Several of her books have been translated into German: Überlegungen zur Frage des Antisemitismus (Anti-Semitism Revisited: How the Rabbis Made Sense of Hatred, 2020), Mit den Toten leben (Living with Our Dead, 2022), and Wie geht’s? Miteinander sprechen nach dem 7. Oktober (How are you? Talking to Each Other after 7 October, 2024). Horvilleur is also a founding member of KeReM, the council of liberal francophone rabbis, and editor-in-chief of the online magazine for Jewish perspectives, TENOU’A.
Delphine Horvilleur; photo: Alexandre Isard
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Ofer Waldman
Since summer 2025 Ofer Waldman is head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office in Tel Aviv. Born in Jerusalem, he moved to Berlin in 1999 as a member of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and played among others in the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Waldman received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin (German Studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jewish History). He is a freelance author and journalist. In 2021, he and Noam Brusilovsky won the ARD German Radio Play Award for the radio play Adolf Eichmann: Ein Hörprozess (roughly: Adolf Eichmann: An Audio Trial) (RBB/DLF). His literary debut, Singularkollektiv. Erzählungen (Singular Collective: Stories), was published by Wallstein Verlag in 2023, and in 2024 Suhrkamp published his correspondence with Sasha Marianna Salzmann about the world after 7 October under the title Gleichzeit (roughly: Sametime). His new book Verkämpftes Land. Beobachtungen (roughly: A country torn apart. Observations) was just published with Wallstein.
Ofer Waldman; photo: Bernd Brundert
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Digital Lecture Series
Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers
- Landing Page
- Digital Lecture Series Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers: The event series at a glance
- Events
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Yael Kupferberg: Rescheduled for 25 Sep 2025, in German
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Eva Illouz: 16 Oct 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Liliane Weissberg – 11 Nov 2025
- Digital Content
- Current page: Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Delphine Horvilleur: Video recording from 22 May 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Moshe Sakal: Video recording from 12 Jun 2025
- See also
- The W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin: A Platform and Laboratory for Diverse Perspectives
We would like to thank the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung for supporting the Digital Lecture Series.
Video Recordings: Watch Past Museum Events (86)
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Watch Past Museum Events
We film select events, such as conferences, panel discussions, book presentations, and our lecture series.
